From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja,
The All Progressive Congress (APC) would never oppose execution of constituency project by members of the National Assembly.
Its National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, stated this when he hosted former National Assembly Members Forum in Abuja, yesterday.
He said the party was happy with the quality of constituency projects the legislators carried out.
“There is no doubt we are so happy to have you here. As members of National Assembly legislators, psychologically, you are alway nostalgic about legislation and sociologically, you are bounded by esprit de corps. You can see how important you are. In fact, National Assembly is the first casualty to military rule. Therefore, since we have been lucky for many decades now that we are experiencing democracy, it is your responsibility to consolidate National Assembly, whether you are inside or outside. The psychological thing that binds you together should continue.
“That is why we are so happy with the legislative projects in their constituency. Even though some are asking why constituency project, an ordinary voter would like to see something on ground. Even when your main function is to make laws and oversight functions, an ordinary voter doesn’t want to know how legislation is affecting his life. He doesn’t see how oversight function is affecting his life, he can easily see a constituency project whether it is a borehole, building of school, clinics and so many other things. So, we think it is very important, whether you are from third, fourth and fifth Assembly, when you see your constituency project whenever you are elected, you feel very happy and satisfied.”
Leader of the delegation, and former House members, Ibrahim Zailani, expressed confidence that the ruling party would retain power at the centre for 60 years.
“We have no doubt in our minds that you will lead this party to continuously form government in the Federal Republic of Nigeria for more than 60 years, we know you can do it and we have absolute confidence that you can do it. As you can see, we are representing the country because all the six geopolitical zones are adequately represented here. We may not be in the House of Representatives now, but we want to tell you that all of us have the energy, the vision and the interest of the party at heart. So, we are offering ourselves for any party assignments.
“With this, we know from one of us, you may have a special place for either the legislators or former members of our forum, because we saw what you have done with one of our member who was your immediate past Commissioner for Finance. We want you to do more possibly pick one of our ladies and work with in the APC. On behalf of all of us, we thank you, we will continue to pray for you, to show our solidarity, to show our support because any support given to you, we are given to ourselves because we belong to all progressive Congress.”