By Citizen Richard Odusanya
Now is the time to hold our legislators accountable.
In response to my essay on the burden of the microphone, a citizen offered a piercing feedback: “We don’t have the same opportunity to turn our criticism or opinion to obligation.” He is correct. Platform is unequal. But that feedback reveals a deeper power we have abandoned — the power to make obligation a constitutional compulsion.
For too long, Nigeria has treated the budget as a political document, not a moral document. Funds allocated to states disappear into a ritual of yearly questionable road repairs, while the essentials of dignified living remain in ruins. We patch the same stretch of road every December, while children learn under trees, hospitals operate without drugs, and citizens are priced out of housing and food.
This inversion must end. The legislature must guarantee that essential amenities come before optics.
The constitution must guarantee that housing, health, education and food are at the forefront of our national planning. These are not campaign slogans. They are the minimum guarantees of citizenship. They must be justiciable, measurable, and enforceable.
What does that mean in practice? It means laws empowering Nigerian lives must be constitutional. It means funds allocated to states must be spent according to constitutional purpose, with transparent reporting and consequences for diversion. It means the legislature must enforce a hierarchy of needs: people before projects, welfare before white elephants.
We cannot build a future on roads that lead nowhere, while the people who walk those roads have nowhere to live, no hospital to heal them, and no school worthy of their children.
If the National Assembly and State Assemblies will not legislate the Nigerian people into the center of national planning, who will?
This is how we move from opinion to obligation. We stop merely complaining about bad governance and start demanding constitutional guarantees for good living. That is the legislative covenant.
Citizen Richard Odusanya is Curator of WITNESS 2026, a civic doctrine platform on Conscience, Competence, Character
