by Uchechukwu Okoroafor, Abuja
As the race for the 10th Speaker of the House of Representatives intensifies, we are looking at some of the leadership qualities of the lawmaker representing Bende Federal Constituency of Abia State, Hon Benjamin Okezie Kalu that stands him out among the top contenders for the position.
Grow your business with us
Kalu, who is also the Spokesman of the House of Representatives, is going to bring to the 10th House of Representatives reasonable changes and address challenges that the givers of the mandate expect him to resolve. Since Speakership is all about the people, he would be conscious of the fact that when the 359 members vote for him to become their Speaker, he is not going to be Speaker of 359 people alone, but the speaker of the Parliament that belongs to the Nigerian people.
His Speakership will be a reflection of the entire federal constituencies in Nigeria. On the expectations of Nigerians from the Speaker of the 10th Assembly, he believes that Nigerians’ expectations can be established through a thorough NEEDS analysis, considering the nation’s mood and proposals from the public on their wishes concerning issues that should be prioritised as a national objective.
He believes that understanding these and marrying them with the proposals of the ruling party that made the electorate vote them into power would help him have a direction. Such direction that ensures that, though there are three arms of government, they are one government. He will be a speaker who wants every part of Nigeria to be heard and heard very well. It’s also important to note that his Speakership would be the Speakership that would enthrone Parliamentary sovereignty where the Parliament is bigger than any of the members participating in the Parliament. He would ensure that Nigerians and other arms of government would respect National Assembly resolutions.
As someone who has worked very closely with the outgoing leadership in the House led by Hon Femi Gbajabiamila he knows that the current leadership have done their best to ensure that symbiotic relationship between the three arms of government works well for the development of the country. He understands the kind of Speaker Nigerians are looking forward to, which he referred to as Speaker impartiality. A Speaker that would be very impartial, a Speaker that would put himself last and put the desires of Nigerians first, a Speaker that even if the gavel is going to go against his sentiments, his biases, he would still allow the gavel to move in the direction of the people. When the gavel goes in the direction of the majority of the people, he goes in the direction of democracy, fairness, equity, and good conscience. That is the kind of Speaker that Nigeria is looking for. That is the kind of Speaker he would be. A Speaker that would sustain the leadership model of the 9th House of Representatives. He is well positioned to do that.
Some of the things that set Hon Kalu apart from other candidates include the fact that he believes in institutional trust, diversity sensitivity, Speaker impartiality and parliamentary sovereignty. He also believes in reducing the extensiveness of this diversity insensitivity. In his thinking there is urgent need to stop it from expanding – this insensitivity to diversity. He believes and rightly so, that we might be of different tongues and races and ethnic groups and regions, but we are one Nigeria. What sets him apart is that he is interested in reducing or eliminating inequalities of participation. He is interested in nonexclusionary discriminatory parliamentary infrastructure policies that have made certain people perform below expectations. He will be prioritising the representativeness of the representatives of the House and transparency of the activities of the House to reduce the opaqueness that has surrounded the activities of the House of Representatives this year and that has caused a lot of misunderstanding in the minds of onlookers, citizens of the country. He will be prioritising accessibility, being conscious of the fact that the Parliament belongs to the people. He would ensure that the Parliament is reasonably accessible to all the sectors of our economy and all the people that have given the lawmakers their mandate.
His administration as Speaker will be adaptable, and will make the Parliament more accountable to the people. He would be prioritising that as well as prioritising effective Parliament. He would ensure that the borderlines between the mandate and the relationship the lawmakers share with other arms of government would be very clear and well-defined. He would operate with the understanding that even though there are three arms of government, there is one government, but in being one government, they should not be into the roles of the other and vice-versa. His administration will be that of transformative legislative intervention that will help the national objective of the country, as set by the Executive and approved by Parliament, that they would be able to achieve that within the shortest time possible. He will look at our obsolete laws that the dynamics state of our nation has made irrelevant in addressing the needs they were set out to achieve. Although some of those laws would be visited, new laws would be made to ensure that pegs were well carved, either roundly or squarely, for the needs of our country under his administration.
The leadership style he would bring to the table is a combination of leadership styles. He is a democratic leader who is also strategic, as a result he processes his decision based on strategy and goals. You can say that he has the element of strategic leadership. He is also an energetic and focused leader or what you can describe as visionary leadership. He is also a leader that is bold to set ambitious goals and a pace setting leader. He is a leader who pushes to think the new and versatile ways, which can be described as transformational leadership. He can also be described as a leader who nurtures individuals, so he has an element of coaching leadership. He is therefore a combination of democratic, strategic, visionary, pacesetting, transformational and coaching leader. All these elements combine to form his leadership style, which he has applied repeatedly, contributing to his success as a lawmaker and representative.
These combination of leadership qualities are what he would bring to the table to make a difference as the Speaker of the 10th House of Representatives.