Voting Bill: Make NASS Part-Time With N77,000 Salary Like Corpers – Adeyanju Urges
Human rights lawyer Deji Adeyanju has come down hard on Nigeria’s federal lawmakers following the withdrawal of a controversial bill that sought to make voting compulsory for eligible citizens.
The bill, which proposed fines of up to ₦100,000 or six months’ imprisonment for individuals who abstain from voting without justification, was met with widespread backlash before being quietly shelved.
In a statement on Monday, Adeyanju described the bill as “tone-deaf and profoundly unserious,” accusing the National Assembly of wasting legislative time on what he called “anti-people proposals” rather than addressing Nigeria’s pressing socio-economic challenges.
“The now-withdrawn bill reveals just how idle our legislature has become,” Adeyanju said. “At a time when insecurity festers and our youth face mass unemployment, proposing to punish citizens for not voting is both absurd and insulting to the Nigerian people.”
Adeyanju argued that voter apathy in Nigeria is not caused by indifference, but by widespread disillusionment with the political class, the lack of electoral transparency, and the failure of successive governments to deliver meaningful development.
“This bill completely misses the point. Rather than addressing the root causes of low voter turnout—such as electoral malpractice, broken promises, and widespread poverty—it seeks to criminalize citizens’ justified lack of faith in the system,” he added.
Taking a broader aim at the structure of Nigeria’s legislature, Adeyanju called for the introduction of a part-time legislative system, suggesting that the current full-time model has turned politics into a career path for many jobless individuals with no real-world experience.
“Politics in Nigeria has become a full-time job for people who have no other jobs,” he said. “In saner climes, legislative roles are held by professionals—lawyers, academics, entrepreneurs—who serve part-time and bring their expertise into government. If our lawmakers had actual careers outside politics, we would not be seeing such ridiculous bills.”
He further proposed a radical reform of the legislature’s remuneration and structure.
“Let them earn ₦77,000 like NYSC members. Maybe then, only people who truly want to serve would come forward,” Adeyanju stated. “We must restructure our political culture to reflect service, not self-enrichment.”
He urged lawmakers to instead focus on genuine reforms that would restore public confidence in the democratic process, including strengthening electoral institutions, improving campaign finance transparency, and ensuring the accountability of elected officials.
“If lawmakers sincerely want to increase voter turnout, they must first earn the public’s trust. They should pass laws that make elections credible, secure, and transparent—not punish the victims of their own failures,” he said.
THE WHISTLER reports that the now-defunct compulsory voting bill had sparked public outrage, with civil society groups, legal analysts, and political observers warning that it violated the constitutional rights of Nigerians and ignored the deeper causes of civic disengagement.
Voting Bill: Make NASS Part-Time With N77,000 Salary Like Corpers – Adeyanju Urges is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
