Date Published: 09/27/11

Can Nigeria Survive?

The framers of the militarily imposed 1999 Constitution attempted to provide a system of check and balance on the three arms of government so as to reduce to the bearest minimum the emergence of dictatorship and tyranny in their working relationship.

In fact, Part 1, Section 88 of the 1999 Constitution provides that

POWER TO CONDUCT INVESTIGATIONS

(1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, each House of the National Assembly shall have power by resolution published in its journal or in the official Gazette of the Government of the Federation to direct or cause to be directed an investigation into:

(a) Any matter or thing with respect to which it has power to make laws; and

(b) The conduct of affairs of any person, authority, Ministry or government department charged, or intended to be charged, with the duty of or responsibility for:

(i) Executing or administering laws enacted by the National Assembly; and

(ii) Disbursing or administering moneys appropriated or to be appropriated by the National Assembly.

(2) The powers conferred on the National Assembly under the provisions of this section are exercisable only for the purpose of enabling it to:

(a) Make laws with respect to any matter within its legislative competence and correct any defects in existing laws; and

(b) Expose corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws within its legislative competence and in the disbursement or administration of funds appropriated by it.

In other words, each house of the National Assembly is empowered by the constitution to oversight both the executive and the judiciary with respect to activities for which it has competence to legislate.

In modern states, the Legislators, because they come from their small constituencies are closer to the grass root than the Governor or the President. That is why their meeting venue can rightly be called peoples parliament if at each session, they try to justify the peoples trust and confidence. For example, the award of huge allowances to for themselves to the extent that senators have at least N18million and House members have N16million to themselves quarterly as allowances cannot be justified when the states are finding it difficult to pay N18,000 minimum wage.

Most reported cases of graft, and corruption are usually buried and abandoned. Take for example, the leadership of committees for electricity and powers initially deceived Nigerians as they went about visiting power stations with strong media coverage. They claimed that they were probing how the executive utilized over 16 billion USD on expansion of power supply but they themselves eventually became part of the corruption they were to oversight. At last, there were reported cases of how the committees of both the senate and House of Representatives and their leadership connived to award bogus contracts to empty the treasury of Nigerian Electricity Commission of over N5billion naira. The leadership of the National Assembly has ensured that the prosecution of their collegues had been stalled till date. In fact, it has been reported that one of the dishonourable Committee Chairman has again returned to the parliament.

Again, Nigerians cannot forget too soon the many cases of impunity that characterized the various scandals in the house, e.g. the over N2billion naira vehicle purchase for the House, the reported cases of over N9 billion naira which the Leadership of the House has failed to account for until the parliament got dissolved, the scandal involving Senate Committees on healthcare, education etc in the last parliament that have been swept under the carpet.

The above summary of the very poor image of the National Assembly is just to underscore the fact that given their level of involvement in corruption, the parliament cannot faithfully investigate, uncover and expose various cases of corruption and perversion in the country, not to talk of recommending implementable sanctions.

Arising from the norm in Executive Presidential System of government, the executive interaction with the people through out its tenure is relatively unhelpful. In the parliamentary system, the executive and the parliament are in daily and regular contact and interaction. Motions for vote of confidence on the government can be moved as soon as the opposition feels the executive is no more popular as to remain in office. There cannot be undue delay to investigate and effect sanctions as they may be warranted in the particular circumstances.

The fact that many awarded contracts remain unexecuted or half heartedly done and no one is punished for such glaring cases of outright failure is because our National Assembly has turned out to be undeserving of being called honourable. This viewpoint take cognizance of the fact that hopefully, many of the decent Nigerians who were in 2011 elected into the National Assembly will aggressively and decisefully impact on the quality of performance of this new National Assembly.

The point one is making here is that the Nigerian annual budget proclamations have remained mere rituals which for many decades have never be executed. There are many scandalous abandoned projects in many part of the country. The many cases of corruption in the country will remain as they are now until the Nigerian peoples pro-actively prevail on the assembly men and women to perform through street actions, regular visitations to the parliament and by the usage other forms of social media. A situation whereby contracts approved and appropriated for in many ministries and other statutory bodies remain unexecuted and the public officials and the various contractors are not apprehended and punished is only possible because the National Assembly members are shamelessly part of the rot.

One is not unmindful of the yearly dubious invitations of ministers and chief executives of parastatals and other agencies to defend their budgets. The popular understanding in the country is that the Assembly’s various committees use such occasions to bargain for their selfish portion in the budget.

Furthermore, it is the unfortunate belief that the presented budget is unreasonably inflated to provide for their own portion of the budget. Our constitution places the responsibility of execution of the budgets on the executives which also should be answerable for failure. Therefore the regular virtual re-writing of budgets by the assembly members since 1999 in a kind of legislative tyranny fashion is part of the shame of our so called legislators.

The public will recount that huge sum of money appropriated on various social services and infrastructure remain unexecuted. For example, the PDP’s Mr. Fix it, Chief Tony Annenih as Minister of Works received between 150 and 200 billion for road construction, between 1999 - 2003 yet no one single road was competed and the old PDP chieftain remains a boss whose questionable acts had never been brought to book. Today, he is as usual, the current Chairman of Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA which has been held unproductive and prostrate by PDP party stalwarts.

Whether or not Nigeria will go under will to an extent depend on the level of fidelity of the Assembly members, in performing the legitimate roles assigned to them by the constitution. From available statistics, Nigeria has earned over 230 billion USD from General Obasanjo’s emergence till now under Dr. Jonathan. The worry is that there is no trace of how such huge resources has been utilized. Rather than making life better for Nigerians, as we, the campaigners for restoration of democracy to Nigeria hoped for, the level of poverty and misery in the country is now too worrisome and intolerable to ignore.

The fact is that President Jonathan need not be a military general to be able to perform well, but he should realize that his regular promises of transformation in the last one year has not improved the living standards of Nigerians. Nigeria now has over 10million unemployed graduates. The façade of the rising GDP has not positively impacted on the citizens practically, yet, the President has acted militarily to approve the suspension of Justice Salami in an undue haste when in fact he knows that Justice Isah Ayo Salami, the jurist, is presiding over the presidential tribunal dealing with the petition of Gen. Buhari against the President. Someone ought to have advised the president that he cannot be a judge in his own matter, ‘nemo dat quo non habit’.

Those who want to sustain this lopsided national structure should realize that undermining the judiciary and the operation of the rule of law as manifested by the conduct of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria as the Chairman of the NJC is injurious. Justice Katsina Alu resorted to the use of self help as he set up Justice Babalakin, Dahiru Mustafa and finally Auta respectfully who eventually helped him to achieve his working to the answer objective to replace Justice Isa Ayo Salami. Furthermore, that Justice Katsina Alu’s NJC dishonourably failed to take judicial notice of the pending suit against the body is an open invitation to anarchy. The unfortunate incident has eroded the confidence of the public in the judiciary as the last hope of the citizen. For how long can this charade go on?

AYO OPADOKUN

National Coordinator, CODER