Date Published: 06/24/09
REPS: ENOUGH OF DISTRACTIONS PLEASE
BY: FRED ODIALE
The House of Representatives of 360 members, representing all the federal constituencies, is the most democratic institution in our democratic system. Its power of lawmaking particularly appropriation power, makes it a significant body to work for change in our society. Its oversight function also places it in good stead to check corruption and absolutism in governance.
These functions has been performed with varying degree of success by the House over the last ten years under conditions and circumstances of a learning process and for most time, an overbearing executive arm of government yet to fully acknowledge the democratic ethos of separation of power.
However, in recent times, a lot of good and unprecedented feats have come out of the House under the leadership of Dimeji Bankole, a speaker of the House elected on the platform of probity, transparency, accountability and good governance. In about 19 months that the Abeokuta, Ogun State born Polo playing Speaker has held sway in the House, one can point to a couple of things done well by the House of Representatives in the interest of Nigerian people pursuant of his mandate and forces that threw up his leadership.
Significant milestone under Bankole will include the re-engineering of the entire budgetary process with the issue of unspent funds, hitherto glossed over now a major issue in our budget. In two budgets that came to the House under Bankole, N750billion was returned as unspent funds and re-appropriated instead of disappearing into private pockets through bogus end- of-year contracts.
Equally, the insistence of Bankole-led House on proper scrutiny of budget has led to discovery of duplication of projects. The House has also passed the National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO) Bill patterned after the US Congress Budget Office (CBO) to provide the legislature with its own template and fundamentals in the passage of Appropriation Bills. The bill is awaiting Senate concurrence.
On lawmaking in general, the House has passed 59bills in two years with most of them awaiting concurrence from the Senate while over 200 Bills are in the final stages of passage into law. Indeed, this record in two years is by far better than that of any other session of the National Assembly in the last ten years of democracy. The House has also passed over 200 resolutions affecting various aspects of our national life and individual citizens positively.
In the area of oversight, the House investigative activities have exposed corruption, maladministration and misappropriation of funds in the power sector, the Capital Market, Custom, NNPC and MDAs which were discovered not to be remitting revenue generated to the tune of N3trillion in five years to the Federation Account as they should constitutionally. Indeed, the corrective nature of the House investigative activities has now made public officials to be on their toes and wary of their actions which are subject to future investigations.
But these forward looking activities of the House of Representatives under Bankole has given rise to negative backlash from those affected by the gradual erosion of the status quo of our way of doing things. Those whose personal economic interest are affected by these reformist and activist legislature are fighting back, using some members of House to cause maximum distractions and prevent the House from further proceeding in its role for the society.
The usual antics of some members are to continually raise “Point of Order” which have the tendency of slowing down legislative process. At a point, some members were calling Point of Order to commend the traditional dress sense of some members! At various points, Bankole has appealed to members to shun shenanigans being thrown at the House to distract it from set agenda.
But a more dangerous distraction is the issue of raising allegation of fraud and corruption against the leadership of the House, or members of the House. For instance, to stall the presentation of the Power Probe report, a N100million bribery allegation was raised in a magazine against the Committee on Power and Steel and this has the effect of stalling the presentation of the report for weeks until the Ethics and Privileges Committee declared the allegation as baseless.
Not long afterward, Barrister Festus Keyamo accused Bankole and the leadership of the House of corruption in the purchase of Peugeot 407 cars for committees of the House of Representatives. This issue generated much tension and negative publicity for the House which was effectively distracted for months to tackle this credibility issue.
At long last, it was found that no such fraud has been committed and Bankole cleared of any misdeed. Indeed Keyamo was reported to be parading forged and fake document for which he was recommended for Police investigation and possible prosecution for forgery and perjury. To forestall or postpone that eventuality, Keyamo quickly ran to the court to dodge possible prosecution that would have irreparably asphyxiated his legal career. In the interim, he achieved the goal of distracting the House while failing in the contract of orchestrating Bankole’s impeachment.
The issue of the N5.2billion rural electrification contract which is before a court was used to distract the House and bring its image to disrepute even when all accusations against legislators remains mere allegations yet to be proven.
But the most recent distraction was the uproar generated by a member of the House, Hon. Dino Melaye in consort with Hon. West Idahosa, Hon. Kamil Akinlabi and Hon. Solomon Awhinawhi over three principal officers who were accused of under hand dealings in handling House delegated assignments in the last two months. The Chief Whip, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha was accused of fraud in the handling of the 10 th Anniversary of Democracy program on June 4 th, 2009. The Majority Leader of the House, Hon. Tunde Akogun was similarly accused over the handling of the House Retreat from June 16-17, 2009, while Hon. Babashehu Agaie, the deputy Majority Leader was accused of mismanaging the Afro-Arab Parliament Conference a month earlier.
All this came to light while the House was on recess and Hon. Melaye who championed the distractive allegations was all over the media houses claiming he has over 250 members behind his crusade. The D-Day for the planned removal of these officers was June 23 rd, 2009 when the House resumed from recess.
Alas, nothing of such happened in spite of the hired crowd paid to picket the House on D-Day. After a rowdy session which saw majority of members expressing dismay over the attack on their integrity and that of the House. A possible suspension of Dino for three months was on card through a motion, with overwhelming support of members before Dino beat an ignominious retreat and “seriously apologize” to members and the House for smearing their image and integrity. He further resigned his chairman position of House Committee on Information to assuage member’s hurt feelings at the public ridicule his action has brought the House.
At this point, Bankole again reminded the members of the Green Chamber to be more focused and shun distractive tendencies that tend to slow down the House progress. He listed important issues before the House requiring urgent attention to include the Electoral Reforms, Constitution Review and a couple of bills geared towards good governance that would impact on Nigerians for generations yet unborn. He urged members to be ready to improve on their performance in the interest of Nigeria adding that as it is the current session of the House has performed better than the others in the area of law making and oversight.
One would want members to heed to the admonition of Bankole and shun distractive tendencies that only serve personal interests. It is indeed regrettable that most allegations against the House usually come from members aggrieved over loss of committee head or those jostling for position. The interest of making law for good governance of the society should be paramount among the operators of this democratic institution. Enough of distractive allegations.
Fred Odiale
15, Asaba road, Benin City,
Edo State.
