By Olusegun Adeniyi
From
the judgement of a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos which orders
President Muhammadu Buhari to “urgently instruct security and
anti-corruption agencies to forward to him reports of their
investigations into allegations of padding and stealing of some N481
billion from the 2016 budget by some principal officers of the National
Assembly” to damaging allegations by both former Finance Minister and
Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof.
Attahiru Jega, the spotlight is now on our federal lawmakers who are
being perceived as no more than cheap bribe-takers.
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| *Senate President Saraki and House Speaker Dogara |
The
situation is not helped by the widespread knowledge that the National
Assembly has become the watering hole of high-maintenance ex-governors,
semi-literate political contractors, wanted international criminal
suspects and some yesterday’s men who are now in desperate need of
economic empowerment. Yet, in a situation where lawmakers behave like
gangsters, the various executive bodies like ministries and agencies
will begin to see their assignments in transactional terms as oversight
becomes a ritual of appeasement of the greed of committee members and
the budgeting process, which ordinarily should be a serious assignment,
degenerates into an annual bazaar.
The
whole controversy started with Okonjo-Iweala’s latest book titled,
‘Fighting corruption is dangerous: The story behind the headlines’,
where she revealed how the National Assembly was given an additional
vote of N17 billion to secure the passage of the 2015 appropriation
bill. “In the case of the N17 billion, the book does not talk of bribe.
It indicates that lawmakers increased the budget by N17 billion and we
had to accept that to move on; hence, the term ‘price to pay’. The
reason for discussing what happened is that this approach needs to
change” Okonjo-Iweala clarified, in response to sensational newspaper
headlines that did not accurately reflect what she wrote in the book
that I have also read.
While the public was still digesting that furore, Jega added fuel to
the fire by accusing National Assembly members of engaging in corrupt
practices in their oversight responsibility. More striking is the fact
that he made the accusation in the presence of the entire leadership of
the three arms of government in Nigeria : President Buhari, Senate
President Bukola Saraki, House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara
and Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen. Members of the National
Assembly, according to Jega, “engage in bribe taking when they pursue
committee works and oversight…Some chairmen of the committees in the
National Assembly have become notorious on this issue of demanding
bribes with impunity. I have passed through the university system. I
have heard so many stories of many vice-chancellors about the horror
that they go through on question of budget and so-called oversight
assignments.”
Taken
together, the Federal High Court decision and the revelations by both
Okonjo-Iweala and Jega speak to the lack of transparency and
accountability in the budgeting process. But if we point fingers only in
the direction of the National Assembly members we will be missing the
point and would never get any solution to a problem that has festered
for years. If we must be honest, both the executive and the legislature
are guilty when it comes to promoting private interests in budgets since
they all insert and locate projects in their various communities or
that of their spouses, friends or political benefactors.
First,
let us deal with Okonjo-Iweala’s allegation. I recall that in July
2012, the then Finance Minister had a similar confrontation with the
lawmakers over the budget for that year. Co-incidentally, it was Hon.
Femi Gbajabiamila (then in his capacity as House Minority Leader) who
also responded by accusing Okonjo-Iweala of double standards. “N6
billion was allocated for water projects. N1.3 Billion of the N6 billion
was for the Finance Minister’s village, another N1.5 billion for the
president’s place and N3 billion for the rest of the country. Yet she
(Okonjo-Iweala) is not elected but you say those elected should not
bring development through the budget to their areas” said Gbajabiamila
in July 2012 while defending the National Assembly.
Indeed,
the indiscriminate siting of projects based on questionable criteria is
one of the biggest forms of corruption in the country aside the fact
that it is responsible for the waste with which the national landscape
is strewn and this is not restricted to the federal government. It is in
fact worse in the states where many of the universities are located in
the villages of the governors who initiated them. At the federal level,
the location of projects also has more to do with where powerful
politicians and civil servants hail from than the requirements of
national priority and value for money. That, for instance, explains why
the federal government would build a Helipad in Daura, Katsina State at
huge public expense!
Meanwhile,
in defending the water project in her village for which N1.3 billion
was allocated in the 2012 budget, Okonjo-Iweala had argued that it was
initiated in 2006 by the lawmaker representing her Federal constituency.
“The project in question, a dam, was not brought to Ogwashi Uku by me
but by a former colleague of the honourable members who was representing
the community in the House. But it’s not right to distort facts just to
make a point,” she said.
While
the lawmakers have been up in arms against Okonjo-Iweala, the antics of
some of them neither help their cause nor give any ‘Assurance’ that
they are sensitive to public mood. When, for instance, you hear that a
principal officer of the National Assembly is competing with Davido on
which G Wagon is more expensive to dash a spouse/girlfriend celebrating
her birthday, you can only begin to question the source of such wealth
that could be spent so recklessly, especially at a period like this in
the nation.
Now
to Jega’s accusation: Demanding gratifications from heads of federal
government agencies, for which a serving minister was once removed and
tried, has for long been a recurrent allegation in the National
Assembly. Yet, not a single lawmaker has been made to suffer any
consequence. That actually is the problem because while the National
Assembly is ever quick to suspend members who make accusations that they
consider unsavoury to their collective integrity, they never punish
those whose conduct also bring shame on the institution. Rather, in
almost all the instances, they would do everything to protect such
members. Two cases bear out this contrasting posture.
In
2005, a member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Haruna Yerima,
publicly accused many of his colleagues of demanding (and receiving)
bribes from ministers and heads of government agencies as well as
corporate bodies. “Whoever tells you there is no corruption in the House
is in fact corrupt. Ministers and heads of parastatals are often asked
to bring money by some honourable members so that their budgets can be
passed. Most of us are contractors. Most of us come here to make money.
Most of our debates are beer parlour debates. No research. We argue like
ordinary people on the streets. Our debate is shallow” said Yerima.
As
to be expected, Yerima was suspended despite explaining that he did not
mean to impugn the integrity of the whole House but rather to expose
some individuals who were giving the legislature a bad name. “I did not
talk about institutional corruption but individuals and committees. I
insist they are corrupt. If I am crucified over it, so be it,” said
Yerima at the time. But in the usual ‘trial’ that followed on the floor
of the House, the then Deputy House Speaker, Austin Opara recommended
that Yerima be taken to “a psychiatric hospital for examination” before
he added, “it was in the same manner he lost his job at the Nigerian
Defence Academy (NDA) Kaduna as a lecturer.”
In
contrast to the manner in which Yerima was dealt with by his
colleagues, the April 2012 public altercation between Hon Herman Hembe,
then chair of the House committee on Capital Markets and Other
Institutions and Ms Arunma Oteh, the Security and Exchange Commission
(SEC) Director General at the time, provided a different outcome. This
followed the decision by the House committee to hold a public hearing
“to identify the manifest causes of the markets’ near collapse with a
view to finding lasting solutions.”
Although
the session began with members expressing genuine concerns over the
manner in which private investors were being short-changed by the banks
and the fact that some companies actually came on the stock exchange for
a brief period, garnered considerable funds from investors and then
disappeared, the hearing turned ugly when Hembe decided to attack the
person of Oteh: “You stayed in a hotel for eight months and spent over
N30 million. In one day you spent N85, 000 on food at the hotel. These
are the things we should look at to see how you will regulate a market
that is collapsing…”
Unprepared
for such an attack, Oteh tried to deflect the question but when she
came back the next day, she turned the table on her accuser: “Mr.
Chairman, I question your credibility to preside over this probe. On
20th October last year (2011), you were given a cheque to travel to the
Dominican Republic to attend a conference. Can you tell Nigerians that
you returned the money when you did not travel? In asking the SEC to
contribute N39 million for this public hearing, don’t you think that you
are undermining your capacity to carry out your duties? You also
requested that we should provide at least N5million; that was a day
before this public hearing started…”
An
apparently rattled Hembe tried to bully Oteh into facing what he said
were the real issues but he failed miserably. “The issue of corruption
or no corruption we should put it aside…I think we should concentrate on
the major issue here. Let’s see how we can forge ahead with the hearing
and achieve something before the end of the day. I will Chair this
committee to the end of this public hearing” said Hembe who was removed
from the assignment by the obviously embarrassed House leadership after
that encounter. But predictably, he served no punishment.
In
dealing with the Hembe issue on this page in March 2012, I wrote: “It
should be clear to the National Assembly that the incestuous
relationship between their committees and the Ministries, Departments
and Agencies (MDAs) on which they have oversight responsibilities cannot
continue. It is an open secret that many of our law makers are the
leading contractors in some of these MDAs where they deploy their
oversight powers as a weapon of blackmail and intimidation.”
For
sure, there are many honest members in the National Assembly just as it
is to be expected that in a gathering of such large number, there would
be all sorts of characters. But we should also not gloss over the
allegation by Jega. The brazen manner in which some lawmakers demand
bribes from agencies of government in the course of budget defence
cannot be allowed to continue unchecked. The challenge is that because
there are no sanctions for bad behaviour, these notorious members (most
of who are known to their colleagues) are never checked and thus
continue to give the legislature a bad name.
As
guest speaker at the second anniversary of the 8th National Assembly on
9th June last year, I had the privilege of sharing with the House of
Representatives members my thoughts on their negative image perception
against the background that the legislature is the scaffolding that
supports the polity and once that structure is contaminated, democracy
is endangered. Although some members were uncomfortable with my
presentation, Speaker Yakubu Dogara was very gracious afterwards and I
believe it would serve the National Assembly well to reflect on some of
what I said on that occasion: https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2017/06/09/image-perception-of-the-legislature-causes-and-possible-solutions/.
Meanwhile,
I sympathise with the National Assembly because their situation is also
peculiar. Their entire budget, as big as it may seem, is not even up to
what a chief executive of just one agency under the federal ministry of
transport controls and is but a tiny fraction of what the Group
Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)
can play with in an environment where politics is dictated by patronage.
Yet, their constituents expect them to build hospitals, erect schools
and foot personal expenses, including the wedding ceremonies of their
children. But while they deal with these existential challenges, it is
also important for them to understand their critical role and why public
attention is always on them.
The
principle of separation of powers which defines the strength of our
model of democracy demands a very strong and resourceful legislature. It
also requires that legislators be above board, enlightened even, in the
pursuit of their self-interest. In addition to carrying out routine
oversight functions, the legislature is closer to the judiciary in that
it is supposed to ensure that the executive maintains order in
accordance with the laws it makes.
Given
the foregoing, the various allegations of outright extortion, bribery
and dubious financial racketeering by our legislators since 1999 have
deepened the general negative perception of Nigeria in the eyes of the
world. Even at home, the garish ostentation is not helped by the cultic
secrecy around their actual emoluments. The public image of the National
Assembly is therefore that of a conclave of glorified pick pockets and
greedy hustlers. That then explains why there is an increasingly
widespread view that what Nigeria needs is a part time legislature or a
drastic reduction in the number of the lawmakers.
That is a growing vote of no confidence that should worry the National Assembly members.
*Adeniyi is the Chairman of ThisDay Newspaper’s Editorial Board
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