NIGERIA is a country of the incredible. The high level of criminality that defines much of what makes ours an incredible polity is traceable to the leadership of the country. I say this in the light of the confusion that surrounded the whereabouts of both the electronic and printed copies of the 2016 Appropriation Bill. It was reported last week that copies of this Bill, as delivered to the National Assembly, could no longer be found in the Senate chamber. How this document developed the capacity for mobility is the riddle that our ever resourceful senators were at pain to resolve all through last week.
Nigerians must remember that just before Christmas, precisely on December 22, President Muhammadu Buhari presented the Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly. Thereafter the National Assembly went on recess for the Christmas and New Year holidays. The National Assembly is only resuming full operations after the holidays and the Appropriation Bill for 2016 was to be considered in a second reading by the Senate. This event that was slated for Tuesday, 12 January could not go on because both soft and hard copies of the document could simply not be found where they had been lodged in the Senate chamber. The leadership of the Senate along with its Peoples Democratic Party sympathisers believe its own bureaucracy in the Senate has been infiltrated and corrupted by the Presidency.
According to Senate President, Bukola Saraki, a man whose relationship with both the presidency and the APC leadership is at best frosty, the Senate Presidential Liason Officer, Ita Enang, himself a former senator, submitted different copies of the proposed appropriation bill to the Senate. This was Saraki’s own subtle explanation of what many PDP senators saw as an act of mischief by the presidency that has been accused of withdrawing the bill, albeit unofficially, in order to further tinker with it. This after it had been presented weeks ago by the president! What could be more criminal than this? When passed at the National Assembly, the Appropriation Bill becomes an Act of parliament, which is a law of the Nigerian State. It’s a document that is as important as this that is being flippantly reported as missing- in fact stolen, going by the less euphemistic accusation from the Senate. Some senators are therefore calling for investigation of the matter while others insist the president has committed an impeachable offence. We have to make clear that the House of Representatives seems not to have been affected by the pilfering that occurred in the Senate.
Which would leave any reasonable person observing this absurdity to ask why this act of theft should happen in just one chamber of the National Assembly and not the other. What would be the object of such theft- to simply embarrass the Senate and its principal officers? Or could the theft truly be an attempt to withdraw the original document submitted and read to the National Assembly by the president, as is being alleged by many in the senate? Let us remember that the presidential presentation was televised live to the world on 22 December, 2015. Would anybody in their right mind really find no other legitimate way to seek withdrawal of such document –if that became necessary- than to steal it altogether without fear of consequences? Has Nigeria degenerated to such level or is it the case that it is our politicians that have lost all sense of propriety and are just not bothered about the gravity of the accusations they make in a bid to gain some political mileage?
This episode initially looked to me like a desperate attempt by the leadership of the Senate to get one back at the presidency and by so doing smear the apparently stain-free babanriga of President Buhari. A section of the Senate leadership no doubt seems eager to show that even the president is not above murk. How long ago was it that the present Senate leadership and its surrogate were accused of criminal alteration of House rules in order to facilitate the appointment of certain persons into some positions? That episode that involved the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ikweremadu, is still a matter of criminal investigation. It would therefore be a balancing act to show that the presidency is guilty of the same offence. But this might be another opportunity to say it as it is by asking hard questions of the presidency. Could the president or his minders have truly sought to withdraw the proposed 2016 Appropriation Bill in the manner reported in the Senate? The latest report that the president wrote to the National Assembly, suggesting a desire to withdraw or tinker with the earlier document submitted by him, seems to lend credence to the allegation of theft against the presidency.
Which leaves one no option but to question the method or style of the Buhari presidency. It is one thing to have good intentions however contentious it might be defining what that means. But the method one hopes to employ to achieve those good intentions is something else. We must steer clear of all anti-democratic methods. President Buhari may need to review his style and that of his administration as he goes on with the governance of this country. This has become imperative in the light of a few comments he has made that would seem to suggest he might be reluctant to accept views different from his own. While Nigerians understand that things had become egregiously bad under the successive PDP administrations that the country has had in the last few years, while they may understand that President Buhari may be anxious for us to get back on track by correcting the mistakes of the past, it would be a disservice to us all for anyone including President Buhari to take steps that might reverse the milestones already achieved on the democratic front.
A reluctance to obey court orders or question or reinterpret such orders simply because they do not align with the position of the president or his administration might ultimately hurt whatever positive strides the administration might be making at the moment. Suggesting as the president did during his media chat, that an accused person should be held in custody even when the courts had granted such an accused bail cannot further the interest of democracy. Such a suggestion would seem of a type with the attempt to adopt unorthodox, even criminal methods, to seek withdrawal of the document of the 2016 Appropriation Bill. Even though the Senate leadership has been mealy-mouthed about it, the presidency appears to have been up to some dirty trick in the ‘missing’ 2016 Appropriation Bill brouhaha. Let it own up now.
VANGUARD
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