In about four weeks, the Eighth National Assembly will be dissolved. For a parliament that a lot was expected from, being dominated by the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, which rode to power on the mantra of “change,” what did the country get from it? Early signs were portentous with the subterfuge and acrimonious circumstances that defined the emergence of the leadership in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Bukola Saraki’s ambition to become the Senate President put him at odds with a powerful bloc in his party, which thought differently. His alliance with the minority Peoples Democratic Party to achieve his goal, ended up with a strange legislature in which the opposition really dictated the pace. This turned the APC into an opposition unto itself; a sort of self-immolation it never recovered from.
The result is obvious: a dysfunctional government. But the most visible consequence of the rancorous APC is neither Saraki nor Dogara. It is the legislative branch of government, and by extension, Nigeria’s democracy. Instead of a robust practice of checks and balances that makes for good governance, what we have on our hands are arrogant and power-drunk Legislature and a weak Presidency.
The parliament is the embodiment of democratic system where laws that give meaning to the lives of the people and governance are passed. In a functioning democracy, the legislature’s other principal functions are balancing power and representing constituencies. Through its oversight functions, accountability, checks and balances are entrenched in public institutions. Saraki in his maiden speech flaunted the pursuit of all these ideals. He had reminded his colleagues that Nigerians voted for “a life of accountability,” change from poverty, misery and hopelessness to a life of prosperity and solemnly vowed: “We shall entrench greater openness and accountability.”
But he was proved wrong! At the end of his tenure, we got none. Transparency makes for better government. In 2015 when it was inaugurated, Nigeria was broke. Its institutions were weak. Its educational system was crumbling. Altogether, the economy was in a mess. Yet, the lawmakers remained ensconced in their ostentatious lifestyle. Despite being public officers sustained by taxpayers’ money, our lawmakers’ obscene emoluments remained a well guarded secret. This is out of sync with the global best practice. But the bubble burst in 2018, when Shehu Sani, a senator, said each of them collects N13.5 million monthly as operational cost. This is besides their salaries. Earlier, The Economist of London newspaper in 2013 had claimed our federal lawmakers were the highest paid in the world with an annual basic salary of $189,500 as against $174,000 for US lawmakers; $105,400 in the UK; $157,600 in Brazil; $104,000 in South Africa; $85,900 in France and Saudi Arabia for $64,000.
This obscene package came against the backdrop of an assembly that berthed when the country was being suffocated by an economic headwind as crude oil prices in the international market headed south. According to Statistica, annual OPEC oil prices averaged $49.9 per barrel in 2015 and dipped further to $40.68pb in 2016. This was when 36 Toyota SUV cars valued at N36.5 million each, were distributed to senators. It was meant to be a merry go round. It also acquired a Range Rover SUV bulletproof car, valued at N298 million with a customs duty of N74 million, perhaps for its principal officer.
Good scrutiny, wrote Robin Cook, when he was Leader of the United Kingdom House of Commons, makes for good government. With its failure to consider the Auditor-General’s report for four years, like its predecessors, the Eighth Assembly deepened corruption in the system, instead of the transparency and accountability it was elected to pursue. Passage of more than 200 bills by each of the chambers might be for the lawmakers, a matter for chest-thumping. How they impact on lives matter more; their incurable deficit on this and selfish motives that underpin many of them are alarming. This explains why they hardly have the nerves to override the President when he withholds his assent to them. In 2016, under the so-called constituency projects, a sum of N40 billion was scandalously inserted into the budget at the instance of the House leadership.
It is a notorious ritual for which the Eighth Assembly will be known. Such corrupt devotion deprived our annual national budget the power of being a tool for development and bridging our infrastructure gaps. In the 2017 budget for instance, the N31 billion the Executive allocated for the reconstruction of Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was reduced to N10 billion. The lawmakers added 100 new roads of their own. This irresponsibility reached new heights in 2018, with their addition of 6,403 new projects that served purely their interests, amounting to N578 billion. A parliament that views the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the gateway to Lagos, the country’s industrial and commercial hub as a South-West project, rather than one of national priority, is visionless.
With mindless killings and banditry now scarier than ever before, this parliament failed woefully for its inability to offer a meaningful legislative solution. Driven by the need to ensure public safety, it took the New Zealand parliament 26 days to pass a new gun control law on the heels of right-wing extremist terror attacks. The law banned the types of weapons a gunman used to kill 50 people at two mosques. Here, our lawmakers watch helplessly as criminals take control of the land. The most egregious failure is the National Assembly’s dithering on the constitutional amendment for the devolution of policing power.
It also failed the country by gambling with bills that would have impacted on the economy positively. Nigeria’s economic potential is constrained by many structural issues, including over-reliance on oil, insufficient electricity generation capacity, inadequate infrastructure, obstacles to investment, unproductive quasi-federal structure and limited foreign exchange capacity. Yet, the National Assembly failed to make any significant laws to address these economic binding constraints. As the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill designed to reform the Nigerian oil and gas industry is still stuck amid the maelstrom of ethnic and regional politics, so also is the 1955 Nigerian Railway Act Amendment Bill needed to transform rail transport. The problem is that if these bills are not passed into law, they will, again, expire with this assembly.
How then will the Eighth National Assembly be remembered? It is argued that achieving good governance requires the existence of a strong, effective and efficient parliament. This is the legislature Nigeria needs. But it is regrettable that the Eighth National Assembly is dysfunctional, insensitive and egotistic. It failed the people when it mattered most.
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