What Nigeria’s National Assembly has morphed into an anti-people assembly is no news. What is news is that leading lights in that reaction are now elements of the new progressive ruling party. When reactionaries wear progressive garb, what are they — progressive reactionaries? Ha!
Hardball’s Monday morning ire is stoked by The Nation’s story of March 4: “Lawmakers kill Buhari’s N500 billion for the poor”, which they claim is not a true reflection of their thoughts. Guess the chief ideologue in that story? Mohammed Danjuma Goje, chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, former PDP governor of Gombe State but now APC senator from Gombe.
The senator, who in the story assumed the role of Mr. Fiscal Impossible, dismissed the N500 billion voted for the economic succour of most vulnerable Nigerians, in Budget 2016, as un-implementable. He spoke at a joint session of the Senate and House committees on Appropriation, en route to passing the 2016 Appropriation on March 17. At the briefing were Budget and National Planning Minister, Udo Udoma and Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun.
The “can’t do” senator said the modalities to implement the N500 billion intervention were not clearly stated in the budget; said when it got to the market folk, the budget spoke of “market women” when in his native Gombe, all they had were “market men”. He also dismissed the Buhari Presidency’s proposed school feeding programme as un-implementable, because most of them studied under trees due to lack of classrooms.
Well, maybe that was the situation in Gombe when the senator was governor. But pray, how do Osun, under Rauf Aregbesola, which has implemented the scheme for more than four years now; and Kaduna, under Nasir El-Rufai, which has just started implementing it, do the magic — a clear magic, which could have been beyond the ken of the senator as governor?
When will the Federal Government cease to be the big-for-nothing, dog-in-a-manger bully that cannot do but won’t allow others who can, do? Never, if the reactionary notion of the National Assembly is allowed to stand.
Mercifully, Budget Minister Udo Udoma made it clear that the intervention was an inviolate campaign pledge, suggesting deferring implementation was out of question. That is good because the President has a mandate, forged from these promises. He takes the flak if things go wrong, not some feckless National Assembly.
Even then, Senator Goje’s remark on the schools feeding scheme shows his basic lack of understanding of the programme. Like many of his over-fed and over-pampered compatriots, the senator focused on the freebie from the state: why should you feed pupils when their parents should do so? Teach them to fish, they thunder that popular cliché in holy rage, but don’t give them fish!
But what of the business chain in the process en route to the feeding: the livestock, grain and chicken farmers whose businesses would get a boost? The food vendor who would recharge his or her economy, and have more disposable income? And the increased money in people’s pockets, which can be spent to reflate the economy? O no, forget the process, the end result is freebie!
O yeah? But when did freebies become a crime — when vulnerable Nigerian masses are beneficiaries? Listen to the same National Assembly, on January 4, exactly two months to The Nation report. The news was the N4.7 billion to be shelled on buying Nigeria’s 469 federal lawmakers cushy cars.
“There is no way,” Senator Sabe Abdullahi exploded, “we can exercise our legislative functions, especially in the area of oversight, using our personal cars.” Progressive rage, isn’t it?
These legislators should get real and wean themselves from their overarching sense of self-settlement. If the President cannot dictate to them when it concerns their personal comfort, they certainly cannot dictate to the President when it is the collective comfort of Nigerians.
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