After groping in the dark for nearly two decades, state assemblies have acquiesced to the clamour for their autonomy. They are set to liberate themselves from being appendages of the governors, a move that will place their funding in the first line charge. Epileptic funding of the assemblies has been used by the Executive arm of government in many states to turn them like a dice.
However, the new lease of life will only come into effect after the ongoing Second Amendment to the 1999 Constitution by the National Assembly must have been consummated. This is a welcome development. Curiously, state lawmakers had jettisoned the proposal when it was first made by the Seventh National Assembly, following pressure from the governors, who wanted to keep them under their perpetual control.
The new twist sprang from their consideration of all the items for constitution review, which they transmitted to the National Assembly on March 1 in Abuja. The Chairman of the Conference of Speakers of State Assemblies, Abdulmumin Kamba of Kebbi State, had used the opportunity to denounce the federal lawmakers’ rejection of the bill on devolution of powers. He, therefore, called for a rethink.
It was not by accident that the founding fathers of democracy created the executive, legislative and the judicial arms of government, with well defined responsibilities, and each acting as a check on the other. This pristine arrangement is fundamental in a democracy. Where the legislature’s autonomy is eroded or lacking, what exists is anything but democracy.
Regrettably, such has been the lot of most states in Nigeria since 1999. Most governors have subjugated their state assemblies or, worse still, the assemblies have become willing tools in their hands, thereby betraying the trust of the people they purport to represent. As a result, many governors behave like emperors, embezzle and misappropriate public funds and defy all measures to make them accountable.
But in a democracy, the assemblies exist to make laws for good governance. Their major work, however, lies in oversight in the ministries, departments and agencies to ensure that value for money in public expenditure is religiously observed. But this has not been so. As evidence shows, they are mere rubber stamps of the executive.
However, it is hoped that their expected independence should translate into radical change in governance or service-delivery. Absence of this is responsible for about 15 ex-governors standing trial for hundreds of billions of naira allegedly looted while they were in office, majority of them since 2007. A survey by this newspaper in 2011 showed that only Rivers, Imo, Lagos and Oyo states included their security votes (funds) in the budget. The budgeted security votes ranged from N2.5 billion to N7.5 billion.
Incredibly, governors of 32 other states dipped their hands in the treasury and spent as they liked. Whether budgeted or not, the expenditure is never accounted for. This is alien to the 1999 Constitution. Security vote is a conduit for siphoning public funds and this should be stopped by the state lawmakers. That Rabiu Kwankwaso claimed he never collected any fund under this guise when he was in charge as governor of Kano State provides proof of its dubiety. He was once quoted as saying, “Security vote anywhere is stealing. I don’t believe in it….” What makes the expenditure more questionable is that robbery, kidnapping, cultism and unwarranted killings of innocent people are hardly tamed, despite the humungous amount appropriated as security vote. Evidently, they are on the ascendancy.
Lawmakers’ ignorance of their role in a democracy and indolence have deviously served not a few governors’ interests, as seen in the misappropriation of the N1.9 trillion bailout of the Federal Government to states to assist them clear the salary arrears of their workers. However, it is heartwarming that one of the legislatures in the Southern part of the country has recently found its voice to demand from the governor how he spent the Paris Club debt refund, as it considers the 2018 Appropriation Bill. Unfortunately, the refund has become a slush fund, rather than one to be budgeted and accounted for.
Elected representatives who are responsive and beholden to the constitution cannot pander to the recklessness of any state chief executive or be blind to his stewardship. The World Bank’s advice on this suffices. The parliament, being in control, it argued, would be “incomplete as long as government continued to enjoy wide discretion in spending public revenue.”
As it has happened in some states where salaries are being owed for months, pupils sit on bare floor in schools to learn and pensioners are denied their benefits, for lawmakers to rubber-stamp proposals to pay N200 million annual emolument to their respective former governors, five-bedroom maisonette residential apartments in Abuja and other ones in their states is irresponsible. Added to these are 300 per cent furniture; 300 per cent vehicle maintenance; 100 per cent yearly utility; 100 per cent entertainment and free medical not exceeding N100 million annually.
Power, as John Acton, the University of Cambridge historian, famously stated, “tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” These immortal words should guide each state assembly in stemming the incongruity of a governor acting like a bull in a china shop. Governors should be compelled to be transparent and accountable to the people. A state legislature that is delinquent in forcing this through has definitely lost its legitimacy.
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