Now that Senator Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamala have been elected Senate President and Speaker, House of Representatives respectively, the Presidency and powers that be in the All Progressives Congress must feel very accomplished. And justifiably so.
Just four years ago, the whole APC machinery was beaten at a game it thought it knew how to play well. Before they woke up from the slumber of inexperience and self-aggrandisement that had taken over the souls of a lot of its prominent members, candidates they hated stole the show and inflicted injuries the party never recovered from.
You would then understand the import of Tuesday’s triumph of the candidates of the APC. To Adams Oshiomhole, the altercating national chairman, who huffed and puffed about his party getting all the sensitive positions in both chambers, Tuesday’s victory is a sure incentive to further flex muscles and attempt to subdue the influence of other political parties as the dispensation progresses.
Moments like these should however also be time for the deepest introspection. The bliss that victories bring could be detrimental when it is unbridled and mismanaged. The APC needs to rejoice with caution at this. In addition to that, leaders of the party should step back, sit down and reassess their performance over the last four years and speak some truth to their power. They say after all that the one with the smelly genitalia is naked with himself even if he successfully covers up his challenge from others. The ruling party needs honesty with itself at this point.
When the jury finally comes to judgment about the last 20 years of Nigeria’s democracy and the role that successive members of the legislature have played for instance, the 8th National Assembly so terribly disparaged and loathed by the APC would very likely come tops for its performance and sustenance of the legislative ethos. The APC and its supporters would sure not have any of this, but it is on record that at no time in the last 20 years has the country found the two chambers of the legislature play their constitutional checks and balances role without fear or favour.
Of course, the natural argument would be that the immediate past Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara were rebels from the outset. But the APC will also do well to remind itself that the Saraki/Dogara rebellion grew from the mismanagement of the party’s 2015 successes. And unless cards are better played this time, there can be no guarantees that a repeat could not happen in a long four-year haul ahead.
For starters, political parties in Nigeria make a mockery of the idea of the supremacy that they throw it in the faces of the people. While a party does indeed have the right to present a united front in the election of principal officers of the National Assembly, the decorous behaviour is to restrict all the discussions and grandstanding to the caucuses of the party.
The election of principal officers of the National Assembly should be the exclusive affair of the chambers. Much unlike the parades of shame by political parties and their candidates, who literarily travel round the country, visiting governors in solicitation for votes. The worrisome indication of this charade is that these legislators are very susceptible to manipulations in their legislative duties.
This is one of the reasons why the APC and the Presidency in tow must not imagine that having evidently loyal people like Lawan and Gbajabiamila is a definite assurance of smooth, frictionless relations between the two arms of government. This dream is not likely to come to pass for two major reasons. The first is the nature of the duties of the legislature, which like the intoxication of wine, will come upon the legislators as they get to business. The second and even more frightening reason is the President’s own judgemental inclinations that most often demean and alienate the other arms of government.
How is one sure of this? Consider this example: Just penultimate week, President Buhari passed a most harsh and critical sentence of lack of patriotism on the immediate past leaders of the National Assembly. And the foundation of this charge? The passage of the 2019 budget five months into the year as well as the insistence of the National Assembly on increasing the figures initially proposed by the executive.
In ventilating that opinion, Buhari did not own up to the threefold executive failure that may have contributed to the delay in the early realisation of the budget. These failings are namely: the non-realisation of the promise to prepare and present budgets to the legislature early enough, that his administration has neglected the democratic norm of engaging leaders of the legislature before budget proposal is physically presented and that even after presentation and the lethargy of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of governments to swiftly answer the summons of the National Assembly during the budget defence process.
To spare Nigerians of the unhealthy relationship that existed between the executive and legislative arms of government between 2015 and 2019 therefore, Buhari would have to be a bit more realistic about his own humanity and that of the other people that work with him in the executive.
In the last four years, the President came across as seeing the weakness of every other arm of government but his own and that self-righteous disposition cannot continue if he desires the cooperation of others. This means that the President must give as much respect to members of the National Assembly as they give him.
One of the ways to show this respect is reinforcing the machinery for consensus building within the government. Consultations, formal and informal must be constant between the two arms of government such that the President sells his vision to the legislators with relative ease.
To imagine that having supported those who emerged leaders of the National Assembly means a total sacrifice of their birth rights is a fallacy that the President and his party must avoid. Anyone who has doubts about the importance of the foregoing must recall the topsy-turvy relationship that existed between those that former President Olusegun Obasanjo helped into principal offices at the National Assembly. The entire roll: the late Senator Evan Enwerem, Senators Adolphus Wabara, Anyim Pius Anyim and Ken Nnamani, eventually fell out with Obasanjo in unimaginably bitter manners.
This goes to tell that, members of the National Assembly on realising the enormous powers of their institution as enshrined in Chapter Five of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), would fight to protect the independence of the body irrespective of what their parties may think.
This is usually compounded by the personal interests of each member of the assembly. Were that not so, how is it that not even former members of the legislature who now behave like saints and now talk down on others, ever spoke about the scandalous emoluments that they drew while at the National Assembly. Why did it take 18 years and an unusual Senator Shehu Sani to give Nigerians an idea of these remunerations even in the last National Assembly, which was mostly populated by the APC members? That goes to say that beyond party affiliations, something central to survival of these lawmakers bind them together.
So, if he desires a fruitful relationship with the legislature as he should, President Buhari and his party must perish the idea that having Lawan and Gbajabiamila is enough to ride roughshod on the National Assembly. Buhari must work hard to cultivate the legislators and show them respect regardless of their party affiliations. Nigeria is haemorrhaging away now and nothing, but healthy collaborations would save it. Ample, time and mutually respectful communication in addition to shared vision, which recongises that no one knows it all is the only way to make things work between the President and the 9th National Assembly.
Adedokun tweets@ niradedokun
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