The Sun News On-line/politics

A league of some cerebral members of the House of Representatives called The Initiatives, is on a national mission for good governance, rule of law and to create synergy between the three arms of government and between the governed and the government. The dean of the agenda-setting group and member representing Eket Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Eseme Eyibo, speaks on the objectives, benefit, mode of operation and targeted audience of the body whose first national roundtable takes place April 24.

Excerpts:
Agenda
There is a group called The Initiatives. It is an Agenda-setting group made up of some cerebral members of the House of Representatives and I have the responsibility and confidence of this membership to be its dean. It is a group committed passionately to the issue of good governance. When we are talking about good governance, we are talking about good legislation and obedience to law; we are talking about the prevalence to rule of law; we are talking about a synergy between the three arms of law: the Judiciary, the Executives and the Legislature.

We are also talking about a synergy between government and the governed because you know the business of government is a social contract between the government and governed and when once there is an understanding; when once there is a good will; when once there is cultivation of confidence existing in this partnership, then you are talking about good governance. So, what we are therefore trying to do is that, before today, an average Nigerian politician was known to be a player in a theatre of affluence. An average member of the House of Representatives or a National Assembly member was seen to be a never-do-well who is just coming into Abuja to loot the treasury but today, we are celebrating good governance. We are now trying to take governance into another level by assuming the Nigerian people we are partners in the process of good governance and this partnership means that we have to reconnect power back to the people as we are representatives committed to the issue of legislating on the laws of this land.

We also need to have your input so that every law that we must make must be able to enjoy popular acceptability because a law is said to be good when it is obeyed and when it enjoys acceptability. Take for example, we are talking about the issue of insecurity in this country. Everybody is blaming the police but if we look at the dynamics of today, then you look at extent law like the Police Act. There are a lot of laws in this country that are due for amendment.

There are lots of extent I cannot sit down as a member of the parliament and now decide to talk about the amendment of the Police Act without engaging the police in a robust discussion. The police must partake, the civil society, the Ministry of Justice and the Nigerian people must partake so that by the time you have inputs from all the sectors, on an issue, you will be able to come out with the amendment.

And with an act that will be able to enhance the performance and the efficiency of the police Force and will go a long way in creating the platform for the promotion of a peaceful and lawful society. Take for example an issue like taxation.

I cannot sit down as a lawyer in the House of Representatives and believe that because I am a member of the House and the constitution bestows the authority to legislate, I now decide to come up with the law relating to tax when I don’t have technical terms to do that. So, like the round table conference we are doing every month, we can now say let’s call the Chartered Institute of Accountants (ICAN), ANAN, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, the Custom Services and the relevant sections which are key to the subject matter.

They came and engage in a conversation. At the end of the day, if the executive send a bill on the issue of taxation to the floor of the House, whether I’m a lawyer or I’m a political scientist but based on the indepth knowledge I have gathered from this interaction, I will now be in a better position to join other professionals in engaging in a robust debate on the floor of the House and when once such debate is robust and proactive, it will be able to come out with a legislation that will be enduring; a legislation that will be widely acceptable. We will diminish a situation where we have unnecessary lacunas existing in our law. What we are trying to do is that the National Assembly and indeed, all legislatures in this country have a good research department that will help to confront their issues.

The political parties and other institutional structures meant to help to develop governance in this country have often times been caught napping because of knowledge gaps.
You know, there is a difference between politics and governance but it is not separated in this country. People who are playing politics, who have no business in governance are being made to transform into governance.

That is why you have a lot of round peg in square holes. Somebody who is not supposed to be a councilor, you find him becoming a senator; somebody who is not supposed to a councilor, you find him becoming a minister; somebody who is not even fit to be a councilor in his village, you see him becoming a member of state House of Assembly or a commissioner. A lot of these cases manifest in our lands because of the culture of mixing politics with governance; because of our inability to develop a sub-section pattern, which will be able to uplift and promote the ideals of democracy.

We expect that through a roundtable like this, we will be able to also engage the political parties and they will also benefit, some getting to educate and prepare themselves for succession so that during another election, the political parties will be aware of the responsibilities and obligations of throwing candidates who are round pegs in round holes, so that at the end of the day, when political parties are able to come up with people like this, we will now have people who are not just competent but have the mind power to be able to drive the aspirations of our nation, and this nation cannot be successful as a country, so to speak, if the people are not integrated into its agenda. The only way to integrate the Nigerian people into its agenda is to make sure that we create a platform where everybody will feel the sense of ownership in governance because it is a social contract.

Funding
We all are making sacrifices. We said, why do we take money to buy rice, cows and all that during Christmas, Easter and other festive periods? We should be able to change the face of our politics by reconnecting power back to our people. This country has been very used to the creation of waste.

This country is so endowed and because we lack mind power to be able to create wealth out of our endowment, what we have now is that we have successfully created waste out of the natural endowment of this country.

We are trying to introduce mind power development into our political culture so that we will have an opportunity now to build infrastructure that will now come up to translate and recycle the waster into wealth and while we are doing this through individual sacrifices, you know that the kind of leadership we have now in the House of Representatives, for example, is a leadership which is not a political party leadership. It is a good governance leadership that cuts across all the political parties.

The leadership under Rt. Hon. Dimeji Bankole (with due apologies and reverence to the previous leadership of the House of Representatives), I think the one we are having now is not just cerebral but it’s been able to create a level of generational statement. It’s been able to launch this country into an identity. So, we are sacrificing ourselves and we are not looking at that as being too much because for Nigerian people to have chosen the 360 of us out of a population of over 140 millions to come and represent them, it means that Nigerians love us and there is no sacrifice, just like the omelet, no egg is going to be spared in the process of preparing this omelet. So, we are not counting on how much money but we are going to assure you that no matter how insurmountable the challenges are, this is a knowledge-driven agenda; this is knowledge-driven forum and no amount of challenges no amount of barrier or obstacles has ever in the history of man been able to diminish knowledge.

Between the roundtable and other programmes
The difference between this one and those ones are that the progenitors will have the picture of it but the people who are implementing are people who do not understand the concept of the origin of the programme, so when once there is a knowledge gap between the progenitors and the implementers, you will always have that problem. He cannot succeed because it is a knowledge-driven thing. Knowledge is one thing you cannot transfer, you cannot borrow, you cannot pretend about it but in this case, we are both progenitors and the promoters.

So, we had the pictures, we had the dream, we translated this dream to a vision and now we have bought the vision from a drawing board to the table and we are the people driving it. We now know from the origin where we are heading to. We have the full picture of the map of our direction. We are not asking anyone to come and do the implementation for us. We know what to do. We know how to adjust. We are the people driving the vehicle. We know when to change the gear and we know where the gears are.