Lots of Nigerians, the unlettered and the educated, without knowing the technicality of the National Assembly being empowered by Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution as amended to expose corruption, inefficiency and waste in government, simply know that the legislative arm has conducted several sensational investigations. The abuse or otherwise of both sections by the National Assembly in probing corruption and fraud is a discourse for another day.
For today, I would like to remind readers of how some of the probes that were celebrated with screaming headlines practically went up in smoke, while in other cases, the reports from those investigations were never submitted, leaving many worried Nigerians in a lurch, with some so disappointed and angry, they seldom take the National Assembly seriously.
Unfortunately, the 8th assembly, the House of Representatives to be precise hasn’t fared any better when it comes to dashing the hopes of millions of constituents across the country. The constituents watch reports from investigations by House committees on TV, gloating, practically thirsty for blood-hoping to see those who have stolen or mismanaged their commonwealth be charged to court with timely presented and well articulated reports becoming useful to prosecutors.
Probably as worrisome as the noxious trend of wasting the time of the public and expending scare resources on ultimately futile probes, is the now established tendency of setting up adhoc committees to conduct investigations that can easily be handled by standing committees. Just like the 96 standing committees in the House, the role and process of setting up adhoc committees is clearly stated in the House Rules. The legality and appropriateness of adhoc committees simply makes it highly unnecessary for even the most cynical observer to contemplate the National Assembly doing away with adhoc committees. But the question that comes to mind is if these committees reflect the letter and spirit of the rule on which they are set-up.
Along with bringing together two or three standing committees relevant to a subject of investigation or dealing with the issue of familiarity between committees and Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) they oversight, timeliness is the major advantage adhoc committees are supposed to have. Sadly in two years of the 8th House, a good number of investigations by these committees went on for months, with some of the chairmen of the committees aping chairpersons of standing committees. A lawmaker once expressed how embarrassing it was, that those whose jobs are more like a 100 metre dash than a marathon, now print complimentary cards introducing themselves as chairmen of House adhoc committees. I wonder what this member would have done if he saw a recent self adulating full page colour birthday advert of a member in a national daily. This ranking member who should have shown pride in his people by introducing himself as the lawmaker representing his constituency chose to be identified as the chairperson of an adhoc committee! In what could be analysed to be a loss of patience and faith, in March, Speaker Yakubu Dogara, announced the dissolution of all adhoc committees set up prior to October 22, 2015. These adhoc committees, as many as 22 of them, were set up before the Speaker inaugurated standing committees. The dissolved committees which conducted investigations in key sectors of the economy would have done a corruption ridden country like ours a lot of good by working on a schedule and coming up with testable recommendations. In line with legislative tradition, investigation by dissolved adhoc committees are automatically taken over by relevant standing committees, making a few observers ask why the needless jamborees of adhoc committees.
To put it directly, a seeming duplication of duties is the major reason for complaints from committees of ministers and heads of agencies refusing to honor invitations. A minister or Director-General would have appeared before an adhoc committee and in a short while, be invited again by a standing committee or vise-versa, with work to do, the heads of MDAs ignore summons or send representatives to the chagrin of lawmakers. There have equally been instances where heads of MDAs get conflicting directives from adhoc and standing committees on important issues, some of whom went on oversight visits at different times. This has created confusion a few times. Also a situation where chairmen and deputy chairmen of committees who have a load of motions and bills referred to them are again handed the responsibility of chairing adhoc committees has led to some lawmakers biting more than they can chew. Truth is, some even lobby for the chairmanship of adhoc committees, but they only end up hugging the limelight and using up resources that could have been channeled to more productive ventures. Then there is the discomfiting issue of adhoc committees being more prone to abuse than the case of standing committees of which members have a stronger sense of ownership. A recent example was when the chairman of the adhoc Committee Investigating the Activities of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), Emeka Anohu, held a solo press conference on the position of the committee on the intention of the Federal Government to scrap the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND). Ideally, such a vital step taken by Anohu ought to have been taken with overwhelming support from members of the committee, because in the same vein, reports of committees have to be signed by members.
It’s important to note that not all adhoc committees have been a complete waste of time, neither have standing committees necessarily recorded higher success rate in terms of investigating allegations of corruption in government or working on bills referred to them. Also significant is the fact that even when it is the Speaker who appoints chairmen of adhoc committees, he isn’t the one who advised or instructed members who raised motions praying for adhoc committees to be set up to do so. He however cannot fully absolve himself of the blame, as in many cases, the first step to lobbying members for a motion or bill to scale through is talking to the presiding officer about it. Probably the time has come in the life of the current House for Dogara to confront the frivolity adhoc committees increasingly represent. The Speaker can ride on the growing antipathy to adhoc committees in the house. One occasion that was indicative of the mood of the House was when ranking lawmaker, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha led the onslaught against a prayer for an adhoc committee in a motion on the need to investigate the rise in number of health centers run by quacks, sponsored by the leader of the Enugu State Caucus, Pat Asadu. Onyejeocha argued that with two standing committees on health one of which Asadu, a doctor, belonged to, that on Health Institutions to be exact, it would be unnecessary to call for an adhoc committee. Just before the National Assembly went on recess, another member, Mark Gbillah, in his motion on the, “Adverse Consequences of the Refusal of the Federal Government to Obey Court Judgments/Orders”, sought the setting up adhoc committee that would report back in six weeks. But having witnessed some adhoc committees taking months to be inaugurated, with more time to start work and the endless wait for their reports, the motion was amended and referred to the Committee on Justice.
Some lawmakers are thinking that, though adhoc committees are good instruments for handling legislative tasks, the sub committees created from within standing committees can carry out the same duties. There is also growing concern that the Speaker shouldn’t be seen as creating job for the boys using adhoc committees, not only in the literal sense as no female lawmaker has been appointed chairperson of an investigative adhoc committee, but in the Nigerian nuance where job for the boys is reward for loyalty.
Another look at Dino Melaye’s recall
In what may be best described as a most unconscionable insult to our collective sensibilities as Nigerians, the utterly and shameful nonperforming Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello is proceeding with brazen arrogance to recall a duly elected Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dino Melaye, for no other offense than having disagreements with him.
Whatever disagreements we, on our part, may or may not have with Senator Melaye, the truth is that the best case anyone can make against him is that he or she may not like his style. Yet style is personal and one man’s style, like meat, may amount to another’s poison. We are all who we are and Dino is just Dino.
Perhaps the case may well be made that were every senator to be like Dino, the Senate would be one rather rowdy house indeed. Yet, by the same token, if there were no senators like Dino, it would be a most lackluster and in fact, unproductive house we would then have. The truth about life is that God in His infinite wisdom has made us all different for a reason and it is within the variety of our individual differences that the full gamut of His glory is revealed in us as one beautiful and colourful collective.
I have often wondered if those who tirelessly upbraid the Senator from Kogi West can even point to a single detriment that Nigerians at large or indeed his constituents in Kogi West ever suffered on account of him. What has anyone ever lost because Dino is loud, bold, forceful, uncompromising, or lacks much use for political correctness?
As a lawyer, my professional orientation is so configured that facts are sacred to me and evidence is my religion. As for the evidence, it is overwhelming that for all the faults any holier than thou person may choose to find with Dino, he is one senator that has benefitted this nation tremendously and a public personality history will end up remembering more favourably than otherwise. As a matter of an empirically verifiable record, Dino actually goes beyond mere rhetoric and lip service to fight corruption in what amounts to a most practical, hands-on and result-eliciting approach to the anti-corruption crusade.
The ascertainable feats he has achieved in this direction are legion but one of my favourites is his master class pertaining to the Treasury Single Account, TSA. Here, Senator Melaye, tackled what is best described as a most innocuous yet quite perfidious species of corruption in which simply by opportunistically charging what mathematically seems, at face value, to be a small commission, some smarter-than-himself character somewhere ends up unfairly collecting what actually amounts to a huge chunk of our national wealth, thereby committing a most horrific rape of our national patrimony.
This sort of corruption, wherein some smart clown sitting quietly somewhere simply proceeds to “legitimately” rob us blind with a binding agreement to do so in hand, is one of the worst manifestations of our national malaise and is precisely Dino’s specialty in combating. In fact, given that he is not a lawyer and yet he is regularly able to identify such instances of revolting corruption while immediately making the requisite noise to promptly nip it in the bud, makes him a truly competent public official if nothing else. Who says noise is not good?
My approach to Dino is to strictly assess him for his net utility as a public official regardless of whether or not I find his style to be particularly to my liking or not, more especially since I am not God to whose tune everyone must dance. On the strength of the evidence, Senator Dino Melaye is incontestably an asset to this nation and only an irritant to people with whom he has political differences that are of no concern to the average Nigerian. In any case, it is most certainly not a failed governor from Kogi that should be allowed to unseat a distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria simply because of political differences!
As a chief executive, Governor Yahaya Bello is the poster child of failure itself. Here is a man whose defense to the allegation that he owed workers fifteen months salary arrears was that he was owing only twelve months!
Yahaya Bello is a governor without votes and therefore without a mandate. He became governor on votes the people gave to the joint ticket of the late Abubakar Audu and the still very much alive James Faleke, Audu’s running mate and legitimate gubernatorial successor, and it is Faleke’s mandate Bello now occupies.
Apparently realizing he lacks both legitimacy and pedigree, it is possible that Bello has come to the suspicion that he can never return to power in Kogi and has thus decided that there is probably no point to prove to the people other than robbing them blind, tormenting them to madness with hunger and destroying the state for whomsoever will be unfortunate enough to succeed him.
Yahaya Bello neither rules like a governor with a mandate nor one with any realizable ambition to return. He might as well be saying to the people of Kogi “ I am not coming back, I don’t need your votes, I don’t need to impress you and I am simply going to do what I like till the end of my windfall of a tenure which you the Kogi electorate did not give me in the first place.”
We should be extremely careful with this matter of the recall of Senator Dino Melaye. It is not an occasion for hastiness, opportunism or settling of scores while ignoring the bigger picture. It cannot at all be equitable that it is a gargantuan failure that should be able to recall a Senator of our republic like Dino who compared to Bello is a performer per excellence.
If Mandela says Dino should be recalled, I would leave Delta for Kogi to mobilize against him. If Martin Luther King Jr. says Dino should be out, I would lend my voice, resources and heartfelt commitment to the effort. If it is a Yahaya Bello of all people that says Dino should be thrown under a bus he is driving, then we must all seriously consider dragging down Bello from the bus, placing Dino in the driver’s seat and leaving Bello to his faith with a very clear conscience on our part.
It is clear that Yahaya Bello is banking on the most unwarranted campaign of calumny mounted against the legislature in recent times by a host of largely clueless characters with little if any profound appreciation of the kernel of democracy. While the growing tendency to stigmatize our legislature and whip up sentiments against lawmakers in the hearts of their constituents is in vogue, we forget that it is potentially the biggest threat to our fledgling democracy.
Ask any political theorist or historian of note and he or she would tell you that a vibrant legislature is more critical to the survival of a democracy than a performing executive. Without a functioning, independent and altogether meaningful and impactful legislature, there is absolutely no democracy to speak of. A rubberstamp legislature is not only a joke but an affront to democracy and in any body polity in which the legislature is reduced to the status of a toothless bulldog and inconsequential underling of the executive, democracy simply no longer exists.
Apart from our penchant for analyzing issues without a deep sense of contemplation or availing ourselves of a holistic approach to assessing reality, there is absolutely no evidence for the notion that our legislature is in any way or to any verifiable extent an underperformer in comparison with the executive.
The truth is that when you apply scientific methods to evaluating phenomena, you likely end up with surprising findings. If we are to embark on a scientifically valid assessment of the executive and legislative arm, there is as yet no tenable extant indication that the legislature is more likely to be found wanting.
Between Dino and Bello, it is not Dino that deserves a sack letter and if one must sack the other, it cannot be the man who cannot pay salaries that should be sacking the man who saved our nation billions.
If Dino goes, no lawmaker is safe and if no lawmaker is safe, our democracy is as good as dead.
Barr. JESUTEGA ONOKPASA,
178 Sapele/Warri Road,
Sapele, Delta State.