Fred Itua, Ndubuisi Orji and Chidinma Adiele
It goes without saying that the Parliament is the heartbeat of democracy. In Nigeria, the parliament in the 4th republic has been assailed with mounting residues of subservience to the executive arm of government, undue rascality and unbounded fire of resilience. As the watchdog of the executive branch of government, it represents the interests of everyone and cuts the cynosure of eyes.
Since the beginning of the 4th republic in 1999, Nigeria has had an uninterrupted National Assembly. In the senate, eight presidents have presided over the affairs of the upper legislative chamber, while in the House of Representatives, five speakers have held sway.
The senate between 1999 and 2007 witnessed unprecedented leadership instability and was variously described as “Fuji House of Commotion”. Within its life span of eight years, five senate presidents from each of the five states in the south east- Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo all produced one. Out of the eight senate presidents since 1999, seven were members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. The climax of the instability and slur in the senate occurred on 18th of April, 2018. The day will always ring a bell in the National Assembly. On that day, hoodlums, allegedly led by the current Deputy President of the Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege, invaded the National Assembly and carted away the Mace of the Senate while plenary was ongoing. The Mace was later retrieved at a location close to Abuja city gate. Nobody was and has been arrested or tried for that incident.
Thawing the ice
At the inauguration of the 6th Assembly in 2007, Patricia Etteh was elected as Speaker of the House. Etteh, who was the first female Speaker in the history of the country, was yet to fully settle into her role, when she ran into troubled water over alleged N628million budget for the renovation of her official quarters and that of her deputy, Babangida Nguroje. For Etteh’s adversaries in the House, under the aegis of the Integrity Group, that was an opportunity to move against her.
After many weeks of turbulence, characterized by many open confrontations among lawmakers, the first female Speaker was forced to resign her plum position and thirty nine years old Dimeji Bankole was elected as her replacement.
On June 9, 2010, Senator Dino Melaye and his group gave Bankole a seven-day ultimatum to quit his position for alleged corruption and high-handedness.
As part of its duties, as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (As amended), the House in the past 21years has embarked on several probes, which has unearthed several frauds and malfeasance in government. However, the probes have been the Achilles heels of the Green chambers as some of the exercises ended in monumental scandals, impugning the integrity of the House and the head and members of some of the probe panels. Three of these scandals stand out. They are; Elumelu power sector probe, Farouk Lawan subsidy probe and Herman Hembe capital market probe scandals.
The National Assembly is not yet saturated with scandals, slurs and stirs. Indeed, Daily Sun investigations reveal that there is a plethora of them in the offing, suppressed for long and about to explode. Under the present dispensation, the oversight power of the legislature has not been judiciously exercised to guarantee Nigerians the dividends for electing their representatives. There have been clear cover-ups and lack of political will to bring a lot of the cases to fruition. Even when it issues reports on certain national matters such as fuel subsidy scam, the National Assembly lacks the fire power to compel the executive to implement its recommendations. Since nothing comes out of drills of individuals, agencies and corporations, the billions spent annually on either public hearings or oversight functions have turned out to be mere drains on national resources. Demands for bribes to exculpate the accused have been the order of the day. For instance, during the Maina Pension scam, the probe instituted by the senate into pension funds that affected about 141,790 pensioners, Abdulrasheed Maina, the chairman of Pension Reform Task Force, was accused of looting N195billion. The senate set up a committee to look into the matter. During investigations, Maina alleged that Alloysius Etuk, from Akwa Ibom State, demanded $100,000 from him as bribe. A former director of pensions in the office of the Head of Service of the Federation, Sani Shuaibu Teidi, who was prosecuted along with 31 others, also alleged that Mr Etuk and other members of the committee collected a bribe of N3 billion from him. Although the senate was incensed by the allegation, no decisive step was taken to investigate it. The National Assembly as in most other cases did not, and has never pushed hard enough for the executive to implement its reports bordering on scandals and corruption.
The kerosene subsidy scam is also at the base of the suspicions and disregard of the National Assembly by the ordinary Nigerians. Kerosene, which is supposed to be sold for N50 to consumers, sells for between N326.9 and N349Per liter. Many years after a presidential directive ended subsidy for kerosene, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC still claims it has continued to subsidize the product with the National Assembly feigning ignorance. The effects of the subsidy are not being felt by the ordinary Nigerian. Several billions of Naira is believed to have been stolen under the smokescreen of the subsidy. At some point, the National Assembly made a feeble attempt to flag off investigations into it, but it was all hot air. It issued no indictment and did not take concrete steps and follow- ups. No official of the petroleum ministry, or the NNPC was invited for explanations or sanctioned.
Five people, including a former director of Police Pension Fund, Esai Dangabar, were accused of misusing N32.8 billion from the police Pension Fund. Dangabar accused some members of the senate of benefiting from the loot. The senate denied the allegation but failed to order an investigation. Till date, no one knows whether the senate joint committee on Establishment and Public Service Matters, and State and Local Government Affairs indeed took bribes from the pension thieves.
A former Aviation minister, Stella Oduah was embroiled in a N255m armoured car scandal. She was accused of abusing her office by compelling an agency under her ministry to buy her expensive cars. The House of Representatives which lumbered into the matter has successfully failed to release a detailed report of its investigations into the matter, stretching from the 7th Assembly till date. Recently, a federal High Court in Abuja granted Media Rights Agenda (MRA) leave to apply for an order to compel the House to furnish it with transcripts of the House Committee on Aviation at the hearing of the committee on the procurement of the two bulletproof BMW cars by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority,(NCAA) through Messrs Coscharis Motors Limited.
In 2013, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, alleged that the NNPC failed to remit billions of naira in oil proceeds to the treasury. This allegation brewed a huge conflict between Sanusi and the then president Goodluck Jonathan, making the president to suspend him from office. The National Assembly investigated the matter inconclusively and even the present senate has not bothered to review it.
A private Jet conveyed $15million in cash to Johannesburg for a purported arms deal, Till today, the National Assembly failed to open investigations into the deal.
During a recruitment of Immigration officials exercise which went sour on March 13, 2013 which claimed 15 lives, the Minister of interior then, Abba Moro who was behind the scheme, not only completed his tenure , but was never grilled by the National Assembly despite the revelations that emanated from the scam. The Investigations it launched into the scam were mere façade and impotent.
More scandals
On may 1, 2020, Nigerians were confronted with a bill in the House of Representatives which sought to repeal the quarantine act of 1926 and provide new regulations that would enable the country to adequately contain the ravaging corona pandemic. The bill generated unprecedented uproar and was eventually dropped. It was sponsored by the speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, Paschal Obi and Tanko Sununu. The tension generated by the bill especially on forced vaccination of people, arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses inherent in it put the National Assembly in bad light , with some people alluding foreign collaboration.
On the whole, the National Assembly has discharged its watchdog functions more in the breach than actual patriotism.
In June 2019, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit(NFIU) wrote to all banks requesting for information on all accounts of ;
The National Assembly
National Judicial Council
All the members of the National Assembly Principal officers(management) of National Assembly Service commission, and Principal Officers of the Judiciary.
The banks were expected to provide the NFIU with a schedule (Account names and numbers) of the agencies, principal officers affected and other relevant politically exposed persons.
Although the responses to the request were expected on or before Friday, 13th September, 2019, nothing has been heard about it till date.
Apart from the foregoing, the National Assembly has been lax in invoking its constitutional powers in intervening on crucial issues of national significance. A case in point is its inability to conclusively reform the electoral system which has been at the root of the malaise in the conduct of elections. Although it has enacted piecemeal legislations in this regard, they have not impacted much on the system.
Its aloofness and indifference in conducting public hearings on the abuse of prosecutor power by the police has continued to engender unease and crises in the system. These nagging issues tug at the sanctity, independence and virulence of the National Assembly.