The scandal called Investigative and Oversight committees of the National Assembly has invariably brought to the fore the inconvenient truth which many members of the chattering class and national commentariat will wish to avoid; that the country is slowly but surely sliding into a new strain of dictatorship; one domiciled in that address called the National Assembly.
The scandal called Investigative and Oversight committees of the National Assembly has invariably brought to the fore the inconvenient truth which many members of the chattering class and national commentariat will wish to avoid; that the country is slowly but surely sliding into a new strain of dictatorship; one domiciled in that address called the National Assembly.
The struggle to enthrone democracy and democratic values fought for for decades by brave hearts in the civil society and pro-democracy groups, many of whom gave their lives and limbs in that struggle, sought to ensure a system of government wherein the personages in power will be more than accountable to the people who put them there and where tyranny of any kind will not thrive. However, it might seem that a decade down the line, we have made the mistake of replacing executive dictatorship of the military hue with a virulent form of legislative dictatorship led by lawmaking oligarchs.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
The creeping threat of this deadly strain of dictatorship began to rear its adolescent head sometime in 2007 after the ascension of Late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to power. The National Assembly smelling weakness in the person and leadership style of the then President went on the offensive, usurping the unattended to powers of the executive while arrogating to itself powers it constitutionally did not possess.
The dictum that nature abhors a vacuum is very apt in understanding the historiography of the rise of ‘legislative oligarchy’ in our country today. The inability or unwillingness of President Yar’adua to exercise the awesome executive powers and authority constitutionally granted him left a lacuna in the socio-political and economic space that the National Assembly reeling from its eight years of insignificance under President Olusegun Obasanjo swiftly capitalised upon to make amends for the ‘inappropriate’ way that institution was properly assigned its duties of making laws as well as over-sighting and NOTHING MORE during that period!
That man called Obasanjo was one who knew the importance of power and knew pretty well how to defend his turf from constitutional and unconstitutional intruders and as such, he gave no room for the kind of power theft we now see emanating from the National Assembly.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });
Under Obasanjo, the National Assembly knew its place in the superstructure called government and whenever it got a little bit too excited and began to make strange, arrogant noises of executive powers, it was properly put back in its place; to make laws and oversee the constitutionally backed activities of the executive.
No doubt, times have changed. Like a young feline animal that has tasted fresh blood, the National Assembly has become contemptuous of the President, the Executive and their powers. Ministers and Heads of Parastatals are magistratially summoned to the National Assembly at the whims and caprice of legislators and under threats of sanctions that have no constitutional backing. The silliest of these threats is the claim by the National Assembly that it has the powers to order the arrest of persons who fail to heed the summons of the body. This fallacious claim has persistently beeen bandied and held over the heads of hitherto busy MDA Executives who are forced to drop their daily work schedules to run to the chambers of the National Assembly when an unknown legislator seeking media renown and political relevance issues the usual threatening summons with resonating sound bites in front of cameras and reporters.
It was no wonder that the Central Bank Governor, himself a frequent guest to the chambers of the Assembly protested recently to the same legislators that their constant, persistent and insensitive summons were not only affecting the pace of his work as the head of that sensitive institution but were becoming a threat to his institution.
What our federal legislators care about is power and acquisition of more power. That was why they recently embarked on a nauseating ego trip of eliminating the autonomy of the Central Bank and whittling down the powers of the Governor. That is why they never get tired of despoiling budgets presented by the Executive by stuffing it with extra hundreds of billions of naira that do not in any way engender economic growth or development of any nature.
The organised power theft by the National Assembly has been taken to a new low, in which mere resolutions of the Assembly are now expected and indeed demanded by the hordes of law makers to be taken seriously as acts of parliament and laws of the land by the executive. When our law makers are robustly confronted in their game by bold and courageous ‘summonees’, they package a resolution demanding the President sack them and they expect the President to say “yes sirs! All correct!”
In recent times, the National Assembly has with gross cheekiness demanded at one time or another that the President sack Aruma Otteh of SEC, Abdulrasheed Maina of the Pension fame, Bolanle Onagoruwa of the BPE, Harold Demuren of the NCAA and others on mere allegations of wrong doing; allegations that have never been tested before any competent court of law. In pronouncing illicit judgements against innocent public servants, the National Assembly has also begun to engage in the worst form of judicial power grab not even practiced during the worst epoch of military rule. I know what will happen if the President were to ask, indeed demand the Senate and the House of Representatives to throw out several Senators and House Members facing trial in competent courts for diverse crimes including felonies and misdemeanours from their midst. They would responded by hollering thunderously about executive interference and the sanctity of separation of powers in a democracy like ours.
A National Assembly that has refused to sanction bribe-taking colleagues and question others accused of high crimes such as terrorism and corruption but are quick to cast stones at the executive neither deserve our respect and understanding nor is in a position to exact that the executive be held to standards that its members have refused to aspire to.
A situation where a committee of the National Assembly can imperiously order a Ministry or Parastatal not to carry out its constitutionally assigned duties and operations such as recruitment of new staff or order another agency not to dismiss a worker even if such a staff had breached known extant rules and regulations and expect such orders to be complied with, is without precedent in any democracy anywhere in the world.
Perhaps, it is high time that as a people, we begin to show intense outrage at the excesses of our legislators, after all, the quality of their legislations has had little or no impact on the our lives.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });