PEOPLE & POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The National Assembly and its image

kudugana@yahoo.com

Few Nigerians would have heard of the Policy Analysis and Research Project (PARP), the think tank of the National Assembly.  PARP was an initiative of the NA, supported by the African Capacity Building Foundation through a Grant Agreement the NA signed in December 2002.  It was then established in September 2003, but only took off effectively a year after.

It was established as a professional unit of the NA not only as its think-tank but to also help it in capacity building.  The need for PARP was obvious: of the three arms of government – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary – the legislature is the youngest and the least experienced since, by definition, it always stood dissolved each time the soldiers struck.  And they struck against civilians twice, first in January 1966, and then in December 1985.  On each occasion they sat tight for about 13 years.  These interruptions has meant that the legislature has had very limited capacity in carrying out its jobs of law making, oversight and representation.

Last Monday, PARP organized a one-day stakeholders’ interactive in Abuja to help in the formulation of a communication policy for the National Assembly.  Participants were drawn from the National Assembly, the media, labour, civil rights organizations and the academia.

The aim of the interactive was to formulate a communication policy for the National Assembly that would help redress its negative public image.  Its members had always complained that their arm of government as the only one which truly defines democracy, has been widely misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by the media.

For a people who have complained bitterly about being misrepresented, the poor attendance of the legislators at the Monday interactive was most surprising.  For whereas all the other stakeholders especially the media, turned up in full force, only two legislators, none of whom was a senator, turned up. Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu and Deputy Senate Leader, Dr. Jonathan Zwingina and the new Clerk of the Assembly, Alhaji Nasiru Ibrahim Arab, came for the opening ceremony and stayed on to listen to Prince Tony Momoh’s lead paper and the discussions that followed, but even they expressed regret that their colleagues did not turn up in great numbers.  Honourable Abike Dabiri, the chair of the House of Representatives Media and Publicity Committee, blamed miscommunication between PARP and the National Assembly for the members’ poor attendance.  However, as the event manager, I was aware that Dr. Ladi Hamalai, PARP’s Project Coordinator, had sent out letters inviting all the legislatures to the seminar ahead of their last adjournment.  Dabiri’s explanation therefore sounded strange to me.

However, whether there was miscommunication between PARP and the National Assembly or not, the poor attendance of the legislators at the interactive suggested that the problem of the legislature was more a matter of substance than image.  True, the National Assembly has been largely misunderstood and misrepresented.  For example, it has been portrayed by the media as the most corrupt of the three arms of government.  Stories about its money-for-confirmation-of ministerial-nominations and money-for-approval-of-ministerial-or-departmental-allocations are legion.  So also are stories about legislators spending more time hunting for contracts or junketing around the globe to earn fat estacodes than sitting down to make laws and carry out their other legislative functions.

These stories notwithstanding, there is little or no justification for portraying the legislature as the most corrupt arm of government, both in absolute and relative terms.  As Deputy Senate President Mantu and Honourable Dabiri pointed out at various points during the interactive, its annual budget is an insignificant 2% of the national budget.  This is not much to steal from in absolute terms.  And by the time you have taken out the overheads, the opportunities for corruption pales almost into nothing compared to those existing in the executive arm.

If inspite of this, the National Assembly has had a relatively poor image compared to the executive, the legislators have only themselves mainly to blame.  True, as Senate Deputy Leader, Dr. Zwingina, said during his intervention, the National Assembly suffers from the structural disadvantage that it alone of the three arms of government, has to conduct all its affairs in the full glare of the public.  Unfortunately what the public sees is not a pretty sight and it is mainly the fault of the legislators that they have cut a pretty sorry image for themselves.

As Zwingina knows all too well, perhaps the legislature’s most important function is financial appropriations for the security and welfare of Nigerians.  From 1999 to date the country has not had a proper budget.  Since 1999 no budget has been initiated and passed in time.  Again no budget has ever been faithfully implemented by the executive.  Yet the National Assembly has never done anything to sanction the executive, even if it is merely verbal.  In other words, since 1999, as far as budgeting is concerned, it has been business worse than usual, and the presidency has got away with it scott free. 

Second, as Prince Tony pointed out in his lead paper, the presidency has no right to sell off public property the way it has done under its privatization and monetization policies, without the approval of the National Assembly.  But, as with our national budget, it has done so with impunity and the National Assembly has carried on as if it is business as it should be.

Third, since June 30, the president has been crowing over a so-called debt relief from Paris Club.  Not only are there doubts about the credibility of his claim, there is also good reason to worry that the price we are expected to pay to the relief – there is, afterall, no free launch anywhere in the world – if indeed it turns out to be real, is way too high.  For example, as Dr. Chu Okongwu, a former minister of finance, and himself a former World Bank staff, has said in a widely published article on the “debt relief,” no country has ever paid the Paris Club $6 billion upfront with a commitment to pay another $6 billion after negotiations.

Yet without as much as a courtesy of informing the National Assembly, never mind getting its approval, the governor of the Central Bank, Dr. Charles Soludo, recently told Nigerians that he was already arranging to pay the $6 billion upfront next month and the balance of $6 billions a few months after.  And what did the joint sitting of the two chambers of the National Assembly do when the president addressed them last Monday on the “relief.”?  Give him a standing ovation.

One could go on and on but these three examples alone suffice to make the point that the National Assembly is its own worst enemy.  Not that the media has been above board in reporting the National Assembly.  As the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Umaru Sani, pointed out in his response to Prince Tony’s lead paper, there are many examples of gross media distortions of events at the Assembly and even of outright fabrication of events.  There is also the fact that legislative reporting is a novelty compared to reporting the executive and the courts, given our long period of military rule.

Still as Honourable Farouk Adamu Aliyu, the only other legislator who participated fully in the interactive said, at the end of the day it is up to the legislators to create a good image for themselves by collectively and individually proving that they are serious about attending to the business for which they have been elected.

Sadly it spoke volumes about their commitment to do something about their sorry image that they did not bother to turn up in their numbers for an interactive which their own professional unit, under the capable leadership of Dr. Hamalai, took a lot of time and energy, but somewhat of a shoe-string budget, to organize.