Seldom has the outcome of an election here inspired the hope of a new era as we have had after the March 28 polls. The prospects hinge on the new configuration of the National Assembly, which, for the first time in the Fourth Republic, puts the opposition All Progressives Congress in firm control of the two chambers. After 16 years of legislative impunity and rascality superintended by the Peoples Democratic Party-led parliament, the APC-controlled parliament must seize its chance to rewrite legislative roles, practice and service to the people.
This is the first time the PDP is assuming the position of a minority party since the return to civil rule in 1999. But the APC’s numerical superiority can quickly evaporate and become a disadvantage if the party treads the delinquent ways of the PDP legislators, who frequently employed their majority to serve selfish personal and party interests. Therefore, the best reward an APC-controlled National Assembly can give Nigerians is to discard the filibustering of the past, which achieved nothing. The express yearning of hard-pressed Nigerians is for a conscientious parliament that will amend and make just laws, handle its oversight functions with firmness of purpose, and restore the parliament to the path of integrity.
Serious democracies are reputed for their virile legislature. These parliaments keep the executive arm of government in check and watch over public finances. Here, in spite of the excoriation and protests over their jumbo salaries, adjudged to be the highest in the world, since 1999, our lawmakers have refused to back down. According to The Economist, a Nigerian lawmaker receives a base salary of $189,500 per annum. There are several other hidden emoluments and contract awards the legislators enjoy. In comparison, his American counterpart receives $174,000; the UK counterpart $105,400; German counterpart $119,500; French counterpart $85,900 and Canadian counterpart $154,000.
While all these other countries are members of the G7, a group of the seven richest economies in the world, it is inexplicable that our economy, rated 28th in the world by Gross Domestic Product ($510 billion), sustains lawmakers that top the chart of income earners. This is a country where the unemployment rate is 23.9 per cent (National Bureau of Statistics) and 70 per cent among youths (Central Bank of Nigeria). The APC-controlled parliament should not take the Nigerian people for granted again, but should make its majority count by drastically cutting these immoral perks of office.
There can be no justification for lawmakers earning astronomical pay when there is absolute poverty of 61.9 per cent (NBS statistics) among the populace. Worse, the three tiers of government find it difficult to pay the national monthly minimum wage of N18,000. To give itself a head-start, endear itself to the people and fulfil its “change” mantra, the new parliamentary majority has to declare the salaries, allowances and other perks of lawmakers openly. It should also review these incomes in line with sound economic realities at home and abroad.
Apart from ending the culture of indolence that has made lawmakers to boycott sittings at will, it is important to Nigerians that the Eighth National Assembly amends some laws, particularly those that give organisations like the NNPC and other Ministries, Departments and Agencies a “self-accounting status” in clear violation of the 1999 Constitution. The economy will certainly rebound when all incomes are paid into the Federation Account, as dictated by Section 162 of the constitution, which partly states, “… into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation….”
In the first 12 years of the Fourth Republic, the National Assembly passed just 134 bills, with critical bills such as the Petroleum Industry Bill and the Minerals Bill wasting away in the shelves, despite the fact that they are sorely needed for economic revival and Foreign Direct Investment inflow. The legislative agenda of the APC, which needs to be unveiled early, should give Nigerians a timeline of when these important bills would be finalised.
We are concerned that our parliament has failed in the critical task of screening ministers and other high political nominees of our Presidents. The confirmation hearings have been nothing but a charade, a joke carried too far by previous parliaments. This has to change in the new dispensation. The dubious and curious culture of “take a bow,” used in approving nominees, is retrogressive and should be dropped.
We attach a great deal of importance to the way nominees are screened. Henceforth, the new parliament, under the APC, should screen ministers rigorously. The executive indolence, which is captured in the manner of transmitting only the names of ministerial nominees to the National Assembly without attaching their portfolios, has undermined competence in the Fourth Republic. It should not be permitted again.
Similarly, it is needful for the incoming parliament to meticulously reform the process and passage of our budgets. What we have been subjected to – especially in the past few years – is just a “copy and paste” system. This does not serve any developmental purposes. A budget is the most important economic document of a government, and it gives the direction to the private sector, the public and the government itself. The parliament and the executive should liaise for the timely submission of every budget. And, the APC-led parliament, instead of concentrating on the politics that made the past National Assembly another word for compromise, has a lot to do.
One glaring shortcoming that should not be overlooked in the new parliament is how the past was scarred by scandals. A lawmaker, Farouk Lawan, is on trial for collecting a $620,000 bribe from a businessman, Femi Otedola, to remove his company’s name from the list of those who fraudulently collected subsidy payments from the government in 2011 without supplying petrol. The smear imprinted on the legislature by this N2.53 trillion subsidy scandal has remained indelible. There are other greed-induced bribe-for-budget rackets. At a stage, a string of Senate Presidents exited office in a whirl of corruption scandals. We hope this will not be a part of the new parliament.
