- That 15 bills are affected tells a lot about how our lawmakers and the presidency work
The Senate has come back from a longish recess to discover that 15 bills it had sent to the President for signature have been returned without assent. Rejection of bills by the president in democracies is an aspect of separation of powers and President Muhammadu Buhari is within his jurisdiction for denying assent to any bill with reasons for his action.
What is out of the ordinary in the rejection of a slew of bills is that the President has refused to sign 15 bills within six weeks during which the National Assembly was on vacation. The bills denied assent include: Chartered Institute of Entrepreneurship (Establishment bill), Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) amendment bill, Advance Fee Fraud amendment bill, National Institute of Hospitality and Tourism Bill, The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (Amendment Bill), Stamp Duties Amendment bill; Subsidiary Legislation (Legislative Scrutiny); National Agricultural Seed Council; National Research and Innovative Council (Establishment bill); and the Electoral amendment.
In addition, five constitutional amendments including establishment of an annual State of the Nation address at the National Assembly were also denied assent.
It is normal to assume that bills which have gone through the Senate before arriving at the President’s desk for signature must all be important, at least to majority of representatives of the people. For example, Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) Amendment bill, National Institute of Hospitality and Tourism Bill, Stamp Duties Amendment bill, National Agricultural Seed Council bill, and National Research and Innovation Council Establishment bill pertain to efforts to improve the country’s economy. They should be important to the legislature and the executive as bills with capacity to attract new investments and increase economic productivity.
What appears abnormal is the high number of bills the President had problems with and some of the reasons for sending the bills back without his endorsement. For example, the reason for the President’s refusal to sign the State of the Nation address once a year on a specified date seems rather flimsy. Such once-a-year address of the National Assembly may depend on whims of the executive if a date is not selected. Would the President have preferred that giving the State of the Nation Speech be left open and thus become a victim of scheduling problems every year?
On the side of the Senate, the speed of response expected from senators who agreed on these bills over 90 days ago and should have gone to work to override the president’s denial of assent seems unduly coloured by partisanship and desire to temporise on taking decision on 15 bills that are now hanging, The quick intervention of the Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan:”I will suggest we take up a particular compromise after the chairmanship of Business and Rules committee, and some loyal senators, or whatever it is, we set up a technical committee stating what happened and why those bills were not signed. We may have excluded some things that may not be too serious but, maybe, we have not taken too much time to look at them” suggests an acceptance on the part of the Senate that the President may be right in rejecting the 15 bills.
In a system in which the legislature is responsible to citizens, it is worrisome that the Leader of Senate views bills in which he too must have participated to make, a matter to be left to the orientation of “some loyal senators.” Who are loyal senators and to whom are they supposed to be loyal, apart from the citizens that elect them? This thinking smacks of unnecessary partisanship in respect of matters of serious national interests.
What is concerning about presidential rejection of 15 bills is not that so many bills cannot fail to meet presidential expectations; it is the culture of work in the Senate and in the presidency. It is also a reflection of the lack of understanding between both arms of government. It should be worrisome that the best response to rejection of 15 bills of visible potential for economic diversification and productivity is a quick consensus of the Senate to go back to a technical committee. Is this an acceptance that the Senate in the first instance did not do its job properly and would rather take time to do it all over, or just a device to mask shying from making efforts to override some, if not all, the bills?
Both errors in drafting of some of the bills and the discrepancy in the date of letter of rejection of some bills to the Senate and the date in which the President claimed to have taken the decision to withhold assent indicate lack of concentration at the level of legislative and executive leadership. Nigerians certainly require full concentration from its government leaders.
