AN EPITAPH FOR THE OUTGOING NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
By
Like a bad dream, the much loathed and deservedly despised military weaned legislators that inaugurated the nation’s lawmaking apparatus, the National Assembly, have finally served their allotted constitutional time. And like the book of Proverbs rightly advised, for everything under the sun there is a season: a time to play and a time to work; a time to be lousy and a time to be serious; a time to act big and yet another time to return to the level of ordinary humanity. For our erstwhile "honorables" and "distinguisheds" legislators this is the time to account for their stewardship and go.
For an otherwise august constitutional body that curiously opted to perform rather irresponsibly, and at an abysmally low level too, it is now time for them to say good bye and go, and go, they must. In other words, the confederacy of infamy which the National Assembly became in the four years it blundered through the otherwise hallowed national legislative arena has now been democratically terminated within the prescription of the constitution.
The members of that national institution, to the utter amazement of the people, made a virtue out of base instincts and condemnable acts of shame and sundry inexplicable failures. Indeed, they continued to delude themselves with the tattered veil of "we are in a learning process" as the excuse for their inadequacies up till the very end of their tenure! It must be noted that there were indeed some members who really wanted to do their positive best in office but they were wholly outnumbered by the mob of 419 alumni, which constituted the majority. That is why it now seems as if everybody went there just to steal, aggrandize self or to contribute to the sufferings of the people. It was not so.
More than anything else, this is one solid reason why constitutional democracy is to be preferred to other forms of government – leaders hold their offices at the behest of the electorate and for a predetermined time as well - a form of residual accountability. It is the hope that this seminal lesson would begin to sink into our national consciousness because such would go a long way in moderating what we do or how we do our things as a people as we trudge along on the very slippery democratic highway ahead.
For those who have been lucky enough to be returned to the house a second time, it needs no telling that such fortunate adults cannot be permitted the liberty to be wrong twice and it is therefore the hope that they will resolve, this time around, never again to trod that shameful path of their predecessors-in-parliament that is abundantly littered with the footprints of legislative rascality, administrative and fiscal indiscretion, truancy, waywardness and a collective disposition to failure. In any case, it should be clear to everyone by now that most of the returnees are back simply because their parties apparati ordained it to be so within what we may call the ‘bandwagon package’ and the additional fact that not many outsiders wanted to be associated with the travesty presently with Nigerian competitive politics which left the field continuously opened to those willing to go into it.
So, it certainly has nothing to do with commendable stewardship or electoral indispensability at all, because if there was any institution that the nation lamented its disappointing kindergarten performances over the past painful four years, it was the National Assembly. Perhaps more relevant to their return is the manifest preference of the Nigerian voters to sustain democracy at all cost rather than their love for the politicians so ‘elected’.
If the first term of the democracy project turned out to have wobbled that much, it was partially because those members of the law-making organ whose duty it was to guard and check the Executive and the other branches of government fell cheaply for the lure of corruption, delusion of grandeur and a dishonorable misreading of the job description of the mandate given them by the electorate as that of building personal economic empires at the expense of the nation. The result was the emergence of a rudderless polity in which all fundamental prescriptions of the constitution were trampled upon with reckless abandon. Predictably, that unfortunate development almost made the people of Nigeria to want to repudiate the blessings of democracy. But like the proverbial woman who married two husbands, namely, Mr. Dictatorship and Mr. Democracy in quick succession, they have since come to the realization that a bad democracy is still better for them than the trendiest dictatorship.
First, it was the greed and avarice that ushered them into the legislative chamber. Amongst the catalogue of misbehaviors leveled against them were the huge furniture allowances that they unethically awarded themselves as if they were to be making laws for heavenly society flowing with milk and honey.
In fact, many saw themselves, in all material particular, as being at par with their American counterparts and in many ways superior to them! It was customary for some of them who may not be able to point out the US from a map to be arguing whether if they were US congressmen would they not be getting more, forgetting that in fiscal terms, Nigeria is less than one percent of the US economy. A more logical reward level would have meant that they take home as salaries what is in consonance with the capacity of the national economy. That fact did not make any sense before them, as they wanted to live a luxurious life far removed from that of the people that elected them. If they have forgotten their erstwhile individual poverty, they ought not to have forgotten that the nation that they were elected to serve is a poor one, coming out from the mercilessly kleptocratic dictatorship of the military in which there was no ethical parameters for assessing performances of office holders and what they take away.
In a country where there is no potable water for the inhabitants, no pliable roads and where the social and educational infrastructures are in shambles, where the minimum wage is less than the equivalent of $100 a month, it was stunningly preposterous that people who were elected to serve therein and help the society out of the miry clay of poverty would have the moral audacity to fix for themselves scandalous largesse like furniture allowances well in excess of $35,000 or more than the annual salaries of 10 medical professors toiling within the nation’s universities before the new pay raise! Our legislators threw caution to the wind as they went on to be allocating outlandish salaries and other emoluments to themselves as if there would be no more tomorrow. For all intents and purposes, that was a very sad indication of the kleptocratic disposition of the new Big Men in town. Because they could not restrain themselves, they could not control the other department of government as was designed by the constitution. And they actually, by their subsequent conduct, confirm all those negative characterization to the letter.
Rather than enacting laws for the good governance of the nation, they turned the chambers of the National Assembly into a lousy forum for fashioning out and ranting baseless motions and needless busy-body-ism on issues where they were least needed. Observers were quick to point out that one of the problems that bisected the Assembly from inception was its inability to pick its leadership wisely. For example, the lower house started off electing a neophyte and a damned liar, Mr. Salisu Buhari, a 29-year old who forged all that could be forged about his curriculum vitae, as the Speaker. For a young man who did not have a sub university education but falsely tagged himself with a 419 doctoral title, forged a birth certificate that added several years to his age, to be elected to that exalted office was an indication of the fact that it was a house dominated by crooked people where the worst of the lot was preferable. So it was that Buhari made it to the Speakership until his can of worms ran over. The haste with which the President pardoned him unwittingly set the tone for a credibility crisis that would eventually confront the administration.
The man who took over from Buhari, Ghali Na’ Abba was not better. Although he was better educated and probably more enlightened than his successor, he was one hell of a man who saw himself in the mould of Newt Gingrich, the ebullient and ego-filled Republican Speaker of the US House Representatives who, in a moment of power drunkenness, formulated the so-called Contract with America but fell out so prematurely as not many within the enlightened American political system were prepared for his self-destructive experimental politics.
Little wonder that Ghali Na ‘Abba also christen his pet legislative agenda the ‘Contract with Nigeria’. The real tragedy in his own case was that he also saw himself as the alternate president of the federation and it was obvious that the unprincipled support he got from the anti-Obasanjo elements in the system further intoxicated him to no end. Na ‘Abba really went nuclear, so to say. In his bid to duel the President, no opportunity was spared even if that was at cross-purpose with the position of the party he represents in parliament.
Not able to determine the well-defined parameters of authority under the constitution, Ghali saw himself as the foe that would ultimately undo President Obasanjo with the misunderstood doctrine of separation of powers as his battle Armour. He was wrong. The constitution did not intend needlessly antagonistic departments of the same government but a cooperative relationship of checks and balances. No war was intended amongst the co-ordinate branches, as Na ‘Abba immaturely misperceived it.
The last straw was the ill-advised impeachment process that he initiated and for which those who clearly did not wish him well prodded him on. Completely in disregard of his party’s wish and common sense, he went ahead with the other equally heady legislators and pressed on the impeachment process, which though was bound to fail was nevertheless applauded by those who had been taken in by the ‘regime change’ bogey that was becoming a political anthem in some places. It was their miscalculation that even though they may not remove the president, they would have thoroughly weaken him before the electorate that the chances of his getting re-nominated by the party would be dimmed and that of his eventual re-election fully foreclosed. Whether or not they got their political calculus right in this respect is now a matter of history.
If the lower house was a disaster, the upper house turned itself into a monumental national embarrassment as it tried in any way conceivable to outdo the lower house in all its nefarious misbehavior. Whether it was Evans Enwerem or Chuba Okadigbo that succeeded him, it was all a tale of failure, shame and irresponsibility. Enwerem could not sort out the duplicity charges leveled against him as to his age, qualifications and overall CV claims neither could Okadigbo resist the temptation to dabble into contracts awards that were at variance with the call of his office. Indicted by his fellow legislators in a contract awarding scandal, he was forced to relinquish the position of president of the Senate. So, in quick succession, they were blown away from office due to their glaring failings. As if they would never learn, the man who picked up the mantle where the first two predecessors in office dropped it, Pius Anyim, also did not fare well. It would seem that Anyim really wanted to make some positive impact in the office but he was soon to be trapped in a huge ego container and he could never recover from the shock occasioned by the fact that from nowhere, he could be the president of the Senate of the Republic of Nigeria. So when the so-called move to impeach the president came, Anyim could not determine the limits of his office as he enlisted in the bandwagon that was fashioning an ill-timed, ill-opportune impeachment move against the President. I recalled then cautioning the heady young senator in a piece I entitled, Is the President Really that Vulnerable? But like a dog that would get lost which does not answer its master, they went ahead on the suicidal impeachment road all the same.
It was clear that the move would fail, in spite of the enthusiastically loud press that it generated in the country. I for one never had any doubt that they would not succeed in that project principally because it was baseless and that it is essentially the outcome of intolerance, bad politics and arrogance. More importantly, the law, as it stood, did not support their plot. I agreed on this one occasion with the President that the impeachment call was indeed a joke carried too far. So the ill-advised impeachment move failed, did fail and should have failed because the motive was defective from the word go.
Ostensibly to teach him a lesson, Anyim was made to fight it out with the governor of his home state in Ebonyi and the young lawyer was worsted as he could not even dare to seek re-nomination back to the senate or any other elected office for that matter. Crippled politically and harassed by the anti-corruption commission, ICPC, Anyim and his counterparts in the lower house rushed through the National Assembly a purported repeal of the legislation which designed to curb the rising incidents of corruption in Nigerian. It was obvious that the amendment/repeal was an after-thought by the jittery lawmakers who knew that they were racing against time.
Well, the beauty of the new democracy is that power is now separated as a way of using power to check power. Needless to say that the so-called repeal they hastily carried out will not see the light of day without the accent of the president and it is predictable that he would veto it, as that law is one of the highpoints of his first term. Nigeria has earned a very bad name as a corrupt nation and to worsens that reputation, the national legislature wanted to legalize corruption, which was the natural intention of the repeal Bill that was rushed. It turned out that it was one insult that Nigerians could not take from the legislators and it was therefore a legitimate expectation that the new ‘law’ would not have seen the light of day.
It is really tragic that a National Assembly that started off in shame has to end in greater opprobrium. Since they could not finish the evil job of killing the anti-corruption Act before the election, it is elementary legislative process that the ICPC remains untouched. While that may be the subject of a specialized essay elsewhere, it is sufficient for me to note here that the National Assembly did not take the feelings of the nation into account when it rushed to ‘kill’ the only real legislative job that they did in all the four years that they were at Abuja just to save some of its members from the fang of the anti-corruption Commission.
It is difficult to see how Na ‘Abba and Anyim, both now stripped of their almighty legislative immunity, would not go to the tribunal they so wanted to kill, more so, as corruption suddenly became a major item for debate in the just concluded electioneering. There is now a very strong political mandate for the Obasanjo’s administration to forcefully attack the root causes of corruption in our society. Justice Akanbi should therefore relax as the combined forces of the constitution and the electoral process have spared his job just as I cannot image any immediate future legislature doing anything to weaken that institutional mechanism for fighting corruption in the country. If any thing, it would be to strengthen the existing anti-corruption facilities wherein it would no longer be a respecter of persons as have been alleged by those that wanted it go.
All said, the nation should heave a sigh of relief that the burden of the last parliament has been lifted from its back. It is really unfortunate that the good job of some members in the house has been subsumed in the massive failure of others. Those who did their best deserve our praise and they are so commended. The one point that no one can dispute today is that the out-going legislature was one evil Nigeria really did not deserve. It is to be expected that the incoming assembly would learn from the failure of its predecessor and then proceed to dutifully serve the nation in conformity with the mandate they have just secured and as amply defined by the constitution.
Due purely to a self-inflicted curse, the out-going legislature was inaugurated in controversy, operated all through in controversy and finally ended up in controversy. A fitting epitaph for them must therefore read: They came, they played and they failed!
April 2003