Legislating for the masses, not the pocket

At the beginning of this interesting administration, the song, after the initial avoidable delay in the presentation of the budget, was about ‘padding’ on the part of Ministries, Departments, Agencies and even the Presidency, though one could deduce that those who presented the budget were, at the time, just appreciating the complexities involved in producing a clean budget solely in the interest of the Nigerian economy. Right under the noses of perceived men and women of integrity, monstrous sums were injected into the most important development document, save for the Constitution, under ridiculous items, in the daring pursuit of self-interest. The alarm went wild and ‘budget padding’ became almost a constant phrase on the lips of informed Nigerians and even laymen.
The drama that followed the discoveries, both on the Executive side and at the National Assembly, until certain gaps were bridged and, perhaps, problematic interests protected, can best be imagined.
Now, it is the turn of the legislators. The House of Representatives, in particular, has been boiling since July 21, 2016, a day after Abdulmumin Jibrin was removed as the Chairman of the Federal House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation. Jibrin, an All Progressives Congress lawmaker from Kano State, had released documents indicting the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, in a multi-billion naira ‘budget padding’ mess.
He claimed that he was being persecuted because he refused to accommodate a request to allocate projects worth N40 billion to Dogara in the 2016 budget. While blowing the whistle, which some critics have termed as more egocentric than altruistic, Jibrin alleged that the projects would have been shared among four principal officers – Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yussuff Lasun, the Whip, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa; and Minority Leader, Leo Ogor.
He demanded the immediate resignation of those in the eye of the storm in view of what he said was “a unilateral decision to allocate to themselves N40 billion, out of the N100 billion allocated to the National Assembly, in addition to billions of wasteful projects running into over N20 billion they allocated to their constituencies.”
As expected, and in line with public outcry, the law enforcement agencies responded to the whistleblower’s call for a probe into the allegations. But Dogara reportedly shunned the invitation of the police Special Investigating Panel, ostensibly standing on the grounds that it was disrespectful for any officer other than the Inspector- General of Police to sign a letter to the No. 4 citizen of Nigeria.
If this was regarded as an audacious remark to a section of concerned followers, then Dogara’s cleverly crafted comments on the matter at a forum organised, last Thursday, by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, a public policy think-tank, in Abuja, would be regarded as even more damning. Standing on sections 24, 30 (and others) of the Legislative Houses (Powers and Privileges) Act, he reminded those of us, who might have forgotten, that “most of the things (they) do in the National Assembly are privileged.”
“They cannot be grounds for any investigation on the procedure or proceedings to commence against a member of parliament, either the Speaker or the President of the Senate, once they are done in the exercise of their proper functions,” he argued.
On the allegations that the budget was padded, the speaker maintained that whatever changes were effected in the budget fell within the appropriation powers of the Legislature, which could not be considered criminal.
To Dogara, there could not even have been any issue of padding a budget because “the Constitution talks about the estimates of revenue and expenditure to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly. The Constitution did not mention the word budget.” Smart argument!
The Presidency, on its part, also punctured, perhaps unwittingly, the budget padding allegation, saying, interestingly, that there was no word like ‘padding’ in the legislative lexicon. Case closed.
Some commentators concluded that, in saying this, the Presidency, through the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Senate Matters, Senator Ita Enag, took sides with Dogara. But, even if absurd, we could infer from history that there could be an element of truth in what Enag said.
Over the years, appropriations, which go into the minefield of interests called the National Assembly, never come out the same. Except for the 2007 budget that was passed and presented on January 1, 2007, other budgets since independence have been delayed, owing mainly to self-centered tinkering by the upper and lower chambers of the National Assembly.
In 2000, the fact that the National Assembly increased its N22.7 billion allocation to N24 billion in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s N667.51 billion proposal had sparked off a big controversy. In 2005, still under OBJ, some senators, including the then Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, were even fingered in a N55 million bribe-for-budget scandal. They were accused of obtaining money to facilitate easy passage of the Federal Ministry of Education’s budget.
Late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s N2.4 trillion 2008 appropriation bill was delayed till April over what the legislators publicised, at first, as certain technicalities to be addressed. Those technicalities later metamorphosed into a N34.03 billion increase in allocation for the Senate and N59.52 billion increase in the House of Representatives’ figures.
These events, over the years, have shown that ‘padding’, which the Presidency says is not in the legislative lexicon, has been a routine in the hallowed chambers. In fact, when lingering controversies degenerate into fisticuffs, the underlying matter is usually about who gets more in terms of allocations.
Nevertheless, Nigerians must not in anyway vote for a system whereby the lawmakers’ voices would not count in appropriation matters. That is why they are there – to check the excesses of the Executive and others, and to ensure that adequate resources go into the critical needs of the nation. This is one reason the Executive’s appropriation may not always come out the same.
But in a society where an individual’s social, religious and communal acceptance is often measured by his access to cash and cash-bought influence, it is understandable that self-interest would play a major role in lawmakers’ allocation of resources. After all, self interest, as Eric Beinhocker, the author of Origin of Wealth, famously put it, “is every individual’s alienable right.” The most effective system of government, he added, “is one that accomodates that rather than attempt to change this aspect of human nature.”
The problem of the Nigerian society is that this self-interest has assumed a psychiatric dimension, considering the outrageous sums lost to the insatiable appetite of those in positions of power for criminal wealth.
What we need at the moment, therefore, is not a call for probe, even though this is key, but an agitation for reorientation in the National Assembly. The people’s representatives must shun self-interest for collective wellbeing. This is the least they can offer as sacrifice in our quest for a lasting solution to the nation’s economic troubles.