Stories from Kemi Yesufu
Despite working on 551 bills in the last one year, conducting probes on different sectors, the House of Representatives will also remember 2016 as a year it battled to save its reputation. No thanks to allegations of budget padding and three of its members facing a joint committee to clear their names over allegations of sexual misconduct in the United States. In this interview, Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Hon.Abdulrazak Namdas speaks on the highs and lows of the year. Namdas also spoke on the report that the National Assembly will increase its budget to N150 billion, rumours that the House may extend the suspension of former Appropriation Committee chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin and how the House plans to work on the 2017 Appropriation Bill without it resulting in arguments of budget padding.
Few people will disagree that 2016 wasn’t the best of years for the House considering that it worked on 551 bills. This is even as some who watched even closer wouldn’t score members high in legislative duties like oversight and even attending plenary. What do you say to this?
I would say 2016 was the take-off stage for the House. Yes, it was a tough year, but we weathered the storm and Nigerians have started to understand the character of the House under the leadership of the Speaker. For me and many other colleagues, we have done well in the last twelve months. I would add that the quality of leadership of the House under Speaker Yakubu Dogara became evident to members, with many people coming together, even among principal officers who hitherto had issues fully accepting that we have one leader.
Some other groups who called themselves this or that name came together with the resolve that we move forward as one House. I am happy that now when members have reason to criticise the decisions of the leadership of the House, it is done for the progress of the House and without mischief. On its part, the leadership of the House takes the opinion of members to work on it. The challenges of the year brought the best out of the leadership of the House with members’ confidence in our leadership becoming stronger than ever.
The issue of former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin was resolved by suspending him for one legislative year. He was suspended for breaching the collective privilege of the House and bringing the Green Chambers to disrepute. But do you think the public is satisfied with the closure of this episode as done by lawmakers?
You see, it’s not about Nigerians being satisfied with how the matter ended. It is about the media telling Nigerians what really happened. For Nigerians to make fair judgment, they must be given a fair presentation of what happened. It’s like when people asked why we didn’t investigate the principal officers that were accused of illegally tinkering with the 2016 budget, yet we suspended Jibrin.
I kept explaining that there never were petitions against those Jibrin accused of budget padding. Should we have gone to borrow petitions which we would have used to investigate the principal officers he accused? Jibrin didn’t follow due process, he was not fair to the National Assembly. Ultimately, he gave the impression that he was a man going down, who wanted to drag everyone along with him. I also want to reiterate that the National Assembly doesn’t pad the budget, we have the power to work on the budget.
Only weeks back, the President submitted the 2017 Appropriation bill. It is now left to us to work on it. You cannot be talking of something like budget padding when the constitution says, we have the power to work on the document. If the National Assembly doesn’t have the power of appropriation, then, the Federal Executive Council will as a matter of process meet on the budget and simply adopt it.
The House adopted the Ethics and Privileges Committee report leading to Jibrin’s suspension for a year with a condition that the House will review his behaviour during his year away. There was also the proviso that he must apologise, to which he responded that he never will. Now, there is talk of calls to extend Jibrin’s suspension because he continued with saying the House is corrupt. Is this the right thing to do?
Please it’s better we avoid getting involved in wild speculation. No matter the temptation, we should stick with the fact as its stands. The fact is that this man was suspended for 180 legislative days and there was a clause which states that upon return, he needs to apologise to us. If he fails to apologise, the committee will decide on what to do next. Whatever the committee arrives at will be tabled on the floor. I am not sure if he had apologised; initially, this matter would have gotten to this level. But you can see that pride is an issue in this matter, with his acting like the House can do whatever it likes. Seriously, nobody is talking about extending Jibrin’s suspension as the verdict on his matter still holds.
Now that the president has laid the 2017 budget, how will the House ensure that it carries out its job without being hit with news that some of its members have padded the budget?
But I told you lawmakers don’t pad the budget, that the constitution empowers us to work on what the executive submits. Please be fair to the House in your assertions because you are a witness to the fact that Mr. President sacked some people over the 2016 budget. So, the legislature did a lot of work to clean up that budget. The committee was headed by the Deputy Speaker and you know this. We played an integral role in making the 2016 budget a workable document. What I can say is that with the 2017 budget, we will ensure that federal character is upheld and that capital projects and critical interventions are spread across the country equitably.
We are committed to the resources of the country being spread across all regions of the country. If we look at the budget and notice that it is lopsided, we will not allow it. We will sit and make sure that all regions get a fair share. We will insist that there must be a fair sharing of resources. But I also agree with you that for the 2017 budget, we must show more experience and we must be seen to be transparent.
But don’t forget with the 2016 budget, the National Assembly and the president were handling the budget for the first time. It is expected that both sides will be more efficient with the second budget we are handling.
Daily Sun exclusively reported plans by the National Assembly to jack -up its allocation from N115billion to N150 billion. Don’t you think Nigerians will not support this even as the National Assembly has failed to give the details of how its budget is spent?
This new speculation that we want to jack-up our budget makes me want to ask why you are trying to pitch us against our brothers and sisters (Nigerians). Why is it that people like to single out the National Assembly once it comes to an issue like this one? Why can’t they talk about MDAs or any other arm of government? Most importantly you know that the budget has just been laid.
In fact, it was laid on Wednesday and we went on break on Thursday. We only heard the highlights of the budget from the president. None of us has copies of the document and now there are speculations that we plan to increase the allocation of the National Assembly. Truly, it would be too premature for anyone to make a categorical statement about the 2017 budget at this stage. Even if it happens that we increase our budget, we will justify it, like we have justified our increasing allocations to MDAs when we did.
One issue that has earned the House criticism is absenteeism on the part of lawmakers. Some say lawmakers have abandoned the National Assembly in search for money. What is the leadership of the House doing to make things better?
When we first came in, the chambers used to be filled to the brim. At that time, we hadn’t commenced on oversight. But in the last quarter of the year, we had to check on the MDAs we allocated funds to. I think people need to understand that the job of a legislator entails oversight, representation and making laws. And in doing all these three, it is difficult to please everyone.
If we sit back in plenary, some people will say we aren’t conducting oversight. We go for oversight, then some say plenary is not well attended. I should also add that when we invite MDAs to the House, we are still carrying out oversight.