The 9th Senate has just walked into the hall of history. In doing so, the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, gave a brief summary of the achievements of the 9th Senate. He said that 1,129 bills were presented on the floor of the Senate and over 500 of them were passed while the President assented to 131 bills. He said that was the highest in the history of lawmaking in Nigeria. That sounds like a good record but many Nigerians had urged the National Assembly to call President Muhammadu Buhari’s bluff when he withheld assent to some of the bills. The National Assembly failed to do so. That is why the assented bills come to just about one quarter of the passed bills.
Besides, the 9th Senate was accused of budget padding, crooked constituency projects and most importantly its approval of too many loans for the government. As at today the loan portfolio is N77 trillion and the country uses 96.4% of its revenue for debt servicing. That is an awful position for a country with immense wealth such as Nigeria to be.
The ninth Senate also adopted the absurd bow-and-go template of preceding Senates, instead of rigorously interrogating people put before it for screening. Nigerians have continued to insist that such persons must be thoroughly screened as it is done in other jurisdictions such as the United States from where we borrowed the presidential system.
In Nigeria, women, including the girl-child, are very badly treated, even though women form more than one-half of the Nigerian population. During the lifetime of the 9th Senate, several pro-women bills were proposed but all of them failed to go through the National Assembly. That is a way of putting women further down and promoting patriarchy. My unsolicited advice to the leaders of the 10th National Assembly is that they must remedy the defects noticed in the 9th Senate, in addition to executing their own agenda for the country.
The Senate President, Chief Godswill Akpabio, has given us an idea of how the National Assembly will function. At a thanksgiving service in his honour held at St. Anne’s Cathedral, Ifuho, in Ikot Ekpene, he said: “The current National Assembly will rally round and support the programmes of the current administration by eliminating all inhibiting policies affecting the progress and development of the country. We would be partners in progress for the sole benefit of Nigerians.”
Good talk but the National Assembly must not be, as the 9th Senate was, or was said to be, a “rubber stamp” parliament, an uncritical receptacle of good and bad bills from the executive arm of government. There were a few such bills aimed at muzzling the press. Such bills were stealthily introduced and pushed relentlessly before the members of the media community got wind of it. The Water Resources bill,which has now been killed, belongs here.
We urge the members of the National Assembly to support the executive when necessary and to oppose it when necessary because in this system there must be checks and balances. A Frenchman Baron de Montesquieu published a book titled “The Spirit of the Laws” in 1748. In the book he said: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person…or if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”
That is the doctrine of separation of powers among the three arms of government. The three arms of government must guard jealously their powers while at the same time they must support the other arms to function efficiently. This is a delicate balancing act that involves collaboration with the other arms so that democracy’s dividends can be delivered to the people despite the separation of powers.
For the National Assembly there are two broad functions (a) Legislation (b) Oversight. Luckily, the present National Assembly is more diverse as eight political parties are represented there for the first time. This Assembly comes close to being a pan-Nigerian gathering that ought to care in its legislation for Nigeria’s diversity and the public interest. In terms of legislation, the 10th National Assembly must enact laws that will ensure equality, fairness, laws that will tackle poverty and unemployment, laws that will address gender equity, ease of doing business, laws that will address the present acute insecurity, laws that will promote freedom, democracy and development.
Insecurity is the greatest problem facing the country today. Without security there can be no development. Therefore the 10th National Assembly must put this on the front burner. It must look for ways of tackling through legislation this monster that has brought untold horror to Nigerians all over the country. The Nigeria Police has done its level best but that best is not good enough. The number of policemen in Nigeria is inadequate, grossly inadequate, for the job that needs to be done. That is where the establishment of State Police comes in. In the Nasir El-Rufai report State Police was recommended but the past government and legislature refused to implement it. There is no federation with the size of Nigeria that runs its security machine with a single police force. The 10th Senate must enact a law that makes it possible for State Police to be established. That is one way of tackling insecurity right from the grassroots.
It is perhaps in the area of oversight that the past National Assembly leaders failed woefully. How can we have four dead refineries in a country that exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum products? These refineries have been dead for more than a decade and the National Assembly did not push for their resurrection.
Look at Ajaokuta Steel Company. The Federal Government allocates more than three billion naira to cover personnel costs at the idle company. In 2021, the personnel cost was N3.89 billion which was 92.18% of the total expenditure of N4.22 billion. In 2022, the sum of N3.94 billion was allocated for personnel cost which was 88.14% of the total N4.47 expenditure budgeted for the company. This company produces nearly nothing. It is virtually a white elephant, swallowing Nigeria’s money but producing next to nothing. Why can’t a decision be taken to either sell it or find a competent technical partner that can revive it.
There are several other stories of Nigeria’s failed enterprises. For example the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ASCON) which was set up in 1997 to explore Nigeria’s 187 trillion cubic feet of gas for aluminium production is dead too. The plant was also expected to supply basic raw materials such as ingots and billets to local aluminium rolling mills. That plant was built at a cost of $2.5 billion. It had a capacity of 193, 000 tonnes a year but it was very poorly managed and it produced just 40, 000 tonnes of metal before it closed shop in 1999.
There are other dead companies covering other sectors of the economy. By 1986 the nation had three pulp and paper mills namely: the Nigeria Newsprint Manufacturing Company (NNMC) in Oku Iboku in Akwa Ibom State, the National Paper Manufacturing Company (NPMC) Iwopin, Ogun State and the Nigeria Paper Mill (NPM) Jebba, Kwara State. Several years after their establishment the companies have received different forms of financial interventions from the federal government yet they remain moribund. The Director General of Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Professor Hassan Doko Ibrahim puts the loss in this sector through paper importation at N800 billion yearly while the Printers Association of Nigeria puts the annual loss at about $1 billion. These examples are not exhaustive but illustrative. There are many other federal government owned companies that are dying or dead that need to receive the oversight attention of the National Assembly. Reviving these moribund companies can lead to a serious reduction in the number of the unemployed as well as the number of those seeking to leave the country in search of greener pastures abroad. Government companies need to operate on a profit basis just as the private companies. The slogan ought to be “profitable or perish.” The companies are obviously badly or corruptly managed. That is why they are not declaring profits even in sectors where private companies are making humongous profits.
The 10th National Assembly has a tough job in its hands because today Nigeria is not in a good place. It is divided, sharply divided, along ethnic, religious and regional lines. There must be a definite effort at uniting all segments of the population while acknowledging the country’s diversity. Diversity is not an offence. There are many federations such as United States, Canada and Australia that are diverse and have managed their diversity efficiently. Nigeria must do likewise. That task belongs to the Executive and the Legislature. That is what is called nation-building.