ON its way out, like the Executive Branch, the Ninth National Assembly under the leadership of Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has come under public scrutiny over its performance. Overwhelmingly, the verdict is damning: the parliament accomplished very little and became almost an extension of the Presidency. While the leadership insists that its four-year tenure ending May 29 conflates with a record number of laws passed, its slavish approval of loan requests from the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), lack of rigour in screening nominees, incompetent oversight over public agencies, and the enabling of official profligacy amidst mass poverty in the land are implacable witnesses to its abysmal outing.
The most enduring characteristic of the Ninth NASS, to the dismay of Nigerians, was its abject acquiescence to Buhari, appearing to forget that it is an independent arm of government with an outsized role in exerting the sovereignty and overall interest of the people as the bedrock of democracy. This justifiably earned it the odious moniker of “rubber stamp.” Cementing this reputation, the parliament is considering another World Bank loan request of $800 million from Buhari less than one month to its exit date.
Considered the cornerstone of democracy as the direct representatives of the people, strong parliaments, declares the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the global association of parliaments, are essential for development. Their primary functions are to represent the people, make laws and oversee the government through hearings and inquiries. In a presidential system of government like Nigeria’s, where the president wields enormous powers, the independence, rigour, and commitment of the legislature to ensure that democracy in practice, delivers a “government by the people and for the people” is of utmost importance.
The Ninth NASS fell short of this onerous responsibility. There were some upright, service-oriented individuals in the two chambers, but they were a minority. Lawan and Gbajabiamila however adjudge the NASS to have performed very creditably. The Senate President boasts of the bills passed. On paper, this looks impressive. Of the 874 bills introduced in the Senate, 162 were passed as of July 2022. This is a record in the Fourth Republic: the Fourth Assembly passed 31 bills, the Fifth Assembly 98, the Sixth Assembly 52, the Seventh Assembly 60, and the Eighth Assembly 74.
Apart from the annual appropriation and supplementary bills, the NASS achieved the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract (Amendment) Act, 2019, the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021, Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2020, and Finance Act, 2020. The PIA, though watered down, had gathered dust in the previous assemblies. The Finance Act increased VAT from 5.0 per cent to 7.5 per cent but reduced tax for certain categories of companies.
In its first two sessions to June 2021, the Senate passed 59 of the 742 bills introduced to the chamber; 11 of them were referred for concurrence by the House. By that stage, 355 of the bills had passed first reading and 175 through second reading.
But when juxtaposed against quality, and the urgent interventions it ignored, the quantity of the NASS output pales into debit mode. Many new laws established additional cost centres, bureaucracies and expenditures with no visible funding sources. The Ninth NASS continued the fiscally irrational template of mandating spending with no consideration for where the money would come from. Thus, it engaged in a frantic race to establish new universities, polytechnics/monotechnics, colleges of education, military and paramilitary universities, commissions, and multiple agencies, some doing virtually the same thing.
It failed to repeal the anomalous Nigerian Railway Act 1955 that has denied the country of private investment and kept the rail sector an expensive sole federal responsibility; it ignored calls to legislate compulsory privatisation of the moribund, loss-making state-owned refineries whose failures cost the treasury trillions in subsidising petrol imports, and it failed to fully incorporate reforms recommended by the Uwais panel into the Electoral Act amendments to cleanse the country’s sordid elections.
Besides, oversight has been very poor, with MDAs carrying on with dodgy budgets and expenditures and poor service delivery unchecked by the parliament beyond headline-grabbing summons that led to nowhere.
Lawan has tried vainly to burnish his slavish kowtowing to Buhari as progressive, attributing the “success” achieved to the “friendly but professional approach to Executive-Legislative relations focused on harmonious working relationship based on mutual respect, consultation, cooperation, collaboration and partnership.” This demonstrates a poor understanding of the responsibility of the legislature by the top lawmaker. Cooperation is not subjugation of the legislature to the executive.
The NASS did not apply the rigorous efforts that distinguish independent parliaments; in-depth intellectual debates, agenda-setting and incisive scrutiny of government activities.
Screening of ministers and other nominees by the Senate were mockeries of parliamentary supervision. The Ninth Senate toed the repugnant path of ‘bow and go.’ This enabled Buhari to elevate many incompetent persons into public office. Despite credible allegations of partisanship, Lawan ensured that Buhari’s nominees as Independent National Electoral Commission commissioners were confirmed. This further eroded confidence in the electoral system. One such appointee attempted to manipulate the Adamawa State governorship polls in April.
Instead of authoring laws on restructuring, state police, and railways, frivolously, the NASS enmeshed itself in ridiculous bills to regulate the practice of Christianity, and to withhold the certificates of medical graduates for five years. In the constitution amendments, the parliament was underwhelming, and inserted several retrogressive provisions in the package.
The deficiencies of the Ninth NASS can partly be traced to the flawed emergence of Lawan, Gbajabiamila, and the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege. Favoured by Buhari as a counterpoise to Bukola Saraki, the Senate President of the Eighth NASS, Lawan emerged the Senate President after Buhari persuaded his main rival, Danjuma Goje, to step down. The government then withdrew its N5 billion graft case against Goje. Since then, Lawan had been under Buhari’s spell.
Gbajabiamila’s main goal in office was to provide smooth sailing for Buhari and ensure the latter did not stand in the way of the Speaker’s political mentor’s burning ambition to succeed Buhari. Omo-Agege came to limelight when in 2018 he brazenly led thugs to snatch the Senate mace in support of Buhari’s legislative interest.
To its credit, the Ninth NASS has reversed the formerly unpredictable annual budgeting cycle under the previous assemblies. Since 2019, it has passed the federal budgets early, thus reverting the budget cycle back to January to December. Nevertheless, many Nigerians still feel short-changed. Like previous assemblies, this NASS has not sufficiently been transparent about the remuneration of the lawmakers. The Economist of London once described them as the world’s highest paid lawmakers.
The Railway Act 1955 the lawmakers failed to repeal leaves the rail system obsolete, with just over 3,500 kilometres of rail lines serving the over 200 million population, compared to India that by 2019 operated 68,155km, generating $28 billion in revenue; and South Africa with 20,953km in 2021.
More treacherously, the NASS has been complicit in Buhari’s borrowing binge. At its inception in June 2019, public debt was N25.7 trillion; by March 2023, public debt was N44.25 trillion. Ill-advisedly, NASS approved the securitisation of the N22.7 trillion ‘Ways and Means’ borrowings from the Central Bank of Nigeria. With this, the parliament endorsed Buhari’s illegality of borrowing above the limit set by the law.
It also bungled the opportunity to effect radical changes to the centralising 1999 Constitution and advance Nigeria’s desperately-needed restructuring. In the constitution amendment it undertook late in the day, the standouts included the independence for the state judiciaries and parliaments, which rescues them from the tyranny of the governors, and the approval of states’ participation in railways and power.
But it undercut the pillars of federalism by ignoring resource control and fiscal federalism, and by proposing so-called local government autonomy instead of leaving the states to decide how LGs should operate as is standard in other federations. In the United States, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Germany, LGs automatically fall under the purview of states/provinces/cantons.
A major catastrophe was the refusal to invoke the “doctrine of necessity” to dismantle the single policing structure even as the country is falling apart due to criminality. Nigeria alone, of the 25 federal countries in the world, irrationally operates one single federal police. This fuels insecurity, in which 4,545 people were violently murdered and 4,611 kidnapped by non-state actors in 2022, according to the National Security Tracker.
Like the previous assemblies, the Ninth NASS was enmeshed in allegations, including corruption and budget padding. As it winds down, some members want to impeach Gbajabiamila for alleged altering of the rules for selecting leaders. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission said the federal budget was padded by N300 billion in 2021, and by N100 billion in 2022. By tracking 2,444 constituency projects 2019-2022, the ICPC said it recovered N2.8 billion in assets diverted or embezzled.
Absenteeism was endemic even at plenary sessions. The main excuse is that some lawmakers are engaged in committee assignments. In contrast, the United Kingdom parliament is usually full, as well as the US Congress. For their fat pay cheques, NASS members ought to be more duty conscious.
Sadly, the Ninth NASS failed to stop the corruption-laced envelope budgeting system. It did nothing on the Steve Oronsaye panel report to merge and scrap the plethora of duplicated MDAs that have bloated the public service. Instead, it embarked on creating new MDAs. By August 2022, there were 63 bills before NASS to create new federal universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education without regard to funding sources.
Weak, indolent, and prone to corruption and occasionally to frivolity, the assembly fell short of expectations. Overall, the Ninth NASS was an obstacle to, and not an enabler of progress, fiscal rectitude, of caring and responsible representation, or an effective guardian of the electorate’s aspirations and security. Nigerians will be relieved to see its back.
