Dealing with an obstructive legislature

Also published in Daily Trust

Though making new appointments will remain part of this administration’s ongoing repositioning of government for some time to come, the recent inauguration of the Federal Executive Council by President Muhammadu definitely constituted the most important part of this process given the fact that the council, which is headed by the President himself, represents the zenith of the executive arm of government.

This development is righty expected to inject badly needed momentum into the machinery of government, which, admittedly, has not been proactive enough to keep pace with the rapidly deteriorating situation in the country. Moreover, notwithstanding the level of success achieved so far or expected to be achieved in the future in President Buhari’s ongoing fight corruption, the real yardstick to measure the success or failure of the fight is the ability or otherwise of the newly inaugurated ministers to live up to expectations and resist temptation and pressure to engage in corruption. This is the least Nigerians expect of them, and they can’t afford to disappoint Nigerians. After all, in addition to their acclaimed moral integrity, they are expected to operate under the strict and specific professional and ethical guidelines given to them by President Buhari during their recent two-day retreat prior to the inauguration.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t downplay the imperative of subjecting them and their performances in their respective ministries to sustained scrutiny and assessment by both the president and, of course, the ordinary Nigerians whose standard of living will remain the only reliable yardstick to determine the success or failure of the ministers and, by implication, the president himself, since he constitutionally reserves the right to retain or sack any minister and indeed any political appointee in the executive branch of the federal government, unlike the case with the legislators who enjoy election-based mandate that can only be taken away from them through appropriate legal and constitutional procedures, e.g. recall, by their respective constituencies which elected them.

Anyway, while, on the one hand, the inauguration of the ministers was indeed a milestone as maintained by the president during their inauguration ceremony, apparently considering the sheer diligence said to have defined their nomination process, subsequent confirmation and eventual inauguration, which further raises Nigerians’ already high hope for change, it however increasingly appears, on the other hand, that the legislature may not live up to expectations after all.

Obviously, as one of the three branches of the country’s presidential system of government, the legislature, which the Senate and the House of Representatives jointly and exclusively represent, is in a position to facilitate the achievement of the change President Buhari is out to deliver. However, this can’t be achieved if the legislators are not actually committed to facilitating the change.

Discouraging indications to that effect had begun to surface following the controversial emergence of the leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and has ever since then persisted escalating further over the pattern of the composition, membership and the leadership of their respective standing committees. The show of sheer desperation exhibited by the senators and the members of the House of Representatives over the membership and leadership of the so-called “juicy committees” proves the suspicion that the National Assembly in general is hardly committed to President Buhari’s change agenda.

Contrary to their claims, many, if not most, of the senators and members of the House of Representatives seem to be hell-bent on maintaining and perpetuating the status quo under which ministers would collaborate with members and leaders of the standing committees overseeing their respective ministries to ridiculously inflate contract values, duplicate and/or unnecessarily split projects with a view to stealing and sharing as much public funds as possible, of course at the expense of the quality and the amounts of the public projects or services that are supposed to be provided.

This explains their desperate wrangling over membership and leadership of standing committees that oversee ministries, which in turn oversee the operations of agencies and departments that provide heavily funded public projects and services e.g. Petroleum ministry, Ministry of works, Ministry of transport etc. It’s obvious that, many, if not most, of them who used to make tens and hundreds of millions of naira that way simply can’t come to terms with the change President Buhari is determined to affect.

This, therefore, underscores the urgent for President Buhari to exhaustively explore appropriate means within the ambit of the constitution to creatively come up with an effective way of dealing with Senators and members of the House of Representatives who appear to be too corrupt-minded to carry out their oversight and legislative responsibilities transparently.

President Buhari can achieve this by, for instance, adopting absolute transparency that will enable Nigerians to know and remain constantly updated about the details of all officials transactions involving any government ministry, agency or department with the Senate or the House of Representatives or any of their standing committees, as well as the processing procedures involved in processing the transactions, the identities of parties involved in treating them,  their respective inputs, arguments, views and proposals, of course, with the exception of the relatively very few issues that are too sensitive to be made public.

All ministries, government agencies and departments should be instructed to maintain functioning and efficient websites where such details will be constantly published. This will effectively enable Nigerians to follow the business of governance, the processes involved in doing things and indeed to easily identify the honest and hardworking from corrupt and incompetent government officials not only in the legislature but also in the executive and the judiciary.