National Assembly and the leadership jostle: Matters arising | Nairalaw

Eze Onyekpere (censoj@gmail.com)

Nigerians have just elected legislators at the federal and state
levels. As at now, there is a number of legislators-elect jostling
for leadership positions especially at the National Assembly. They
are jostling to become principal officers, especially, to become
Senate President or the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
respectively. The quality of persons who get elected into the
legislature and the few among the legislators who are chosen to
lead the legislature, as firsts among equals, will determine to a
great extent, the quality of laws, oversight activities and
resolutions that will emanate from the legislature.

It is a fundamental aphorism that development and progress in
any society is largely a product of the quality of laws in that
society. Laws are made to provide for the public good, to encourage
conduct considered progressive and discourage negative conduct.
Thus, the legislature is the law-making organ in every society and
in Nigeria. It is the first arm of government, following the
constitutional provision in section 4. This comes before the
provision for the executive in section 5 of the 1999 Constitution.
It is the arm of government that makes laws for the peace, order
and good government of the federation, the states and local
governments.

Beyond law making, the legislature is the representative arm of
government in every democracy. Legislators are elected as
representatives of defined constituencies. They are primarily
expected to champion their constituency interests and the general
interests of the nation or state. In the Nigerian model of
democracy, certain sums of money are set aside for constituency
projects nominated by the legislator who is deemed to know the
challenges and problems facing his constituents and as such, is
best positioned to champion them through the budgeting process.

The legislative power of appropriation is a very important power
as it reviews the propriety of executive proposals and controls the
allocation and disbursement of funds in the public interest. While
the executive proposes, the legislature makes the ultimate decision
of approval. The legislature also exercises oversight over
executive implementation of laws and policies, as well as conducts
investigations and public hearings to expose corruption or
mismanagement of public resources. Hearings can also be held to
elicit information that will aid the process of making new laws or
amending existing ones.

The legislature is called upon to make all types of laws and
take decisions on basics like housing, food and clothing, to more
complicated issues like science and technology, to ethical and
moral issues like abortion, etc. Thus, a good legislator must be a
very knowledgeable and exposed fellow who can reflect and research
deeply into the problems of the society and come out with
solutions.

To aspire to lead the Senate or House of Representatives, the
norm has been for experienced and ranking members to take the lead.
It is also important to point out that in other civilised climes,
such ranking members must have a trajectory of achievements in
terms of bills, motions and interventions sponsored. He should be
associated with a progressive trend of thought and everyone can
confirm what he or she stands for at any point in time. Thus, as
she is being elected Senate President or Speaker, respectively, one
can predict with mathematical accuracy his leaning on key national
issues.

The legislator or the leader of the legislature must also be a
person of high ethics and morality who is well-grounded in the
nuances of his people. Law itself is a product of morality and
ethics as it reflects the dynamics of social morality. Good ethics
and morality are needed in taking decisions and votes that are
untainted with self-interest, bribery and corruption, as well as
respect for the wishes and interests of the majority of citizens.
He must be someone who is in a position to account for monies
appropriated for the projects he nominated for his constituency. It
is not just enough to nominate projects, but the projects must be
functional and effective in addressing constituency challenges, as
well as being implemented in a value for money approach.

In our civil rule where there is a rampaging and powerful
executive arm of government, it is imperative that the legislature,
especially its leadership, is independent minded enough to exercise
checks and balances on the executive arm of government, especially
on the President.

Nigeria cannot afford a rubber stamp legislature that sees
nothing wrong in the conduct and actions of the executive. In as
much as there should be collaboration between the two arms of
government for the country to move forward, it must be a
collaboration that recognises the public interest. It is
unfortunate that in Nigeria, the public interest is not the same as
the interest of the executive.

The key poser arising is whether those who are jostling to lead
the legislature at the federal level can be associated with any of
these desirable qualities. All the news making the rounds is not
about their telling Nigerians and fellow legislators about their
qualities, accomplishments and their agenda for the legislature; it
is about who has been anointed by the party leaders and who has not
received the anointing.

This is absurd, shameful and will lead the federal legislature
to a crisis. Even if those who anointed and their anointed succeed
in taking the legislative leadership, their success will not be in
the public interest as their service delivery will be poor.

It is not democratic for legislators to take dictations from
certain godfathers who seek to control all aspects of our national
life. If the party with the majority in the two chambers of the
National Assembly wants to intervene, the best it can do is to zone
the key positions in the legislature in an equitable manner and
allow the legislators to now produce their leaders based on the
agreed sharing formula. To micro-manage the legislature to the
point of not just stating that a particular leadership position
should come from a zone or state, but to drop the mantle on a
particular legislator is dictatorial and should be resisted by all
legislators of conscience.

For party leaders to now ask legislators who feel aggrieved with
their decision to resign or leave the party is the height of
arrogance as it is an attempt to play God. It will backfire and
blow up in the face of the mere mortals who think they have assumed
the status of God. The lessons of 2015 are not too distant. They
are meant to be imbibed and used for problem solving.