Time National Assembly Went Back To Work

The National Assembly has been on an elongated vacation which started a few days before their normal mid-year break on July 24, 2018 and got extended for the legislators to attend to their nominations from their respective political parties. The extended vacation came on the heels of deep seated squabbles over defections from the ruling party to the major opposition party by key legislators. This was compounded by threats of changing the leaderships of the legislature and the national embarrassment caused by the Department of State Services’ attempted takeover of the National Assembly complex.

Now that the primaries have come and gone and the National Assembly is scheduled to resume within the week, it is imperative to remind the lawmakers of key pending bills and issues for which their attention is urgently needed. They have to understand that they are on the last lap of their four-year legislative calendar but a good part of the time has been lost and therefore cannot be recovered. Again, it will be impossible to pass all the bills and motions awaiting their approval. Definitely, some will lapse and be reintroduced afresh in the nest parliament whilst a few will scale the hurdle. It is within this context that the need for prioritisation becomes imperative. A scheme to determine the crucial and urgent nature of legislative interventions should be designed to ensure that first things are treated first.

This discourse postulates that the first issue is that given that Nigeria has already been hit by the election bug, and everyone is already doing permutations on whether we shall have continuity or change at the federal and state levels of offices, the legal framework for the election, being the amendment of the Electoral Act should be speedily attended to. The Electoral Act amendment is still a subject of disagreement between the executive and the legislature. Evidently, we have become a nation of one Electoral Act per election or strong and repeated amendments of the Electoral Act on the eve of every election. Best practices stipulate that the Electoral Act should have been ready at least one year before the election or in the worst case scenario, six months to the election. But we are still debating the amendment bill with about four months to the election.

This is not just a national embarrassment but also a display of incompetence, cluelessness and insensitivity of both the legislative and executive arms of government. The disagreements on the contents of the bill which have been ongoing for close to nine months now should be brought to a close in the next couple of days. However, the legislature as the representatives of the Nigerian people should ensure that the bill has enough provisions to plug the leaks against anyone who intends to manipulate the elections so that the votes do not count. A quick decision including two options will have to be made; the first is vetoing the presidential refusal to grant assent whilst the second is to quickly amend the provisions and send back to the President for assent.

The second issue that demands the urgent attention of the lawmakers is that the budget for the elections in February 2019 has yet to be approved. This raises a very critical question about procurement processes that should have started some months ago. Most of the materials that will be used for the elections are not just sitting on the shelf waiting to be bought. It appears the executive and legislature have laid the foundation for non-competitive emergency procurements if the Independent National Electoral Commission is to meet the deadlines that will be imposed by late passage of the budget and availability of resources. The approval of the budget should have happened many months ago and this should be a priority in the next one week of reopening.

The third issue is that the current executive and legislature have reordered the Nigerian financial year through the backdoor. As I write, the 2018 federal budget has been passed. Yes, salaries are being paid and may be overheads drawn down. But where is the capital component of the 2018 federal budget? Available information indicates that the borrowing plan to fund the budget has yet to be approved by the legislature in the month of October. Thus, when will capital budget implementation start? It is therefore imperative for the legislature to expeditiously, in the next couple of days, to sit and consider the framework and approve or disapprove of the same so that capital budget implementation can start. But the National Assembly should have at the back of its mind while considering the borrowing plan that in 2017 that the debt repayment was about 68kobo for every N1 we made in revenue. So, by the time we borrow for 2018, debt repayment may get up to 75k for every N1 of our revenue.

The fourth is about the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill that was sent to the President which he declined to give assent to. It will be a disaster of monumental proportions if the National Assembly will not sit down and either attend to the President’s concerns or override his veto. The bill and noise about petroleum industry reforms is as old as our return to civil rule in 1999 and repeatedly, the bill has had more to do with politics, corruption, inertia and the unwillingness of the Nigerian elite to take definite, concrete and targeted steps towards national development. Leaving this bill unattended to will signal a failed legislature and executive. Also, the other components of petroleum industry reforms including the fiscals, community and environmental concerns should be concluded by the National Assembly before proceeding on Christmas and New Year legislative break.

It will be very sad if the National Assembly resumes and Nigerians are regaled with exchange of hot words and possibly blows by the lawmakers over the leadership of the National Assembly. This is not the time for the police or any security agency to take over the premises of the parliament seeking to close it down due to a breakdown of law and order. The tough-sounding words and posture of the leadership of the ruling party, especially its chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, some weeks ago, should give way to the realism that there is a time for everything under the sun. This time demands that the legislature gets back to the business for which they were elected and for which, many of the members are purportedly seeking re-election. This is no time for grandstanding or cheap partisanship that may lead Nigeria into an avoidable crisis. Every administration will be remembered for something, either positive or negative and it is up to the leadership to decide on which side their names will be written.

Already, the economic growth figures, the prevalent uncertainty and lack of economic direction may see Nigeria slide back to recession if the executive and legislature fail to settle down to stem an already bad situation. The Central Bank of Nigeria had warned about this in its last Monetary Policy Committee Communique, especially about the likely high election spending which may facilitate an inflationary spiral. The economy is grounded despite the high oil prices and the Federal Government needs to be reminded that it made a song out of the high oil prices in previous years for which Nigerians had nothing to show. Unemployment figures remain incredibly high as the National Bureau of Statistics has not released the job figures since late last year.

So, the executive and the legislature should get back to work and stop the childish bickering. We did not elect them for this.