As 7th National Assembly is inaugurated Monday

As 7th National Assembly is inaugurated Monday 

When the seventh National Assembly holds its inaugural session tomorrow, what will top the agenda will be how to elect the leadership that will pilot the affairs of the House for the next four years. Unlike 1999, 2003 and 2007 when nobody was sure of who will emerge presiding officers of the two houses, only few people are in doubt of who would emerge the president of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives this time around. Every direction points to the return of incumbent David Mark as president of the Senate and a woman, Mulikat Adeola Akande, as speaker of the House of Representatives. For the House, however, things are still slightly fuzzy.
What this means is that instead of dissipating energy to battle it out with one another over the positions, the two Houses will quickly settled down for the important business of lawmaking and continue from where the previous National Assembly stopped. Next in line is the election of the principal officers of the Houses. This should also not constitute any problem since House Rules stipulate that only ranking legislators can aspire for the positions.
Expectations from the 7th National Assembly
The outgoing National Assembly recorded remarkable achievements. Arguably the most productive of the National Assembly in the present republic, the two Houses deserve kudos for emerging the first National Assembly to amend the Nigerian Constitution. The House also passed essential bills critical to the transformation of the country such as the Electoral Act and the Freedom of Information Bills (FoI) even if it was a caricature of the original. In all, the 6th Nigerian Senate, which wounds down last week passed 91bills.
Despite the achievements recorded, the House failed to touch on fundamental issues that are germane to the total transformation of the country. The Assembly started by promising the nation an amendment to the 1999 constitution. But did they deliver? The House touched on few areas while it skilfully sidetracked some important aspects. The House of Representatives would later return to its vomit just on the day it was dissolved by absolving its first speaker, Honourable Olubunmi Etteh, from a N628 million financial scandal, the reason she was removed.
The Hon. Ndudi Elumelu led committee constituted by the House of Representatives never came out with a report of its findings on the contracts awarded in the power sector. A committee put together by the same House would later indict the Elumelu led committee of sabotaging the report by taking sides with the contractors that handled the projects. One bill the House did not finish work on was the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). Allegations abound of how members of the outgoing assembly requested for kick backs before the bill was passed.
Another important area the House refused to deliberate on is the aspect of the Nigerian Constitution that touches on state and local government creation. It was not that the Assembly totally did not deliberate on the issue. Indeed, the two chambers of the Assembly spent considerable time on it but they quickly chicken out of the debate over which state deserves to be created and which one does not. When the issue came up on the floor of the Senate, it emerged that virtually every ethnic group demanded for a state of its own. Perhaps afraid of the horse trading that had already accompanied the issue and fully aware that more would definitely follow, the Senate quickly ‘bowed out.’
Other important aspects of the Nigerian Constitution the House did not consider worthy of working on border on true federalism, resource control, restructuring and revenue sharing formula. Already, existing structure clearly shows imbalance in the composition of the states and local governments. Today, a state such as Lagos with over 7 million population has a paltry 20 local governments while states such as Osun and Jigawa with population less than 3 million have at least 30 local governments. This is just one of the imbalances in the national polity that the 6th National Assembly did not ‘balance.’
The revenue sharing formula, on its own, is an old agitation that has refused to die. Many Nigerians feel that the present sharing formula whereby the federal government takes 52.68 per cent; states 26.72 per cent and the entire 774 local government councils 20.60 per cent is counterproductive. It is argued that since the states and local governments are closer to the people, the supposed beneficiary of governance, more funds should be made available for these tiers of governments.
The call for true federalism, which is as old as the Nigerian nation itself, is another aspect of the national polity the new National Assembly should touch on. Though the Nigerian Constitution provided for independence of the three tiers of the executive—Federal, states and local government—what obtained since the start of the present republic has been a far cry from the constitutional provisions. More notable is the control of the local governments by the state government. The trend in Nigeria today is that local governments have almost become an appendage of state governments. In fact some governors in the federation have put the local governments within their controls—they remove their head from office at will and take deductions from their allocations.
These are areas where the seventh Nigerian Assembly is expected to make a difference. As representatives of the entire nation, the National Assembly should be bold enough to effect the necessary changes in the country without fear or favour. The new Assembly should make use of stipulated conditions to bring about a just process in performing this critical assignment.
Landmines
Already mouth-watering salary and entitlements have been earnmarked for new members of the National Assembly to take care of them so they do not need to be enmeshed in armtwisting the executive. By calculations, a senator in the new assembly is expected to earn about N8.2 million in a year while members of the lower chamber will earn about N6.3 million a year. This translates to over N32 million in four years for senators and over N25 million for members of the House of Representatives. This does not include non regular allowances for the legislatures which run into millions of naira.
Nigerians will expect that the fistcuffs and other public disgrace that the outgoing House diplayed will for once be put into the dustbin.
Nigerians have seen too much of this since 1999 and it is time an end is put to the show of shame. In performing traditional responsibilities of budget passage and other oversight functions, members of the assembly should subject themselves to due process and constitutionality. This is one aspect where previous assemblies have been found lacking. The unnecessary delays that prevent quick passage of the budget should be done away with. It is by doing this that the new national assembly men will write its name in gold.