Sani Babadoko
12 July 2008
interview
Kaduna — Last Thursday, the National Assembly held a two-day retreat on the restructuring of The National Budget in Kaduna. The Clerk of the National Assembly, Alhaji Nasir Ibrahim Arab, speaks on the controversy surrounding his service records, financial autonomy for the legislature, plans to open zonal offices by NASS among other issues. Excerpts:
Weekly Trust: There have been reports of a controversy surrounding your service records and that you are supposed to have left the service after 35 years. Why are you still in service?
Ibrahim Arab: Several journalists have approached me on this issue but I have resolved not to talk about it and I have always directed them to the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) which is my employer and has the records of service of all the staff of the National Assembly.
WT: Our readers seeing an interview with you without your personal response to this controversy, you will agree, will be surprised. In any case, the allegations are against the integrity of your service record as a public officer. How and when did you join the service?
Arab: I joined the local government service as a temporary teacher in 1972 in Kaduna State while awaiting my certificate result. I served in that capacity for only nine months. After the results came out, I gained admission for higher education and I resigned to go for higher education. After the higher education in 1975, I did not go back to the local government service but joined the service of the Kaduna State government. This is normal but those bent on blackmailing me now want to merge that period of my temporary service at the local government on my service record. I resigned from the local government and did not go back there after my higher education and I have kept my records since 1975. I have therefore served for about 33 years.
This is not something new and it is allowed. It is my detractors who are trying to make an issue out of nothing.
WT: In your paper at the seminar, you observed that performance of the National Assembly is hampered by lack of adequate funds, manpower and equipment. What will be your solution to that?
Arab: Well, it is the issue of resources and I think you also heard from the presentation of the Senate President. The legislature is not provided adequate resources in terms of finances to carry out its most basic mandate very well. So, we are working hard to see that the obstacle is removed so that the National Assembly will one day, become self-accounting so that it will not be distracted from performing its constitutional roles. The second area, as you have seen, is this the purpose of this seminar is to re-engineer the staff so that they know their responsibilities; they know what contributions they can make so that we can make the work of the legislators easier. This is one area we felt we should encourage the staff and bring together the high level cadre of staff to come together and listen to experts and also make their contributions. At the end of this kind of seminar, we will come out with a communiqué for a mission which we will now go and implement in the parliament.
Also, we have started parliamentary attachment outside Nigeria. Our staff have gone on such attachments to the British Parliament, the Australian Parliament, the Canadian Parliament and so on. We identify two or three staff and send them on such attachments to see how they operate their systems so that they will come and disseminate the knowledge and skills they acquired to their colleagues at the National Assembly.
At the moment, we are also in the process of establishing a National Assembly Training Institute. When established, it will check the challenge of training both the legislators and the staff for effective legislative activities. This will not be limited to the National Assembly; we intend to make it open to all the state assemblies so that we can train their legislators and staffs.
WT: As regards the making of the National Assembly financially independent, what process would you suggest?
Arab: The self-accounting, if we are to follow in the footsteps of the advanced democracies, especially the United States of America. The Congress gets its allocation from the first line charge. That is once the Appropriation Bill is passed, money will come from the Federation Account. It doesn't come through the executive. So, both the legislature and executive will take their money from the Federation Account. It is just like the judiciary now. Uur own constitution has provided for it to get its funding directly from the Federation Account not from the executive arm. But unfortunately, the 1999 constitution did not make this kind of provision for the legislature which is the other arm of government which is equal if not more important than the executive and the judiciary. The legislature is not supposed to be going cap in hand begging for money from the executive; the arm which it is expected to supervise and oversee. It should have complete financial autonomy. So, we hope that during this constitutional review process which the National Assembly will undertake, we hope all these anomalies will be taken care of.
WT: You also suggested the establishment of liaison offices by the National Assembly in the six geo-political zones. How soon is this going to be expected and what role exactly will it play when we have state Assemblies?
Arab: We will articulate it at this seminar and we will put it in our report which we will now present to the leadership of the National Assembly. If the leadership approves it, then we will make sure we make provision for it in the 2009 budget which will be the time for the take-off of these liaison offices.
It is very, very important to have the National Assembly offices closer to the people so that any citizen who has any business with the National Assembly doesn't have to come to Abuja. He can go into any of these liaison offices in his zone and deal with the staff there because they will be bona fide National Assembly staff. If there are public hearings on issues that directly affect a zone, it can be organized in that zone from that liaison office so that it will come nearer to the people concerned. It is easier for them to make inputs. So, through this way, we will be having effective interaction with the generality of Nigerians.
WT: What cooperation have you been receiving from the state Houses of Assembly?
Arab: Interestingly, we just ended a conference at which we invited all the Speakers of state Houses of Assembly and one or two of their members to Abuja. This conference is to be held quarterly. This is to enable us to interact and exchange ideas and compare notes on how to develop our legislatures. It is called Conference of Presiding Officers and was held from 19/06/2008 to 20/06/2008 and it was very successful. So we discussed issues which affects the performance and development of the legislature in carrying out its representative, lawmaking and oversight functions and see how we can articulate those functions effectively. We discussed such issues as the environment and HIV/AIDS. We invited experts who presented papers and we discussed with them. In the communiqué, we charted the way forward for our legislatures and to bring an end to such menace as the environment and HIV/AIDS. These are the kinds of issues we felt we should come together both at the state and the national levels to discuss and go back and see that they are implemented for the benefit of Nigerians.
WT: You said you want a more outspoken participation of Nigerian lawmakers in international parliamentary organizations.
Arab: What I am saying is that there should be a change of attitude towards attending the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the ECOWAS Parliamentary Association. It is not just for us to attend and contest leadership positions. No. We should be making positive contributions to the resolutions of these bodies so that Nigeria, as giant of Africa, should also make an impact on resolutions affecting the continent so that we will go down on records that we have been making contributions to the resolutions at such conferences.
For instance, after our last conference, we decided to have a consultant who will be developing papers for the Senate President who is the head of the Nigerian delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He is to develop and articulate papers on issues affecting Africa for the Senate President to present at that world forum so that decisions can be taken, adopted and passed to other parts of the world.
So, these are the kind of areas we feel we should have an impact and if we are successful with the IPU, then we will replicate it in the other bodies.
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