Kayode Akinmade
4 September 2008
opinion
Lagos — On Tuesday,September 9,2008, the House of Representatives will resume from its recess. It was a well deserved rest for the lawmakers after a hectic legislative session. No doubt, some of the lawmakers would have utilised the recess to rest and attend to family matters. But for many of them, it must have been a 'working recess.' The lawmakers in the House in leadership positions could not have had the luxury of staying away for too long from office. And for many others not in the leadership, there may have been pending constituency matters to attend to. Anyway, the lawmakers are due back to the hallowed chambers and the new legislative session promises to bring out the best in them. The new legislative session will be hectic just like the ones before it. The old sessions had been full of challenges, intriques, drawbacks. There will be deliberate efforts to curtail the drawbacks but the new session is not expected to be stunted in terms of challenges and intriques. Unfinished businesses will return to the front burner; new challenges will be confronted headlong. And uppermost in the minds of the lawmakers as they commence the new legislative session is that every assignment will be approached with utmost sense of patriotism while conduct in the financial affairs of the House nay the country will emphasise transparency. Speaker Dimeji Bankole has said the dispensation under him will not only reverse the situation of the past whereby parliament will vote money for projects and fail to monitor thereby giving room for corrupt public officials to put such money voted in their pockets, but that the House will appropriate funds and follow up the money to ensure that the money so appropriated matches project execution. That must have been the speaker's euphemism to restate the position of the House that oversight function of the lawmakers will no longer be compromised. And the position obviously suits the Nigerian peculiar situation that has seen the entire nation being dotted by abandoned or shoddily executed projects that otherwise would have served the interest of the poor masses but left partly completely or poorly executed after money appropriated for the projects would have been fully paid. The unfinished businesses before the House went on recess are many. However, the most notable is the investigation of the power sector by the lawmakers which report is ready but is yet to be laid on the table for deliberation by the House. If Nigerians have their way, the outcome of the power sector investigation will be one of the challenges they would want the lawmakers to confront first when they resume. The people have every reason to be anxious that the issue of the power sector investigation be resolved once and for all.
While power is one of the fundamental infrastructure supporting the economy, it turned out it was a severely problematic area under the Obasanjo administration. So protracted and enormous was the power problem that in the twilight of the administration, Nigeria was virtually in darkness. Therefore, it was to the amazement of the citizenry when it was alleged that the Obasanjo government spent about 16 billion dollars on the sector. The House instituted the investigation of the power sector against the backdrop of the national outcry that the huge funds spent without improvement in the nation's power situation generated. The lawmakers investigation of the sector has inevitably thrown up contending forces. There are those in favour of thorough investigation to at least establish what happened to the funds voted for the sector. Relevant questions here will include, were the funds appropriately utilised?
If so, what went wrong? Also pertinent to ask is if the funds were misapplied or misappropriated. Were the latter question to be answered in the affirmative, then there would be need for the erring officials and contractors to be brought to book. The erring officials and contractors must have constituted themselves into an interest group opposed to the investigation of the power sector. They went to work the moment the investigation began, trying to scuttle the effort by blackmailing the House leadership and members of the committee saddled with the responsibility. An undeterred House however saw through the interest group's plan and had a successful public hearing on the investigation. The lawmakers also visited the power project sites for an on-the- spot assessment. But before the committee could write their report, the interest group came out with what they must have thought was a joker. They alleged that the committee had taken bribe to influence their report. The House leadership also saw through the plot but because of the weight of the allegation nonetheless asked the ethics and privileges committee to investigate the allegation. The investigation revealed that the allegation was false. Not done yet, the anti-power probe forces tried to discredit the House leadership for insisting on carrying through the power sector investigation. They alleged that there was a scandal in the purchase of cars for the House committees . But the lie fell flat even before their allegation of fresh scandal in the House hit the streets. What the anti- power probe forces may not have known was that the transaction on the cars supply was handled by the National Assembly bureaucracy and that if any backlash would result from corrupt handling, it will have nothing to do with the House leadership. And what is more! The detractors chose a time - the House - recess to plant their scandalous allegation. Anyway, the plot went the way it came. Perhaps the anti-power probe will come up with another mischief; perhaps they will let the sleeping dog lie as the House is set to debate the power investigation report . Speaker Bankole has erased any doubt that the outcome of the investigation will not see the light of day when he said pointedly that the report will be debated and recommendations followed up for implementation. What the House is determined to do is a new dawn in the conduct of public affairs in the country. Apart from it being in tandem with the House sermon on transparency, it is a signal to the corrupt public officials who will rather put government funds in their pockets rather than utilising them for set goals that it is no longer business as usual and that their days of reckoning will sooner than later come. Also pending on the schedule of the House is the issue of the reconstitution of standing committees . All but two of the 72 House committees were dissolved by the leadership moments before the lawmakers went on recess.
The dissolution had long been anticipated, given the claim in many quarters that many of the committees were performing below expectation. The situation had, in the main, been blamed on fixing many of the lawmakers in committees where they did not have requisite knowledge. Reconstituting the committees will pose significant challenge. One, if the House must realise the goal of effective oversight, then the committees must be strengthened by way of fixing lawmakers who have relevant expertise in the committees. This will be a clear departure from the situation of the past whereby committee appointment was seen as avenues to feather individuals nests and promote personal interests and consequently carried out on the basis of patronage. Two, those still . living in the past and thus harbour this notion may oppose the new status-quo. But, obviously, it is in the best interest of the nation that the House has strong standing committees that understand their different terrains and therefore able to monitor budget performance and make those in the executive branch of government account for whatever they do. Such standing committees can emerge only when the backgrounds of the lawmakers are the overriding factor in fixing them into the committees. The House leadership under Speaker Bankole is required to do no less. Yet another area of challenge for the resuming lawmakers is the 2009 budget. For obvious reason, the 2008 appropriation bill was presented late to the National Assembly. Yet the House worked on it as if the lawmakers lives depended on it. For the first time in the history of Nigeria, the House unearthed hundreds of billions of naira in unspent funds under previous budgets. It is a record that Nigerians will expect the lawmakers to build on as they resume for another legislative session. But such expectation can only be met if President Umaru Yar'Adua presents the appropriation bill to parliament in good time. All said and done, the new legislative session will be full of activities and daunting challenges.But as the House under Speaker Bankole has proved,severally,the parliament is up to the task.
-Akinmade is media adviser to the Speaker of the House of Representatives
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