Sufuyan
8 November 2009
analysis
Lagos — From today till Friday November 13, the Senate will not sit in plenary in its red chamber in Abuja. Instead, the 109 senators will converge on the coal city of Enugu for a retreat, which has, understandably, become more or less an annual ritual.
The first retreat was held In Port-Harcourt, Rivers State capital in 2007, with a theme,"Enhancing the Capacity of Legislators to Promote Good Governance, Order and Peace in Nigeria,"
The Port-Harcourt retreat afforded senators the opportunity to visit as much as possible, the creeks to assess the extent of environmental devastation and degradation occasioned by many years of oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger Delta.
But the Upper House, which had expressed concern about the impotence of its resolutions on the Executive arm of government, could not forcefully push through any salutary action that would conduce to unlocking the gridlock in the region.
Amid fears of the reign of kidnap in the region, Mark had led the syndicate to Delta State in a chopper that enabled the delegation to undertake an aerial view of the creeks. The syndicate group could not meet with the militants.
However, there were views in some National Assembly circles last week as to the utilitarian benefits of the retreat. Some argued that it was a jamboree of sort as nothing concrete crystallized from the Port-Harcourt retreat on the side of the Senate towards resolving the issue of youth restiveness and militancy in the Niger Delta.
One analyst said: "The Senate went to Port-Harcourt in 2007; senators claimed to have visited the creeks to see first hand the situation in the creeks, how the chicken that lays the golden egg was being insensitively treated, but came back without advising the Executive on urgent policy options that could bring peace to the region"
"It took the initiative and the wisdom of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to propose the amnesty offer that has resulted in the reign of peace in the Niger Delta region. The Senate is now left to applaud Yar'Adua's novel and bold action. The Upper House passed a motion to that effect last week."
Regardless, the credit, as claimed by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Defence and Army, Senator Ibrahim Ida belongs to all Nigerians including the National Assembly. Ida had said in an interview with THISDAY that his Committee was actively involved with the military in the process that culminated in the actualization of the presidential amnesty to the militants.
Last year, it was the turn of the northern part of the country to host the retreat. Senator Kabiru Gaya (ANPP, Kano South) chaired the Planning Committee. Senators had converged on the ancient city of Kano, the capital of Kano State in the Northwest geo-political zone to brainstorm on the problems confronting the economy and the wellbeing of the region within the context of the zone.
Significantly, senators visited, in syndicate groups, Sokoto, Jigawa and Kaduna States in the zone to assess the impact of desertification and the benefits that the nation could derive from irrigation farming. The Senate was also concerned about the collapse of textile industry and other industries in the North and other general malaise.
But, unlike the 2007 retreat in Port-Harcourt, the Kano retreat had drawn the attention of both the Executive and the National Assembly to the collapsed textile industry and the need to inject stimulus funds into it; it had also produced a legislative therapy in the garb of a Bill to Establish the Desertification Control Commission to address the problem of deforestation and desert encroachment.
It was sponsored by Chairman of Public Accounts, Senator Ahmad Lawan (ANPP, Yobe North). Fifteen others, including Senators Adamu Garba Talba (Yobe), Maina Ma'aji Lawan (Borno), Ahmed Sani Rufai (Zamfara), Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya (Kano), Ibrahim M. Ida (katsina), Idris Umar (Gombe), Bala Mohammed (Bauchi), Ahmed Makarfi (Kaduna), Abdul Azeez Usman (Jigawa) and Mohammed Mana (Adamawa), were co-sponsors of the Bill.
The Bill, which is at the verge of being passed into law, will provide a national umbrella, through the Commission, which will act as a statutory body in which responsibility will be vested to manage and control desertification in the affected States.
The Commission will carry out an extensive survey of the extent of desertification in the country; formulate policies and guidelines for control and management of desertification in the country; conceive, plan and implement, in accordance with set rules and regulations, projects and programmes for desertification control and management; and adopt an integrated approach of addressing the physical, biological and socio-economic aspects of the process of desertification.
It will also integrate strategies for poverty eradication into the process with participation of affected local communities; promote education and awareness of local population on desertification; ensure sound and effective management of the resources available to the Commission from the Federation Account; and, to facilitate, through international co-operation, the transfer of technology, knowledge and know how on the management and control of desertification.
The Bill provides that funding for the Commission would be from the Ecological Funds and other sources. It specifically provides: "There shall be paid and credited to the Commission, all monies in the accounts of the Ecological Fund relating to the States affected by desertification; the Federal Government is to contribute to the fund of the Commission an equivalent of 100 per cent of the total money due to member States of the Commission from the Ecological Fund; and donations, gifts and grants from individuals or corporate organizations at home or abroad."
Lawan had, in his lead debate during the second reading of the Bill, said: "The Desertification Control Commission Bill is, therefore, an effort to evolve an organization that would streamline and coordinate the various strategies necessary to combat desertification in Nigeria.
"The outfit, when established, would in compliance with the United Nations convention to combat Desertification, specify the roles of governments, local communities and land users, incorporate long term strategies, and suggest preventive measures. The Commission would also marshal and utilize resources for the purposes of fighting the scourge, as done in Senegal, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia on the continent, or in the People's Republic of China and Israel."
What is expected to come out of the Enugu retreat, which is the third in the series since the inauguration of the sixth session of the Senate under the leadership of Senator David Mark? The Upper House appears to be running the Enugu retreat with its eyes on the levels of success recorded by the previous retreats.
This time round, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator, Ayogu Eze, is chairing the Planning Committee. Eze who is also Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media while briefing the Senate said the retreat will be used to advance the frontiers of the ongoing process of amending the 1999 Constitution and reforming the Electoral system.
He stated that the five-day retreat would afford the Senate the opportunity to appraise the on-going constitution review and the electoral reform being carried out by its ad-hoc Committee on Constitution Review under the chairmanship of the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu.
According to him: "We have finally approved a theme which is: 'Legislating for an Enduring Electoral System in Nigeria.' It is a reflection of the desire of the Senators to ensure the amendment of the constitution and to ensure a re-appraisal of the Electoral Act to give our people an enduring electoral system."
The theme, which was derived from the national consensus on the need for electoral reform, should be sustained beyond the retreat and should be, expectedly, beneficial to the process of constitution amendment and review of the electoral laws ahead of the 2011 general elections.
Like the Kano retreat that has resulted in the consideration of a Bill for the Establishment of the Desertification Control Commission, the Enugu retreat, analysts contend, should be able to aggregate and define the position of Senate on the constitution amendment vis-à-vis review of the Electoral laws, which will be reflective in the bill proposing necessary amendments to either the Constitution or the Electoral Act.
The theme of the retreat is indeed national in outlook, but the Senate will not spend all the time on meeting minds with stakeholders on it. It was learnt that the Senate-in-retreat will break up into syndicate groups for the purpose of visiting erosion sites in South-east zone, especially in Enugu and Anambra States.
But the question is: beyond the retreat theme, what legislative therapy will crystallize from the Senate chamber with regards to the seemingly intractable problem of erosion devastation in the Southeast? The answer is expected to come from Southeast senators who are well positioned to deploy the platform of the Senate to push through their legislative agenda for tackling the menace.
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