The attention of the New Independence Group (NIG), a socio-economic think-tank, has been drawn to the needless face-off between the Nigerian National Assembly and the Federal Executive Council. First is the position of the Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, SAN that the legislative arm does not have the rights to alter the budget after putting members of the Executive through budget defence sessions and Committee hearings, to the extent that some of the projects proposed would have become materially altered.
Fashola in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Hakeem Bello, and widely published in the media reckoned that it was tantamount to a waste of tax payers resources and an unnecessary distortion of orderly planning and development for all sections of the country, for lawmakers to unilaterally insert items not under the exclusive or concurrent lists of the Constitution, such as boreholes and streetlights. He listed Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Bodo-Bonny road, Kano-Maiduguri road, Second Niger Bridge and long drawn Mambilla Hydropower Project, among others, as those the National Assembly materially altered by directing allocations away from them and in favour of scores of boreholes and primary health care centres, which were never discussed during ministerial budget
Second, and still in the same vein, the Acting President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo was credited as saying that the Senate did not have the power to insist on the non-appointment of Ibrahim Magu as Chairman of Economic and Finance Crime Commission ( EFCC) after the Senate twice rejected his nomination by the President for the office. The Senate not only frowned at this statement by the Acting President, but went further, while considering a letter from the Acting President requesting the confirmation of Mr. Lanre Gbajabiamila as Director General of the National Lottery Commission, to pass a resolution with the following prayers: “That the Senate suspends all issues relating to confirmation of nominees from the executive until all issues of confirmation as contained in the Constitution and laws of the Federation are adhered to; that the Acting President must respect the Constitution and laws as they relate to confirmation of appointments; that the Acting President should immediately respect rejection of nominees by the Senate; and that the Acting President should withdraw the statement credited to him that the Senate does not have the power to confirm certain nominees”.
Our position on the budget disagreement is that whereas it is the responsibility of the Executive to envision and project worthwhile budgetary estimates for the country, the powers of the legislature to appropriate expenditures cannot be solely for the rubber stamping of the estimates submitted to it by the Executive. Indeed, we would contend that the only way to know the proper limits of the powers of appropriation solely vested in the National Assembly is to submit the issue to judicial determination such that both the legislature and the Executive would then take their cue from such judicial interpretation. In the absence of such an interpretation, it would be important for the two sides to see their objective as serving the larger interests of the people such that they would see the need to work together and come out with projects that would lift the living standards of the people. As it is, there should not be anything precluding the two sides to work together in this regard if they are truly both committed to serving the people. The principle of separation of powers through which each arm of government is entitled to its own sphere of influence does not stop them from reaching out to work together in a cooperative fashion in order to achieve objectives. What this calls for is for the two sides to understand and appreciate the need for such cooperation with the legislators informing the Executive of all projects they are interested in such that they could be incorporated in the planning of the budget. In the same vein, the legislators would already be aware, even at the planning stage, of all the projects being championed by the executive and the negotiation on what should be retained and included would have been completed between the two sides while planning the budget. This way the country would be saved the current spectacle of the two sides having a public disagreement with obvious negative implications for the body politic.
In the same vein, we strongly disagree with the Acting President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo in respect of the statement credited to him that the Senate does not have power to reject the appointment of Magu as Chairman of EFCC. It rather smacks of intellectual revisionism, and ultimately a deliberate attempt to weaken the parliament in a democracy that thrives on the basis of checks and balances for Section 171 of the Constitution to be simply used as the premise for arriving at such an inappropriate conclusion. The Acting President had argued that although the EFCC Act requires that EFCC Chairman should be confirmed by the Senate, that part of Section 171 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, which is superior to the Act, does not order such confirmation. On an instructive note, Section 171 of the 1999 merely gives the President power to appoint the SGF, Head of Service, Ambassadors/High Commissioners, Permanent Secretaries, Heads of MDAS and, personal staff of the President. The Executive Chairman of EFCC, created long after the promulgation of the 1999 Constitution, was never one of such offices. It is only logical to resort to Section 2(3) of the EFCC (Establishment) Act, 2004, which deals with this issue. It provides that: “the Chairman and members of the Commission, other than ex-officio members shall be appointed by the President subject to the confirmation of the Senate.
We do not agree that the Nigerian Constitution envisaged a rubber-stamp legislature that must kowtow to the Executive. We also do not expect that the relationship between the Executive and the Parliament would be reduced to petty bickering and squabbles, which portray our leaders as lacking the understanding of the democratic process, since we are not in dearth of the laws, and the courts for the immaculate interpretation of grey areas. Instead of heating up the polity with red-herrings while the most challenging aspects of governance remain unaddressed, the executive may wish to recourse to the court and test the legality of section 2(3) of the EFCC Act 2004, which subjects the power of the President to appoint the Chairman of EFCC to confirmation by the Senate.
The poor image and negative perception of the Senate in the eye of the public is not enough to allow emotions to trump sanctity of the law and cause an insidious weakening of an institution that symbolizes the people’s power and sovereignty.
We therefore want to call on both the Executive and the Legislature to look for creative ways to engage themselves to the benefit of the populace instead of sounding the drums of disagreement publicly on every contentious issue. Fortunately the courts are there to help offer judicial interpretations that would make clear grey areas of the law and ensure that the country continues to grow in its democratic experiment.
For now, what is important is to submit to the ordinary interpretation of the laws which gives the legislature the powers to approve the budget, which cannot mean a mere rubber-stamping of the estimated presented by the Executive, even as it is also logical to expect the Senate to have the last say on who holds the office of the Chairman of the EFCC. To move away from the ordinary interpretation as the Executive obviously wishes would need a recourse to judicial interpretation to accomplish. And we want to call on the Executive to seek such judicial interpretation while still submitting for now to the ordinary understanding that would require the Executive to look for cooperation with the legislature on these two issues.
Signed for NIG by
Professor Akinyemi Onigbinde,
Convener.
