KPerspective October 6 2007
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
The House of Representatives is on recess. The recess, according to House leadership, is to enable the Honourable members consult with their people and do committee assignments. This is as it should be and I sincerely hope they spend the two-week period for those two purposes, especially the first – consultation with their electors.
I say that because if they do, they are likely to discover that the people are so disenchanted that if they have their way the House should stay permanently on recess! I am not exaggerating.
Look at it this way: What has this House really been in about 150 days except on recess? The noblest things they have done is to mourn and bury the dead. The rest of the time has been spent scrambling for committee positions, particularly the so-called juicy ones and stage a legislative pugilist of the year show in defence of due process and anti-corruption. To the eternal ‘credit’ of this present House, the nation celebrated her 47th National Independence Anniversary with accusation of corruption against the Speaker as an ugly backdrop.
Were I to have the privilege of meeting my representative, I would have drawn her (or is it his?) attention to at least two reports that ought to serve as a wake-up call to our so called legislators.
The first is a “survey on best and worst performing countries in
Conducted by Professor Rotberg of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the index gave Nigeria its best performance in security and safety with 62.8 score, followed by 49.5 in human development, 44.3 in rule of law, transparency and corruption and 44.2 in participation and human rights.
The survey, according to the professor used 58 indicators of governance, and evaluated each of the 48 sub-Saharan African countries according to five categories of analysis. The categories used were safety and security, rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunities and human development. He explained: that the premise for designing the categories “is that good governance is the delivery of essential political goods to the people.”
Speaking on Nigeria’s ranking in the survey, Rotberg was quoted as telling Voice of America: “It is quite clear in Nigeria’s case that you lose massive points for conflict; and Nigeria, as everyone knows, has been under turmoil and conflict. Secondly,
For reasons of comparison, I would have drawn the Honorable legislator’s attention to a part of the report which reads:” Mauritius was named the best performing government, while Somalia, which has not had a government for several years and is considered a ‘failed State,’ was rated the worst….Among the top best-performing countries in the survey are Seychelles, South Africa, Botswana and Cape Verde…”
The second report which would have put the issue in clearer perspective and hopefully show where the legislature comes into the picture glaringly was highlighted by Kayode Komolafe in his The Horizon column in ThisDay newspaper recently. I seek your indulgence to quote the first few paragraphs of the piece he titled, Compare N686m with N628m:
“Compare these two amounts of money: N686 million and N628 million. The first (about Euro 3.9 million) is the amount the European Union is reportedly making available for the provision of clean water and sanitation in 12 towns and communities of
“In arithmetical terms, the difference between N686 million and N628 might appear marginal, but there is a world of difference between the uses to which they are put in the Nigerian socio-economic and political system. It is this huge difference that clearly shows what hundreds of millions of naira could do in improving the quality of lives of hundreds of thousands of people even at current value of the currency…Three Local Government Areas would benefit from the scheme in each of the two states chosen for the implementation. They are Gumel, Tankarkar and Maigatari in Jigawa; and Nkanu East, Udenu and Igbo-Etiti in
I wonder whether these two reports would have meant anything to my representative or not, but, I certainly cannot see any signs that it would pull any string in Madam Speaker’s heart. And I make this statement very regrettably.
As I indicated in this column last week, I did not want to join in pointing fingers because the report of the Honourable Idoko-led investigation panel was being awaited. More importantly, I wanted most desperately for the right Honourable Patricia Olubunmi Etteh to survive and eventually succeed; to continue the great run of success by the “Esthers” at least pending the time that the “Josephs” of our nation will get our acts together.
Well, the report came and although it refrained from recommending sanctions partly because, its terms of reference had been so craftily worded to avoid that; and partly to prevent a kind of “hung jury”; it did identify wrongdoings. Responsibility for some of them lay squarely at the Speaker’s table; while the National Assembly bureaucracy could be fingered for others.
Predictably, reactions came, as the cliché goes, fast and thick. Calls for Madam Speaker’s resignation top the list. One of the most damning came from PUNCH columnist, Azubuike Ishiekwene who in a piece titled,” It’s time to go, Madam” noted among other things that “The Idoko Panel …has said, unanimously, that the process of the award of the contract was marred by serious procedural lapses. Contrary to the requirement of the Public Procurement Act, the contract was neither advertised, nor was a quorum constituted before it was awarded. The bill of quantities and the technical drawings that ought to have informed a rigorous and competitive process were not filed and some of the companies that got the contract were not even registered as required by the law. On top of this, the speaker’s personal aide, Iquo Minima, who gained notoriety in the last House for slapping a fellow legislator, Emmanuel Bwacha, won the N71m to provide the furnishings. The speaker had approved this sweet deal and other contracts for the renovation six days before she hastily constituted another meeting to ratify the decisions. Her defence that she was misguided is not unlikely, but is at best shallow and at worst irresponsible, given the fact that one of her personal aides benefited directly from the contract. The whole thing was a sham by any standards, which the speaker, in her sober moment, would find hard to explain, even if it had been a contract she personally awarded for the renovation of any of the hairdressing salons in her two houses in
But it is Madam Speaker’s reaction to the reactions to the panel report that I find most amazing. It is her reaction that gives me the impression that the speaker thinks this is all about politics, NOT people, NOT principles, NOT morals and certainly NOT about staying with the solemn pledge she made to the Nigerian people in her first few minutes of taking office.
A statement issued from her office disingenuously, not to say shamelessly, spoke about “emotional blackmail” and described calls for her resignation as “unfair, inaccurate and unfortunate". This according to her was because, “the Speaker set up that probe panel along with her colleagues. She was elected by her colleagues. Only her colleagues can decide what happens next”.
Hear Madam Speaker please: “Those championing this curious cause of ‘Etteh-must-resign’ are those aware of the facts of the case and their campaign is beginning to look like a haunt borne out of hatred. The probe panel’s report has been laid on the table and what it contains are conclusions, not recommendations for punishment. One wonders when non-members of the House of Representatives started deciding how 360-members of the lower chamber run their affairs... “If I get her drift, our representatives have a kind of divine right to shut us out of “their affairs”, once elected. Translation: it’s none of your business, noise makers. Apart from the “small matter” of the credibility of the process that brought many of these representatives into office, since when has the people’s sovereignty been annulled by elections?
She continues: "The House of Representatives is made up of people elected by Nigerians to represent them. Those who elected them trust them enough to do the right thing. The House has procedures and rules on every issue and only members can decide how the House is run…What the procedure says is that the report will be debated when the House reconvenes after its two-week recess…” Due process eh? The same that the panel said was not followed?
Next she said: “…It is therefore unfair and misleading for people to stay outside and tell 360 members of this honourable House what to do. It is like telling Nigerians that the people they elected cannot do the job…When non-members start instructing the House how to run their affairs, then there is cause for Nigerians to worry…” There is indeed cause for Nigerians to worry but not about any infringement of the divine right of self-serving legislators, many of whom were rigged into office in the first place. There is cause to worry when popular opinion of the vocal section of the hunger-silenced majority is being so arrogantly disdained in high places.
Then the clincher: “Nothing in the conclusions of the panel report showed that the Speaker in any way has been indicted…” Well, I agree; black is white and chalk is cheese! If Mrs Etteh sometimes reads her bible, she should please read Proverbs 12:19; 16:18 and see whether she doesn’t need a change of heart.
1 comment:
People should read this.
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