The support declared by President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the emergence of the President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmed Lawan, and other principal leaders of the 9th National Assembly has since placed them in the eye of the storm. In this analysis, ABDULRAHMAN ZAKARIYAU takes a look at the performance the Assembly so far.
Executive, legislative romance
The 8th Senate, under the leadership of former governor of Kwara state, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, despite its consistent face-offs with the executive arm of government led by President Muhammadu Buhari even though they belonged to the same APC was adjudged to be the best since the return of the country to democracy in 1999.
However, for reasons best known to them, the president and his party (APC) wanted a Senate that would be in a cordial relationship with the executive. This among other reasons prompted President Buhari and the leadership of his party to ensure that President of the 9th Senate and other leadership of the Assembly emerged. The executive arm said its supported for Dr. Lawan was because of his “qualifications, prudence, accountability, loyalty and rich legislative experience” which will assist the APC government to have a robust executive-legislative relationship to fast-track development. Lawan is said to be a “leader with much focus on accountability.”
Expectedly, this generated a lot of arguments among Nigerians who have continued to argue that executive and legislative romance will lead to “rubber stamp National Assembly where everything goes.” They further argued that this may not be very good for democracy.
While some political pundits are of the view that extensive romance between the executive and legislative arm of government may affect the growth and development of Nigeria democracy, on the account that the two arms, because of the relationship, may find it difficult to perform checks and balance as stated by the 1999 Constitution, as amended. A few others were also of the view that to perform the checks and balances, these two arms must not by at war with each other. According to them, cordial relationship between the legislative and executive will fast-track the democratic process.
About eight months after his emergence, Nigerians are confronted with questions such as; is 9th Senate a rubber stamp Assembly? How far has it gone in terms of performance?
Lawan’s utterances, actions, inaction, others
There are no better ways to get a vivid understanding of the leadership of the 9th Senate other than their utterances, actions and inactions. One of the first constitutional functions performed by the 9th Senate was the screening of ministerial nominees. Like a traditionin the senate, most of the nominees were asked to take a ‘bow and go.’ Expectedly, this generated lots of argument. But the Senate leadership since 1999 till date when it comes to ministerial nominees, they most times cleared the nominees.
This is, perhaps, because some are former lawmakers, governors and even friends, so the take ‘a bow and go’ was not just a 9th Senate thing. This was why some pundits lambasted those who used it as an instance to declare 9th Senate as rubber stamp.
Another thing is the mode of greeting, upon emergence we saw Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege Kneeling to greet President Muhammadu Buhari. An act which he claimed was a sign of respect for elderly person like President Muhammadu Buhari. This did not go well with so many persons like former aide to ex President Goodluck Jonathan, an author and lawyer, Reno Omokri who described the act as “very bad.” He queried that “When we have a Deputy Senate President Kneeling Down to greet @MBuhari, how can we expect the 9th National Assembly to Stand UP to him? The Legislature was created to Check the Executive, not to Bow to them. Kneel to God and parents only. Very sad!
Aside from the above, Lawan also declared that the 9th Assembly would honour anything that comes from President Buhari. He said, “I want to assure you that any request that comes from Mr. President is a request that will make Nigeria a better place in terms of appointments or legislation and the senate will act expeditiously to ensure that we play our part in the confirmation or passing of legislation appropriately. As far as we are concerned, those bills will have to come again and start to go through the process from the very beginning.”
The actions and inactions of the leadership of the 9th suggests that one arm of government has dominate the other. But analysts want us to believe that actions and inaction of a few out of the 109 senators is not enough to declare the Lawan led assembly as rubber stamp.
Others
The cordial relationship between the executive and legislative arms according to analysts also led to budget padding without any noise. As it has been with previous assemblies, the Ninth Senate is no different in this regard. The 9th Senate has been found guilty of inserting extra costs into the 2020 budget – most of which are hidden under dubious ‘implementation of projects.’
Members of the National Assembly had, on December 8, passed the 2020 budget of N10.6 trillion against the N10.3 trillion presented by the president – a difference of about N264 billion. The president’s decision to sign 2020 budget without raising alarm is again, not unrelated to the new found love between the two arms.
Similarly, pundits are also of the view that the cordial relationships that exists between the two, the 9th Senate has failed to check most of the actions of the executive, especially that of impunity.
One of such instance was the president’s decision to disobey the rule of law by ignoring court orders in the case of activists, Omoyele Sowore. Related to this, was the failure of the Senate to question the $29 billion loan request by the president – a loan which he said is to execute key infrastructure projects across the country between 2016 and 2018 even though the same request was rejected by the previous Senate.
Cumulatively, all these contributed to the reasons political pundits believe that cordial relationship between the executive and legislative arms of government will affect the checks and balances that is expected of the two arms. It also lent credence to Nigerians who are of the view that 9th Senate is a rubber stamp Senate.
Consequences of the cordial relationship
Like a coin, there are two sides to the cordial relationship between the two arms, having scrutinised the demerit of the relationship, it is also of importance to look at some of the achievement yielded by cordial relationship between executive and legislative arm of government. One of such achievements is speedy budget passage.
This no doubt remains one of the biggest achievements of the 9th Senate and the entire National Assembly in 2019. Delays in passage of national budget had been a major failure for previous assemblies as it usually takes not less than three or four months to pass it. This was not different in the Eight Senate. In 2016, President Buhari presented the budget on December 22, but it was not passed until March 23, 2017. The 2018 budget was presented on December 14, 2017, and passed on March 11 of the next year. The 2019 budget was passed on April 30 after it was first presented to the National Assembly in December 19, 2018. The National Assembly had blamed delayed budget passage on late presentation, failure of MDAs to appear before committees, oversight functions, among others.
But this time, the 2020 budget was presented on October 8 and passed on December 8. This time also, all MDAs were present to defend their budgets – this is not unrelated to the president’s instruction asking representatives of MDAs to remain in the country until after their budget defence.
Additionally, the 9th Senate relationship with the executive arm has led to ‘Prompt’ attention to crucial bills, as well as speedy passage of bills that are deemed important.
Some of these bills are the Appropriation Bill, which was passed within two months, the Finance Bill, which was quickly attended to even though lawmakers did not have copies of the bill at the stage of second reading; the Deep Offshore and the Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract Act and the Public Procurement Act.
Other actions speedily addressed include the confirmation of nominees sent by the president. Some of them are the nominees for the board of Niger Delta Development Commission, Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, INEC RECs, NAHCON, Chief Judge of Federal High Court, among others.
Political analysts noted that all these are possible also because of the new-found ‘understanding’ between the executive and the legislative arms of government.
They’re rubber stamp, PDP insists
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) insisted that the 9th Senate under the leadership of Dr. Ahmed Lawan remains a rubber stamp Senate.
The party’s national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said, “The Senate president said anything that comes from President Buhari is good and they will honour it. What else do you need to justify that the 9th Senate is a rubber stamp Senate. In fact, if there is any word more than rubber stamp, then they are.”
