No country in the world has ever developed through the greed of the elite and those elected and entrusted with positions of authority. Development is not a race to the bottom where members of each arm of government compete on who will corner more resources belonging to the public for their private use. It is rather a race to the top where those in authority should be competing to determine the most prudent arm of government. Essentially, the powers of appropriation are powers meant for the public good and not for the enhancement of the interest of the current holders of political power whether in the legislature, executive or judiciary.
Nigerians are in agreement that the cost of governance has become too high and frustrating efforts at using available resources to fix the infrastructure deficit and attend to matters that will improve the living conditions of the majority who live below the poverty line. The federal government had gone ahead to set up several panels and committees to review the cost of governance and make recommendations on cutting down excess fat. The committees include the Anya O. Anya and Oronsanye committees. But as usual, the reports of the committees are gathering dust on the shelves.
It is within this context that the response by Hon. Victor Afam Ogene,
Deputy Chairman House Committee on Media and Public Affairs to Madam Oby Ezekwesili’s comments on the cost of governance should be reviewed. Madam Ezekwesili was reported to have raised issues about the high cost of governance, the bloated recurrent expenditure which leaves little or nothing for capital expenditure. She spoke about the high cost of running the National Assembly at N150billion per annum in the last three years and about N1triilion spent in the last couple of years. In response, Hon Afam Ogene asked inter alia; “What is the percentage of the National Assembly’s N150billion allocation in a budget of N4.9 trillion?” Employing argumentum ad hominem, he further queried: “For an ex-official of government, who between the 2006 and 2007 federal budgets, superintended over a total of N422.5 billion as Education Minister, what percentage of the public fund was expended by her as recurrent cost?” He raised issues on how a discussion on the cost of governance in Nigeria should “be curiously limited to an inquest into the operations of the National Assembly, leaving out the other two arms and arriving at the rather simplistic suggestion of the introduction of a unicameral or part-time legislature as the panacea for all Nigeria’s problems”.
The poser on the percentage of N150billion to N4.9trillion appears to be a misunderstanding of the issues involved in exercising the power of appropriation. Such a poser should be met with another poser; what is the percentage of the population of members of the National Assembly and all the employees in agencies under the legislature to the overall Nigerian population? Pray, we may be arriving at the day when the available resources will be shared equally into three to service the demands of the legislature, executive and judiciary and the rest of us can go to hell. The proper poser should be on what the arms of government are assigned to do in the service of the fatherland. Should the legislative vote be competing with the Ministry of Works or key infrastructure ministries?
Picking on the legislature to make a case about reducing the cost of governance may be a starting point and a right thing to do in the circumstances. The promises of democracy and its link with development are hinged on an effective legislature considering the aphorism: no legislature, no democracy. The legislature is the first arm of government from the way the 1999 constitution provides for the three arms. After affirming the supremacy of the constitution and other preliminaries in three sections, section four begins with legislative powers. Not only is the legislature given the power of the purse – to appropriate, it is also given the powers to exercise oversight over the expenditure of the funds it appropriates. Thus, if other arms of government are getting more than they need to function effectively, it is the fault of the legislature that voted such bloated funds in the first place. Assuming that the legislature inadvertently approved the bloated funds, a dutiful exercise of oversight powers will reveal the misapplication of resources which gives the legislature another chance to effect corrections. And the best way for the occupants of the high seat of the appropriation throne to insist on reduction of waste and inefficiency in the system is by first putting their house in order and leading by example. For the days are gone, when Nigerians will do as the leader says, but they will replicate what the leader does.
Arguments against the person in logical parlance are fallacies and do not answer or address the question raised by the first person. Assuming without conceding the Madam Ezekwesili used up all the monies voted for education on recurrent expenditure; will this justify the legislature doing the same? Moreover, the Ministry of Education is one of those ministries where the bulk of money goes for salaries of teachers and there is nothing anyone can do to reduce the number of teachers; rather statistics indicate that if we are serious about education, we may need to recruit more.
If we are all agreed that the cost of running the administration is too high, then all arms of government led by the legislature must come clean with an agenda for reform and pruning the excess cost. This cannot be done surreptitiously and secretly as previous committees whose reports gather dust on the shelves proposed to do. The ideas for pruning must be put on the table and Nigerians allowed to make inputs and have their way on where the fats should be pruned from. There is nothing sacrosanct about a bicameral legislature or a legislature whose members work on full time. If Nigerians decided otherwise, then the present occupants of office must submit to the will of the people. The executive who manage the bulk of state resources are too happy that the legislature is failing in its duty to check them and as such, they continue in their ways. It is only in Nigeria that government agencies feel themselves duty bound to buy computers every year, to buy cars for officials after the officials have collected monetised car allowances; to feed certain officials of state with hundreds of millions of naira and to ridiculously budget for “members image laundering”.
The race is not a race to the bottom; it is a race for development and a race to the top; a race for prudence, honesty, transparency and accountability and the legislature should lead the way. This is more so considering that the legislature has the power to impeach a president who refuses to play by the rules. The ball is strictly back to the court of the lawmakers. They cannot be making laws for the peace, order and good government of Nigeria when our resources are scandalously mismanaged and our priorities very wrong.
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