N160m SUVs for Lawmakers: Where Do We Go From Here?

I had planned to write on something else until I was forced to change my mind by an incident last week. On Tuesday, I was a guest on a radio programme where two of the listeners who phoned in reacted to the much-vexed N160m SUV bazar for the 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives. These two callers remarked sarcastically that not a single member of the legislative houses rejected the wasteful gift, including members of the Labour Party, among whom are the famed “keke” and “okada” riders whose unexpected victories were celebrated as a paradigm shift in our historically elitist electoral politics.

I subsequently saw some other writeups expressing similar sentiments. The argument generally has been that these “ordinary” Nigerians who found themselves suddenly vested with lawmaking and oversight powers are to become the real mouthpiece and defenders of the common person who has always been forsaken by people he elected to represent his interest in government. But the hard truth is that these so-called “okada” and “keke” riders have joined the oppressors as was almost inevitable.

In the first place, there was no ideological motive in their joining the Labour Party. There was nothing they saw in the party that attracted them to it, if not that they saw it as an accessible platform to run for an election since the dominant platforms, especially the APC and PDP, were simply inaccessible. If APC and PDP tickets had been reachable, believe me, these folks would never romance with Labour Party. It was a marriage of convenience. But luckily for them, Peter Obi joined the party at some point and they rode on his popularity to power.

Knowing all these, no one should have expected that these lawmakers were going there to foster any principles or project any people-oriented ideology during debates and voting. No, they sought power just to use power the way power has always been used in Nigeria – selfishly. They had nothing different up their sleeves; their mindset was still the usual “if you can’t beat them you join them.” They merely used the LP ticket as a means of “joining them” and they have joined them. Thus, all the noise and excitement of having “okada” and “keke” riders winning seats in the House of Reps were actually founded on nothing. I knew this from the onset and never shared this excitement.

But to appreciate our unfortunate situation fully, we must remove it from the LP and its exceedingly lucky candidates so as to see the larger picture. It was not only the LP candidates that pledged to represent the interest of the common person if elected. In other words, none of the candidates promised to advance elitism and personal aggrandizements if elected. From the very beginning of electoral democracy in Nigeria, it has always been high-sounding promises of selfless, principled and compassionate representation from candidates who, however, end up giving us just the opposite when they finally clinch power. Thus, one appreciates that there is nothing unusual about the LP reps and senators joining their colleagues from other parties in an SUV bazar that will cost the nation over N75 billion, at a time when the ordinary citizen is being asked to endure the “temporary” hardship occasioned by years of misgovernance by the same folks that have been sharing our common patrimony. It is, however, understandable that the LP lawmakers are merely being mocked for so quickly jettisoning the much-taunted poor-people-oriented ideology of a party founded by the labour movement, after riding to power on the back of the public sentiment commanded by that ideology.

Our National Assembly has always been described as rubber stamp, and this sentiment was particularly strong under the Buhari government. However, though the both chambers were dominated by the APC during that administration, I cannot remember seeing members of the opposition offering any reasonable resistance to the presumably lame ruling party lawmakers. This is irrespective of the fact that the opposition occupied a large number of seats in the both chambers. How many times did we see PDP lawmakers staunchly take an opposing position during debates on national issues? How many times did they strongly oppose the ruling party’s stance on the basis of ideology, even if the majority would eventually have their way? Have we ever witnessed the opposition parties oppose the wasteful expenditures incurred by the nation in maintaining members of the National Assembly? Have we ever seen them question the bizarre arrangement where legislators are allocated money to execute projects (so-called constituency projects) which is in clear violation of the principles of separation of powers and thus encourages corruption?

As it is today, the APC occupies 162 seats in the House of Reps with the opposition parties together having 198 seats, meaning that when the opposition parties are considered as one bloc, the APC is really the minority party. In the Senate, when the opposition is so considered, then the ruling party is just three seats more in number. So where are the voices of the opposition parties now that the treasury of the nation is about to be plundered just to buy luxury cars for the 469 members of the National Assembly? Forty (40) among these opposition lawmakers belong to LP, a supposed party of the masses – where are their voices? Just a few months ago, the Senate President announced to the vacating senators that the Clerk of the National Assembly will send some “prayers” to their e-mail boxes for them to have a good vacation; no opposition voices countered it simply because these “prayers” would eventually transform to N2 million credit alerts.

So, what we have always had is a legislature where members never disagree whenever it comes to their common selfish interest. Make no mistake about that, whenever our legislators disagree and quarrel over anything, just know that someone’s selfish interest is under threat. They do not disagree and fight over the interest of common people like you and me. Therefore, the sooner we recognize that the differences between the political parties that we elect into our legislature lies only in name and not in ideology and principles the better for us.

With the diverse composition of the National Assemble today, we should have no reason to complain of a rubber stamp legislature. But on the contrary, the early signs aren’t encouraging; we are yet to see any evidence of robust checks and balances. Therefore, it is clear that what we call rubber stamp legislation basically has nothing to do with which party has the majority seats. It is simply a product of weak political and governance institutions.

Where democratic institutions are robust, checks and balances are a matter of course; they simply happen irrespective of who is there. Hence, even if the person who sits as the Speaker is a president’s bosom friend or even son, the institutional mechanisms will ensure that everyone plays largely by the rule and not according to the dictates of atavistic sentiments. But because our institutions are very weak, individuals’ primitive propensities continue to prevail, undermining common norms and public interest.

In his book, MY WATCH, Olusegun Obasanjo was visibly bitter narrating his ordeal in the hands of a National Assembly that would always blackmail the president to fulfil one selfish demand or another before it can give approval to a matter brought before it. The former president particularly mentioned how appropriation bills would not be passed by the National Assembly until some selfish demands of members were inserted in the budget. Ministries and agencies are not left out of this blackmail, as they must concede contracts and job vacancies to the legislators to get approvals. We remember Festus Keyamo’s allegation that his face-off with the Senate over the implementation of the N52bn Public Works scheme of the Buhari government was simply because he resisted their request to be given quotas in the scheme. This allegation is very persuasive in view of our previous experiences. The people involved in all these are legislators who should perform oversight functions over these ministries and agencies. So much for oversight.

Not many would have forgotten the September 2020 incident where Godswill Akpabio, as Minister of Niger Delta, under fire from members of the House Committee on Niger Delta investigating the mismanagement of over N80 billion of NNDC funds, retaliated by mentioning that some members of the Committee had been executing contracts for the Ministry. In a knee-jerk reaction to this embarrassing revelation, the chairman of the committee gave the now notorious lines “honourable minister it’s okay, it’s okay… off your mic.” Of course, members from both the ruling and opposition parties, just like in the current SUV bazar, must have benefited from these contracts and none was able to reject these on the basis of ideology or principles. So, we are stuck with a satanic political culture, bereft of norms of democratic representation, where supposed representatives of the people are always united in pursuing selfish goals.

Based on testimonies of people like Obasanjo and Akpabio, one can deduce that President Tinubu may not have had any option than to approve the SUV largesse for the legislators. He must have felt the need to continue the historical collaborative and symbiotic romance between the two arms of government. Doing otherwise would have disrupted his peaceful enjoyment of power. Perhaps, this helps put in proper perspective what is, in our political lexicon, known as rubber stamp legislature.

In advanced democracies, actions of legislators are largely based on commonly shared ideals; their views and contributions to debates are anchored on the ideology of their party. In the US, for instance, you can predict how a particular lawmaker will debate and vote on a given issue based on the ideology of his party and known personal convictions. Thus, we always hear of a hardline republican, a moderate republican, a moderate leftist etc. – all pointing to personal convictions which individual legislators have consistently stood by over the years. In our own clime, it is all about opportunism; politicians run from party to party depending on where opportunity to win election emerges at any given time. It is politics bereft of norms and ideology.

Importantly, Nigerians seem to lack both the consciousness and disposition to follow-up on their lawmakers, to hold them to account once they have won election. The entire noise and excitement end on the day election results are announced. Then we wait for another four years. This is where we are roundly different from the advanced democracies where voters follow-up on their representatives, asking questions of them and letting them know what they feel about their performance. In fact, in those climes, it is always easy to predict whether a serving lawmaker will make it for another tenure based on public feeling about his current performance.

Even when we try to evaluate our representatives, the criteria we use are often out of place. Generally, we tend to rate performance of our legislators based on the length of roads they built, number of bags of rice they distributed, and number of people they gave job. These are, strictly speaking, not legislative duties. In fact, having legislators do that is a travesty of presidential democracy.

Moreover, when we make this sort of demands from our lawmakers, we are contributing to the rot because we are encouraging them to continue plundering the country. The point is that for them to keep patronizing us by way of distribution of bags of rice, giving “empowerments” etc., the money must come from somewhere – and that is the national treasury. And given that a legislator who should be a watchdog over how the executive spends is now the one spending, accountability comes under a serious threat. In addition, these lawmakers keep demanding for contracts and job vacancies from ministries and agencies in order to meet up with the many demands from their constituencies. How then will they effectively perform their oversight functions in relation to these executive bodies? So, we are vicariously liable when it comes to the ugly type of legislative governance going on in our country.

I can only say that our people need reorientation in order to internalize the need to pursue a different kind of relationship with their lawmakers. It should not be a relationship of patronage or indifference, but that of active monitoring, constant evaluation and questioning. During elections, all attention should not be on the presidency alone, we should also be very mindful of what happens regarding legislative offices because they are a critical component of democratic governance. And arguably, our democratic failures so far is, to a significant extent, attributable to our shortcomings in this respect.

Before dropping my pen, permit me to observe that the over N160 million we are to spend buying cars for each of our 469 lawmakers is an amount which most salaried workers in Nigeria will never earn until retirement and death. This amount will pay 30 years salary of a highest-ranking professor in Nigeria. The total N75 billion will pay a year school fees of the estimated 1.8 million undergraduates in Nigeria. Where do we now go from here?

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.