By Kemi Yesufu

A rocky start

IT was in an atmosphere filled with a sense of achievement, that the House of Representatives was inaugurated on June 9, 2015. As at the time of con­ducting the all-important ceremony, members of the House were already sharply divided into two groups, with the Consolidation Group supporting Yakubu Dogara, representing Bo­goro/ Tafawa Balewa federal constitu­ency and the Loyalist Group backing Femi Gbajabiamila, who represents Surulere federal constituency, for the office of Speaker.

Going into the inauguration, it was clear that the the ruling All Progres­sives Congress (APC) had selected the former House Minority Leader over his Bauchi counterpart. Though the party leaders didn’t storm the Green Chambers like in 2011, when members ignored the presence of the acting chairman of the then rul­ing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mohammed Haliru to elect Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker, nevertheless, in a show of defiant independence, lawmakers elected Dogara, although days before the party had conducted a mock election which Gbajabiamila won. Dogara scored 182 votes while Ggajabiamila polled 174.

As shocking as Gbajabiamila’s defeat was, many were even more surprised that Tambuwal who they ex­pected to reward the Lagos lawmaker for the role he played when he was elected Speaker of the 7th Assembly, didn’t do so. The Sokoto governor later explained that he backed Dogara who didn’t support him during his push to be Speaker, because of his be­lief that he was more competent and had better leadership skills.

After the defeat, it was even more perplexing for observers that it took the insistence of some party leaders, namely, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and President Muhammadu Buhari to secure Gbajabiamila the position of House Majority Leader. Some specu­lated then that the lawmaker, who finally settled for the position of the Majority Whip, Alhasssan Doguwa wanted to be Majority Leader and he had more momentum on his side, due to Gbajabiamila’s insistence during the days of negotiations, that principal officers of the House emerge exactly as approved by the party. It was easy to speculate that owing to the loss of the Loyalists Group, they wouldn’t fare well in the sharing of committees.

By the time the list of chairpersons of Standing Committees and their dep­uties was announced by the Speaker, it was clear that majority of those that supported Gbajabiamila to the very end were overlooked. But more infu­riating to the APC lawmakers was the fact that the main opposition, the PDP, got many juicy committees even as it got nearly the same number of chair­persons. APC had 48 chairpersons, while the PDP had 45. The mood of Loyalists Group was made manifest when Gbajabiamila stayed away from the special session to inaugurate the 96 standing committees.

The lawmaker in a leaked letter accused Dogara of sidelining him in the process of selecting chairpersons and deputies of committees. After weeks of acrimony, the principal of­ficers stepped in to to ensure a peace pact between Dogara and Gbajabi­amila, which seems to have endured. But it hasn’t healed all wounds. Some lawmakers who seem not to agree with the leadership of the Speaker still went ahead to drag him to court over the House rules. In the summons written by their lawyer, Ahmed Bello Mahmud, dated December 14, 2015, the lawmakers, sought that the court declare the new Standing Orders null and void as well as unconstitutional as it contravenes the Constitution. The group is led by Aliyu Madaki, a staunch supporter of the House Lead­er. The House had on October 8, 2015 adopted the report of its ad-hoc com­mittee to review the House Standing Orders, 2011, in which the Speaker is vested with the powers to suspend any member that approaches the mace with whatever intent.

Legislative Agenda

Settling down to work, one docu­ment that has acted as a guideline to the 8th House is its Legislative Agenda. It is far reaching and quite ambitious with many wondering if the House can cover areas identified in this agenda, which the Speaker and some of acolytes his, often point to in describing the uniqueness of the current House. Chairperson, House Committee on Foreign Af­fairs, Nnenna Elendu- Ukeje is one of those who believe that the lawmakers haven’t over reached themselves in regard to the agenda. She opined that the House has ample time to come through on the issues highlighted in the document. She said: “ You say the agenda is ambitious but for me, it is quite achievable. There are certain aspects of the agenda that are novel. I love the fact that we are going to have sectoral debates because that way, we can look at the laws sector by sector. Then there is the case for e-parliament. For us e-parliament is very important because of the high attrition rate. A lot of people are trained and four years later, they leave. Now, we need proper documentation so that when you get to a committee, the people that left wouldn’t have gone with everything. It is desirable that with a punch of but­ton, you can get all the information you need. There is also the issue of having more committees. Some peo­ple would say, it could lead to the du­plication of responsibilities and make things more cumbersome. But I think with more committees, more people will be involved in the nitty-gritty of things. The gender agenda for me is very important. To me, now it goes beyond numbers. Yes 35 percent rep­resentation is desirable, but for me, it’s now about what the Japanese Prime Minister tagged ‘womanomics’, that is, budgeting for women”.

A season of probes

One area the House has made headway with regard to its agenda is with probes. Suffice to say that even without its agenda, majority of Nige­rians, without knowing the technical­ity of the National Assembly being empowered by Sections 88 and 89 of the Constitution to expose corrup­tion, inefficiency and waste in govern­ment, simply are accustomed to the legislative arm conducting investiga­tions. Hardly does a day in the Lower House go by without motions on probes and investigations coming up. Sometimes, observers have criticised lawmakers for seeking for easy fame by bringing-up allegations of corrup­tion and embezzlement that fizzle out when brought under scrutiny. Also the House has had to deal with the heavy criticisms from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is targeting only those in the opposition. But it has trudged on this murky path, all the same. One investigations that has received public attention is the oil-swap arrangement that was operated under President Goodluck Jonathan. There have been claims and counter claims from the former minister of petroleum Diezani Alison-Madueke and ex-group managing directors of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) who failed to appear before the Zakari Mohammed led Committee.

While the ex-NNPC bosses alleged that Al­ison-Madueke approved lifting of oil without contracts, the former minister who spoke through her lawyers denied the allegations, saying, she always followed due process. This was even as the companies that benefited from the deals were accused of tax evasions running into billions of naira. The House has also commenced investiga­tions into all beneficiaries of Oil Prospecting Li­censes ( OPL) and Oil Mining Licenses (OML). The Gideon Gwani-led Adhoc committee man­dated to investigate all OPLs and OMLs granted by the Federal Government recently announced that a large number of oil companies had failed to pay compulsory fees to the tune of $2 billion .

Away from the Petroleum and Gas Sec­tor, the House equally set its sights on the over one trillion naira worth of contracts awarded by the Nigerian Railway Corpora­tion for the rehabilitation of the railway lines under the Jonathan administration. Again, the revelations at the hearings of the Ehio­zowa Agbonayinma chaired Adhoc Com­mittee were quite alarming. Also in another probe that the public, the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) Emeka Eze revealed that his office did not know about the award of the 470 million dollar contract for installation of Closed Cir­cuit Television (CCTV) cameras in Abuja and Lagos. Eze who spoke at a hearing held by the ad-hoc committee investigating the contract for the installation of the cameras, equally said the BPP did not have records of any award of contract for the installation of CCTV cameras in Lagos and Abuja by the Ministry of Police Affairs.

Beyond graft, the House has investi­gated matters of national importance such as the Fulani Herdsmen-Farmers Clashes. Weeks back, its Committee on Police Af­fairs looked into the alleged takeover of Ag­atu and three other Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Benue state by Fulani herdsmen. But it is noteworthy that the latest investiga­tion of the House into the farmers-Fulani herdsmen clashes comes after its Commit­tee on Agricultural Production and Services failed to lay its report on the investigative public hearing conducted on a motion on “The Incessant Clashes between Herdsmen, Farmers and their Host communities in Ni­geria”, four weeks after the conclusion of the exercise. Another major intervention in the Legislative Agenda of the House that it has gone far with implementing the sectoral de­bates. The first set of the debates centred on the much-touted move by the APC-led gov­ernment to diversify the economy and had in attendance, the Minister of Information Cul­ture and Tourism, Lai Mohammed, the Min­ister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, the Fi­nance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enel­amah. The debates as Dogara had explained severally, were to give lawmakers better insight on the need to enact laws that would lead to making Nigeria more competitive. However, the jury is still out on the useful­ness of the debates even as it has been char­acterised by low attendance by lawmakers.

Takeover of Kogi Assembly

That the Kogi State House of Assembly has been factionalised since December 2015 is a well-known fact. But it was on Wednes­day, March 9 that a major intervention on the crisis in the Confluence State was made with the House of Representatives announc­ing its takeover of the state assembly. The House also ordered the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase to imme­diately seal off the premises of the assembly, declaring the supposed impeachment of the embattled Kogi assembly, Speaker Momoh Lawal Jimoh, null and void.

The House decision followed the adop­tion of the report from its ten-man investiga­tive panel which looked into Jimoh’s alleged removal. Recall that following the adoption of a motion entitled “Illegal Removal of Kogi State House of Assembly” moved on Tuesday February 23 by Karimi Sunday under matters of urgent public importance, the House inaugurated a committee headed by the Deputy Whip, Pally Iriase to investi­gate the circumstances surrounding Jimoh’s impeachment.

Presenting the report of the Commit­tee, Iriase described the actions taken by the Imam led group as an affront to the legislature, adding that not only did the self declared new Speaker of the Kogi assembly and his other colleagues fail to form a quo­rum, plenary did not hold on the day they claimed to have impeached Jimoh.

Reps and budget 2016

The 2016 budget will probably go down as the most controversial in recent history. The way the House bent backward to accom­modate the president’s wishes is indicative of how much Dogara wants to be on the same page with him. Days back, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sulaimon Lasun revealed to visitors in his office, that the work by the joint committee to correct the grey areas of the budget kept him awake for eight straight days. Lasun, who headed the budget reconciliation committee which consisted of representatives from the Senate, the House and the Executive, handed over the corrected version of the budget to the presidential advisers to the National Assem­bly, Ita Enang and Suleiman Kawu on May 5. The handover signaled the end of months of speculations, rumours and scandals. But it was along and tortuous journey to that special day when Nigerians finally heaved a sigh of relief. President Buhari had before leaving for the famous China trip, directed that the ministers review the provisions for their respective ministries. However, the ministers soon noticed that some important projects were jettisoned and the monies slated for them, applied elsewhere.

One project which cancellation drew heavy criticism even among lawmakers in both chambers, was the Lagos-Calabar rail project for which the president had earmarked N60 bil­lion. This is even as the National As­sembly approved the Lagos-Kano rail project, which had a proposed budget of N100 billion, and then took N40 bil­lion from the Lagos-Calabar rail proj­ect and added it to the Lagos-Kano rail project to make it N140 billion.

Even before southern senators stat­ed that the Lagos-Calabar rail project must be included in the budget, judg­ing by the comments that followed media reports, the belief was that the North was hugely favored to the det­riment of the South as the balance of 20 billion was then distributed to projects located in the region, mainly roads – many of which are supposedly located in the constituencies of the Ap­propriation Committee chairmen in the Senate and House of Representa­tives. While Senate’s Danjuma Goje is from Gombe State, Jibrin comes from Kano State. Also Jibrin was ac­cused of allocating about four billion naira worth of projects to his Bebeji/ Kiru Federal Constituency, to the cha­grin of his colleagues who in an ex­ecutive session asked for his removal as chairman of the committee. Sunday Sun gathered that reallocation of four billion naira for projects in Jibrin’s constituency was one of the major changes in the corrected version of the budget.

PDP in opposition

The 8th House saw the PDP being in opposition for the first time. The lawmakers elected under the party had little or no problems selecting their leaders with Leo Ogor emerging mi­nority leader and Chuwkuka Onyema serving as his deputy. Many would say that PDP has played the role of the opposition in a more reconciliatory fashion, picking when to strike. Ob­servers would also agree that the fact that PDP had more experienced law­makers has been of great advantage to it. Such individuals point to how the PDP lawmakers chose Dogara and influenced his victory even as they consolidated by picking and retaining A-grade committees.

Though many have complained that it seems PDP lawmakers hardly back Ogor in putting policies of the APC through “legislative fireworks” as he loves to say, as a group, few could deny their effectiveness. The most recent of episodes of the PDP lawmakers acting the spoiler, fol­lowed the hike in fuel pump price to N145.

The House had summoned the minister of Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu over the matter. He arrived on time and was about to be ushered into the Green Chambers, when PDP law­makers staged a colourful revolt. The House leader had moved a motion for the suspension of the House rules to admit the minister. But when Dogara who presided over plenary put the motion to question for the admittance of the minister, the nays had a louder voice but the Speaker passed it, to the shouts of “no”, “no”. The oppo­sition lawmakers who came into the chambers brandishing small Nigerian flags, followed the shouts of “no”, with singing “All we are saying, save Nigeria”. They also chanted “APC, shame”, leading to the stalling of pro­ceedings for about 30 minutes. When the situation finally calmed down, Dogara described what happened as “the beauty of democracy. We disagree to agree.”

This is even as Kachikwu eventu­ally spent over two hours explaining why government jacked up the price of fuel.

Lawmakers speak

Though some critics have said the 8th House still shares unpopular simi­larities with earlier assemblies such as the purchase of new cars, frequent adjournment for breaks, fighting over juicy committees and stories of budget padding, the Leader of the House see things differently. Gbajabiamila, who spoke at the second edition of his quar­terly briefing on the activities of the House believed members deserve a pass mark. He said the bills and mo­tions sponsored, so far, were indicative of the House’s resolve to make laws and embark on legislative activities for the good governance of Nigeria.

Also speaking on the performance of the House, chairman Committee on Financial Crimes, Kayode Ol­adele, who observed the high level of bi-partisanship in the House, opined that members had learnt quickly. He said: “When we were inaugurated, we faced some teething problems. But these problems were not extra-ordi­nary or wholly unexpected. Many of the members are first -timers who are just being confronted with legislative responsibilities. Of course, there was the power tussle within the House. At that time there was the seeming lack of party cohesion and discipline, which caused the House some problems. But good enough, we have re-organised ourselves. We know one another better and now this is a House that works as one.

Most of our activities are done with­out recourse to party affiliation . A lot of motions and bills have been discussed on bi-partisan basis. And our Speaker has never lost control of the House and, of course, this is a House that has been working with the president, hand-in-hand to ensure that the dividends of democracy get to the grassroots.”