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By Chinelo Obogo
The immediate past speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, has said that Nigerians should hold state governors and local government chairmen responsible for governance instead of focusing on the federal governmet.
Ikuforiji who said this in his Lagos office this week, pointed out that state and local governments collectively receive over 50% of federal allocations, yet citizens focus on the central government. He said citizens have better access to local council chairmen than to the president, making local accountability more practical.
He also said he is usually embarrassment when state governors commission modest projects like four or five classrooms, saying such achievements are adequate only for local council chairmen. He described State Houses of Assembly across Nigeria as being too weak to perform their oversight functions, describing most of them as merely “aprons around the waist of the governors” rather than functional checks on executive power. He contrasts this with Lagos State’s experience, where the legislature has consistently held governors accountable since 1999.
My experience as speaker
When I was the Speaker of the Lagos House of Assembly, the then Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola was not comfortable with our demands. He said he just came in and we were already insisting on self-accounting bill and I said, yeah, the law is there and the economy of the state has improved tremendously and we now want it, that’s how we got it. Even when President Tinubu was governor, we held him accountable. When any of the MDAs run into trouble with the House, he will tell the commissioner in charge to go and answer the questions. It was also the same with Fashola.
While he was being praised all over the country, we were always holding him accountable. But here we have Houses of Assembly all over the nation, not taking their governors to task, not asking questions and then you are saying poverty is still high. How won’t poverty be that high when governors are not doing what they should do to alleviate the poverty.
Rising debt profile
As a businessman, if your company has not gone to that point where you owe billions to financial institutions, it’s not likely that that company is even doing well. Because to actually grow, you will always need some amount of funding. If you just constrict yourself to using your available funds alone, you will be crawling. You won’t be able run. We got to a point in this country when we could not even service 96% and if the thing had continued, the whole economy would have even collapsed.
If we are borrowing for good, that good, then it’s a healthy thing. The international financial institutions will not give you loans if they see that you are running very close into the ditch. When they know that you are about to dive into the ocean, they will not give you any loan. But when they see that at least the loan you are taking from them is going to be productive and they know they’ll be able to recover whatever they give you, that’s when they give.
ADC
The people that are in the so-called ADC, mention one of themwho can really stand up against Tinubu. What have they done? What are their antecedents vis-a-vis the number of governors, who havedecamped from the other parties into APC. Don’t forget that most of us politicians are selfish. When you see that you are in a sinking boat, a politician will jump out of the boat, in fact, if his best friend is the one with the life jacket, he will tell him that he is playing with the life jacket, he will take the life jacket and jump out before you know it. That’s what everyone is doing. In fact, I think what should be the fear of each and every one of us is that the way things are going, are we not going to end up with a one party state very soon? Look, the man they are ganging up against, till today, is the only politician in this country who stood with just one state out of 36 and fought the government with all its might till he collected one more state and another and another one, until he gathered all the lost states.
Hold states, LGA’s accountable
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We should learn to hold the state governors and LG chairmen accountable because they collect over 50% of whatever comes to the purse of the federal government.
The two tiers of government collect over 50% so why do we now concentrate on the centre? When you are in a family house and your own wife cooks and it has no salt, would you blame the Mogaji of the family? Why don’t you look, you know, in your immediate room and try to correct the problems there? When will a man who lives in Atakumosa get to see the president? But he can get to see the chairman of his council. Those of us who were at the state level should talk to these state governors. We all know what is going on across the country. I think it is just a disservice to ourselves not to the President, that we leave these people who we are supposed to hold responsible to have a field day.
If a council chairman builds a block of four or five classrooms and he goes to commission it, I’m happy that he has done so. But when a state governor builds a block of four or five classrooms and he goes to commission that, I’m happy that he has done so. But when a state governor builds a block of four or five classrooms and he goes to commission that, I feel embarrassed. Something is wrong with us and we need to correct it. Don’t forget that we are running a federation and the president has no power whatsoever to ask a governor what he has done with his resources. That is how things are and there is a limit to which the President can act because our governors are extra powerful. Unfortunately, my own constituency that is supposed to hold them responsible across the federation is so weak that they are not able to do anything. Most Houses of Assembly are just like aprons around the waist of the governors. That is why I said that in Lagos, we have always held the governors accountable since 1999.
State of emergency in Rivers
When there is a looming disaster in any state, the President can declare a state of emergency there. He doesn’t have the right to remove any governor. He can only suspend and there is even a limit to it. The maximum time he can say he’s doing is six months and of course, it allows a renewal of that time. The National Assembly must sanction it before he can get it done. So the constitution already made it virtually impossible for the president to control the governor.
It is the State House of Assembly that should hold the governor accountable. Somebody may actually look at it and say, if that be the case, why can’t the president go down to the State House of Assembly and push them? Of course, as a father to the nation too, there is a limit to which you can play such politics before we say it’s real dirty politics.
I think we all should take it as our responsibility to actually push this. Make the Houses of Assembly across the nation, make them to come alive and do what they are supposed to do. When I was speaker, I always saw myself as the Chief Police Officer of the state.
People will not even know that when Tinubu was governor and the House was not happy with him, he called for a truce. He invited us to his house and his he wife prepared food for us and you know what? When got there, we said we are not eating and then we left. We did that twice. They made food and everything ready for us and we said we don’t want your food. What we want is what we want. That’s how the house got built up. We were always holding our governor and his men responsible for their actions and inactions.
Electoral reforms
The National Assembly in its wisdom is proposing to have the presidential and the governorship elections November-December so that there will be a six-month period before inauguration of the executive. This is to give room for judicial interventions so that if there are court cases and so on, it can be settled within the six months. Well, let’s see how far they go with that. A lot more also needs to be done. We have a lot more to do, but we’ll start somewhere. I think this proposal is a good start. Even if it’s not going to be November-December, latest January, it should be over. Let’s have that election so that we have sufficient time. We should also educate our people to be more active because when it comes to elections, boycotting elections has never yielded any dividend to the boycotters.
If you say you are not going to vote because you don’t trust the system, you are giving room for the system to even perpetuate itself further. Everyone should vote. Everyone should register to vote.
Look, to rig an election is not as easy as people think of it. Because as we are here now, if we decide to hold an election and somebody is planning to rig, if 15 of us stands in one place and then four people are standing in the other place, for the four to actually overpower the 15 won’t be easy. But when we they make up the minds that it’s not going to be fair, so they don’t want to waste their time,it now gives room for others to do whatever they want to do.
