The OMD phenomenon

However you choose to look at the matter, our democracy appears to have fully evolved into the OMD phenomenon. OMD is short for off-the-mike democracy, which we define as government by official crimes and coverups. When we talk about corruption in Nigeria, all eyes tend to turn towards the executive branch. However, the champions of OMD are not those who live in executive mansions at state and federal levels. Neither are they the managers of the judicial branches. Instead, they are those who live in legislative quarters, the same folks that we vote into office to police the actions of  the executive and the judiciary.

In the past eight years, the OMD phenomenon evolved through two men who have now exchanged positions at the head of the table. These are immediate past Senate President Ahmed Lawan and current President Godswill Akpabio. In the beginning, Lawan shielded the alleged misdeeds of Akpabio in the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs. Akpabio was accused of misappropriating $40billion from the coffers of the Niger Delta Development Commission. Although the case did not come to the Senate, the House of Representatives did not allow it to go without interrogation. The House investigation however died an unnatural death when OMD was invoked at the last minute.

How does the OMD rule work?

In the recent past, the Senate President, Speaker, and Committee Chairs did all they could to shield appointees of the executive branch from allegations of financial crimes. The accusers were often upstanding public servants in those organisations from where accused political appointees operated. The National Assembly officers used three tricks to shut down accusations from the upstanding officials. First, they simply shush the accusers whenever they introduce a particularly damning testimony. If the hushing fails, the chair immediately invokes the off-the-mike rule. If the situations threaten to get out of hand, off-the-mike is upgraded to fainting spells. Once an accused faints in a committee hearing and on national television, this abruptly terminates the proceedings and puts a permanent lid on further interrogation into the matter. The Akpabio allegation dragged to this third and final solution.

It is not often the case that the crimes being committed by public officials involve financial misconducts, as we have also witnessed in the Assembly. The case of how Senator Lawan and Minister Akpabio got their legislative tickets demonstrates how OMD can play out among legislators themselves. In the 2023 elections, both men (Akpabio and Lawan) decided that they would rather be at the head of the table as President. Both also lost the opportunity to contest the senatorial elections after their big losses at the APC presidential primaries. But no matter. They returned to their constituencies in Akwa Ibom and Bono States to lay claim to the tickets already held by other people. And they used the judiciary to perform the magic of snatching those tickets.

The description of their effort as magical was from a fellow senator, Rochas Okorocha, who also  contested the presidency but lost everything. Okorocha wondered aloud in a nationally televised plenary how Lawan and Akpabio could have pulled off the feat. A bemused Lawan simply explained that they used the judiciary route to snatch back the ticket. But how? When one retiring garrulous senator offered one potential explanation about how the judiciary could have been used, Lawan invoked the first rule. This was also nationally televised. The old gentleman explained how on occasion he leaned on his wife, a former appeals court president, to “grant favours” to his (APC) colleagues and partymen. He was silenced before he could conclude his thought on the matter. When legislators gather in plenary, a simple shush from the high table is often enough to effectively put a permanent lid on the matter from which one can smell a whiff of crime or official misconduct.

What is happening in the National Assembly is nothing short of disheartening. The Assembly is the bastion of checks and balances in a democracy. Assemblymen are elected to office to oversight the works of the executive and to make laws for good governance, community safety, and peace. No critical Executive and Legislative appointments and policy decisions can be made without the express prior approval of the Assembly. A performing legislature therefore constitutes an effective block against executive impunity and malfeasance. The Assembly also scans the environment to ensure that laws serve the ends of justice. Where there are loopholes in the laws, these laws are returned for the Assembly to rejig. Theirs is an onerous responsibility that they have so far largely failed to live up to when it mattered most. Regrettably, the legislature appears to have become a tool to effectively cover up financial crimes and malfeasance in the country. Are we surprised that it is this branch of government that is always the first target of disbandment by military regimes?

The National Assembly is in a unique position to force governments to run on the straight and narrow. Legislators oversight the projects to which the nation’s capital budgets are applied. It is also in the position to initiate the removal of any top executive manager in their jurisdiction who badly steps out of line. In other words, the assembly can force the President or Governor to be accountable by recognizing and effectively discharging its responsibility in a democracy.  Assemblymen are also empowered to correct whatever lapses are found in the judiciary through the process of lawmaking.

Senator Lawan, as head of the National Assembly, has done his best to discharge the nation’s legislative functions. Unfortunately, his best appears to many people as a terrible example of off-the-mike democracy, OMD. Akpabio, the man Lawan protected yesterday, is today the top dog, presiding over another Assembly. The famous “uncommon governor” is today taking baby steps, rather than giant, uncommon ones. So far, his two-month tenure has been more of the same OMD. And he mixes his OMD with juvenile humour not befitting his high office. His two most remarkable achievements to date are his flippant ruling to “let the poor breathe” and the confusion over whether he was sending token or prayers to either the bank accounts or mail boxes of his colleagues as the Assembly went on recess.

It is important to let Distinguished Senator Akpabio know that he should use the recess to reflect on how he has fared and how history will judge him in the end. This reflection will hopefully guide him on how to conduct the affairs of the nation from the assembly corner when they resume from their current recess. The people of Nigeria who voted for members of this Assembly hope that Nigeria will get out of the woods not only through executive actions, but through the intervention of the National Assembly.

What makes this current Assembly unique is the reality that if tomorrow the presidential election court judgment negatively affects President Bola Tinubu, the decision will not alter the current executive composition of the National Assembly. The Assembly should, therefore, play its assigned checks and balances function now. It shouldn’t wake up to this responsibility tomorrow if, say, a PDP or Labour government supplants the current regime. And, for us citizens, all eyes should focus on the legislature, if we are to get it right, regardless of who rules as President after the courts make a final pronouncement on Elections 2023.