Abuja tough guys and constitutional amendment

I sympathise with Nigerians who had expected the attempt by the National Assembly to amend some key elements of our constitution as answer to our crisis of nationhood. The high expectation was understandable since we have become a nation of miracle seekers where people believe they can reap what they did not sow.  I for one never share the optimism of those who believe our current class of lawmakers can give what they do not have.

A brief recourse to the past will show that such expectation was a forlorn hope. First, most of the current Abuja actors that constitute our new political class were those born after 1966. Their only form of political socialisation was a passage through   Babangida’s school of democracy.  And It is on record that the first set of ‘new breed” politicians, the  products of  that new orientation such as Tom Ikimi and Babagana Kingibe, chairmen of Babangida decreed two parties sided with the military against Nigeria at a critical period in our nation’s history in1993. We also have it on record that the set that followed in 1999 was no less anti-Nigeria. After first killing their leading light over sharing of spoils of  office (or war as Obasanjo called it), they  settled down  to share among  themselves, in the name of privatization, the nation’s investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.6b. When there was nothing left to sell, they shared   our national patrimony under a dubious government monetization policy. The 2010 group was represented by Goodluck Jonathan, described by one of his colleagues as “an ATM without secret pin number” – was no less vicious. Since for President Jonathan, stealing government money was not corruption, ministers and party stalwarts were given free hand to satisfy their greed. The current recession is the price the nation is paying for the greed of this set.

The reigning group led by Saraki and Dogara has been the most daring. They have no apologies for placing the interest of their members before that of the nation. They went an extra mile by first executing a civilian coup against their party to earn their current positions.  By their outing last week, they have demonstrated they are not about to commit suicide after all the risk just to be regarded as patriots. That option is definitely not an option to those who are ready to impeach the acting President and pull down the whole edifice on their own heads for being reminded that diverting budgetary allocations from important national projects that touch on the lives of Nigerians to controversial constituency projects was unpatriotic.

First, it must be remembered that the whimsical declaration of LGAs as third tier of government by Obasanjo following Ibrahim Dasuki Commission’s recommendation was not aimed at enhancing development at the grassroot level but at securing legitimacy for the military administration.  If there was any consideration for development at all, it was about individuals such as retired military officers who benefited most from Babangida’s Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) campaign which became an avenue for siphoning funds and traditional rulers who also receive 5%of LGAs allocations directly from Abuja for doing absolutely nothing. Local government was patterned after the command structure of the military and funded from the centre became a strategy for undermining the independence of the states and for institutionalization of corruption.

The National Assembly understands that all politics are local. It was not by accident that Awo and Ahmadu Bello started their political careers as local government chieftains. But our current lawmakers as in character, granted autonomy to LGAs instead of correcting an abnormality as there is no federation in the world, as Soludo, the former CBN Governor observed a little while ago, where the federal government allocates funds to local governments that are not accountable to it.

Similarly, the national assembly’s abrogation of States Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) is a betrayal of the federal arrangement.  The challenge before the National Assembly was empowering SIEC to enhance its credibility just as we have done with INEC at the centre. INEC itself cannot be  said to be made up of angels with so many of their officials facing trials for receiving millions as bribe to rig the 2015 election on behalf of some candidates and political  parties. In any case, one of the reasons the United States from where we copied the federal arrangement advertises to support the credibility of their elections is that they are conducted by states irrespective of parties in power.

That Saraki and Dogara presided over constitutional amendments to make themselves members of the Council of State should not surprise anyone. After all, they executed a civilian coup to secure their present positions and will be in good company as they join other coup plotters in the National Council of State.

Passing a constitutional amendment to support state legislatures’ financial autonomy is also in bad taste. It means taking a cue from the upper houses, state assembly members can now pay themselves whatever they want. They don’t have to wait on governors to procure for themselves state-of-the-art SUV cars or add imported bullet proof SUVs, cleared with forged papers to their speakers’ fleet.

Provision for immunity for speakers of state legislatures is nothing but corruption fighting back. Henceforth, EFCC cannot question the Speakers of Houses of Assemblies for financial infractions, false declaration of assets or be asked to defend their honour if per chance they are mentioned in the Panama scandals.

If there is one decision that portrays the current Abuja “like-minds senators” as a pack of unserious lot, it is their rejection of devolution of power. They are in other words saying the current situation where we have  about 88 items in the exclusive  list, 33 items on the concurrent list  without a residual list which has rendered the states impotent  while a dysfunctional centre makes a mess of functions such as roads, agriculture ,health, education, and security that are best handled by states – is fine.

With six months delay and eventual  padding of the current budget by Saraki and Dogara houses while the rest of the country including Abuja  suffer  from collapsed infrastructure, it should be obvious to Nigerians that without devolution of power, whoever  occupies seat of power in Abuja is a hostage to vicious tough guys in the National Assembly.

There is so much at stake for those benefiting from our current crisis of nation-building. We cannot put our destiny in the hands of self-serving law makers whose salaries we do not know until recent disclosure by Senator Buruji Kashamu who declared during a quarrel with Ladi Adebutu  that “your monthly take home is N7m. When you multiply that by 48 months you would have earned a total of N336 million” in two years.

We as a people must stop playing the ostrich and accept that we need an umpire probably the United Nations. We should remind ourselves that even with our founding fathers who were adjudged to be men of vision and character, the national question was resolved in London in 1954 with the support of Britain. Today we have a more vicious political class and a more determined Fulani hegemonic power that is resolved to hold on to their current advantages such as greater number of states and LGAs which make revisiting the national question long resolved before the intervention of an ill-equipped and ill-educated military in 1966 an arduous task