How Reps fared in three years
Immediately after the inauguration of the 8th House, a leadership crisis that took about two months to resolve erupted.
Speaker Yakubu Dogara, who represents Bogoro/Dass/TafawaBalewa Federal Constituency of Bauchi State, emerged speaker after defeating current House Leader Femi Gbajabiamila.
Dogara’s victory was against the position of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) which had wanted Gbajabiamila to clinch the position. It turned out that Dogara got 182 votes, while Gbaja, as he is fondly called, secured 174 votes.
Trouble started when APC, after being humiliated, nominated Gbajabiamila for the position of House Leader. But Dogara and his men would not allow that at first.
Dogara later yielded to pressure on July 28, after foot-dragging for about two months. Soon after that, however, the House went on to carry out its activities peacefully, with Dogara fully in charge.
In August of that year, the speaker came up with the 8th House Legislative Agenda, which was a blueprint of a sort for the Green Chamber to achieve in four years.
Major items on the agenda included needs assessment; focus on internal operations/processes; e-parliament, e-voting, digitization, archiving; focus on National Assembly communications and review of the national budgetary process.
Others were focus on national economy and development; focus on priority legislation; review of the laws of the federation; focus on anticorruption; constitution reform process; harmonization of the national identity management system; reduction of cost of governance as well as improved legislative-executive relations.
While the House was able to achieve some items on the legislative agenda, it appears a number of them have been proving difficult to attain. For instance, while the lawmakers have worked on many bills within the period, it can be argued that they are yet to stimulate the economy via legislation.
The House held sectoral debates with key ministers such as that of finance and trade and investment among others with a view to knowing the direction of the country’s economy. But that appears not to have changed anything.
In the area of improved legislativeexecutive relations, the going was good between the House and the Executive until recently when things took a turn for the worst.
The development was occasioned by the fact that after the House passed a vote of no confidence on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris as a result of many killings in parts of the country, the top police officer remains in office.
Again, the ex-minister of Solid Minerals Development, Kayode Fayemi,
On June 9, the 8th House of Representatives, which began on a very shaky and turbulent note owing to the leadership crisis that enmeshed the Green Chamber, marked its three years of inauguration. Have the 360 members of the Green Chamber made any difference in the area of legislation? Our correspondent x-rays the issues at stake.
was once invited to brief the House on the state of the Ajaokuta Steel Company, but he reportedly declined the invitation as a result of which the lawmakers also passed a no confidence vote on him.
Also, for the personal interest of few lawmakers, who are members of the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) in the House, the relationship between the two arms further went sour.
MembersoftheHousewereinsolidarity with their Senate counterparts who are said to be undergoing persecution by the Executive arm, hence the recent threat to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari should he fail to take decisive action on the alleged persecution.
Thus, it can be said that the relationship between the House and the Executive is at its lowest ebb.
Our correspondent observed that since their inauguration three years ago, the lawmakers never sat at exactly 11am that they set for themselves for the commencement of plenary.
Most of the time, the lawmakers began their sittings at 11:30.am, while some other times they commenced at 11:20. am.
Another thing that has been conspicuous in the last three years of the House is how majority of the lawmakers avoid plenary sessions where major decisions are taken.
Most often than not, the House, which consists of 360 members, begins plenary with less than 100 lawmakers, and in some cases with just about 50 members present.
It is when plenary has gone far that some of the lawmakers surfaced, and only to register their names on the attendance register and leave the chamber. Their defence is usually that some of them attend committees’ sittings, but the timing for such meetings is normally fixed at 3.pm, which is after plenary.
The matter usually became worst during the Committee of Whole where reports of various committees on bills, motions/resolutions and petitions are considered. In most cases, only about 20 members remained to consider reports.
On January 23 this year, only about 35 members of the House, out of 360, passed the Electoral Act amendment bill that sought to change the election sequence in the country.
Deputy Speaker Yusuf Sulaimon Lasun, who usually presides over the Committee of Whole, had cause to complain during a retreat on January 20, in Kaduna where he said most of his colleagues usually left plenary once it was time for reports’ consideration.
Besides, a number of the lawmakers are bench-warmers as they neither contributed to debates nor sponsored bills or motions. Theirs has been to sit at plenary and watch their colleagues speak.
Only last week, House spokesman Abdulrazak Namdas (APC, Adamawa) told journalists that a total of 1,473 bills were introduced in the House in the last three years.
Ninety of those bills were on constitution amendment, while 284 bills are still pending at various committees with 519 bills currently awaiting second reading.
He said 112 bills are awaiting consideration with 22 negatived bills 22 and 23 withdrawn bills.
Similarly, the House received about 2000 motions in the last three years.
“No assembly has ever achieved this. Within three years, we were able to work with the Executive and got the country out of recession.
“The ‘Not Too Young to Run Bill’ also got assented to so that young people can join the space and run for office. The North East Development Commission (NEDC) bill was also signed into law.
“We’ve passed the constitution amendment bill and sent it to the president for assent. This administration has tried so much in signing bills. The good thing about this president is that if he declines to sign any bill, he gives reasons,” Namdas said.
But the question to be asked is what difference have all the bills and motions made in the last three years? Perhaps, there is no much difference going by their activities so far.
On anti-corruption, the House seems to be lagging behind as a number of anti-corruption bills are still awaiting legislative action.
In the area of making its budget public, the House only kept that promise once, jointly with the Senate, last year. The lawmakers are yet to do that this year.
On cutting the cost of governance, there seems to be no departure from the past as the lawmakers settled for Peugeot 508 vehicle for each of them at a total cost of over N6 billion.
It was initially N3.6bn, but the unit price went up due to rise in exchange rate. It took over two years for majority of the lawmakers to get theirs.
The purchase of the vehicles was after the lawmakers individually collected car loans to be paid within four years. The claim was that the Peugeot 508 was for committees’ work, whereas there are only 96 committees in the House.
While the lawmakers were able to conclude work on the National Assembly Budget Office (NABRO), same cannot be said of the e-parliament and e-voting.
One important bill passed by the House was that on the establishment of the North East Development Commission (NEDC), sponsored by Speaker Dogara.
A major controversy that characterised the House in its three years of existence was that of the 2016 budget where the suspended former chairman of appropriation committee, Rep Abdulmumin Jibrin (APC, Kano) made several allegations of corruption against Dogara; his deputy, Yusuf Sulaimon Lasun; Chief Whip, Alhassan Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader, Leo Ogor. Jibrin later expanded his allegations to include all the 360 members of the House, including himself. He ended up paying dearly for it as he was suspended for 181 legislative days by the House on September 28, 2016. He was only recalled about three months ago.