As the nation marks another independence anniversary, the public mudslinging between the Federal Capital Minister, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai and the National Assembly, may well be turning into a peculiar annual ritual that foreshadows October 1 celebration.
It would be recalled that 2003 independence anniversary was celebrated against the background of the accusation of impropriety made by the minister against two principal officers of the Senate- Senators Jonathan Zwingina and Ibrahim Mantu. As if programmed for another round of eruption, exactly a year later, the 2004 independence anniversary is being celebrated against the background of the smouldering tension between the el-Rufai and the Senate on account of the dressing down of the Senate which the FCT minister dismissed as fools.
However, in between the two El-Rufai/Senate crisis , the upper house in the last one year under the leadership of Adolphus Wabara have stumbled from one crisis to another obscuring some significant legislative landmarks.
The challenges that came the way of the Senate, and the continuing crisis of confidence in the upper legislative body, have inevitably cast negative impression on the legislative performance of the Senate, commendable as some of the acts may be.
One of the main activities of the Senate last year after the national independence celebration was the decision of the Senate leadership last November to consolidate its hold on the members when on November 19, 2003 it dissolved all standing Committees.
The main consequence of the redistribution of Senate seats was the stripping of the ‘power’ of one of the putative challengers to Senator Wabara’s leadership of the Senate, that is Senator Ifeanyi Ararume.
Senator Ararume, a one time friend of Wabara in the last Senate was removed from his position as chairman of the Senate Committee on Power and Steel and made vice-chairman of the Committee on Culture and Tourism a move designed ostensibly aimed according to the Senate leadership to put ‘square plugs in square holes and round plugs in round holes.’’
The Committee redistributions also saw the displacement of some veteran Committee chairmen such as David Brigidi from Petroleum and Patrick Osakwe from the Niger Delta Committee.
There were suggestions that the Senate President contemplated moving some other ‘influential’ Senators from their committee positions but was forced to reconsider the exercise after strong warnings and threats coming from some within the leadership.
Nevertheless, rumblings followed these changes, and to make matters worse the effrontery of Wabara in contemplating moving some powerful Senators were to snowball in the crisis that subsequently enveloped the Senate four months after the changes.
As the Senate resumed from Christmas break last January, the legislative body was brought to its knees by suggestions of distribution of money amongst some Senators to induce them to support a certain political agenda.
It first came as a rumour, but was later confirmed that Senators were being mobilized with N500,000 a piece to support a motion to declare emergency rule in Anambra State.
Senator Uche Chukwumerije (PDP, Abia North) in a letter entitled ‘‘The Conspirator’’, was freely distributed to all Senators. Chukwumerijie accused the conspirator then unidentified as playing hatchet man in this plot to decimate the democratic structures in Anambra State.
Chukwumerije, who had by mid-January almost became frenzied about the extent of the conspiracy to undermine democracy in the Southeastern State, wrote in his letter:
"Throughout the evening of last Wednesday, January 14, your house was as busy as a Bureau de change. Some Senators, especially from a certain opposition party, were enticed with the lucre of filthy lucre in exchange for support to your planned motion.””
Faced with growing public denunciation of the affair, Senators subsequently coerced Chukwumerije to identify the conspirator, whom he reluctantly named as Senator Arthur Nzeribe, the leader of the Southeast caucus.
While denying distributing the money, Senator Nzeribe, however, did not shy away from affirming his support for emergency rule in Anambra State.
The affair was perceived in some circles to have caused a permanent rupture in the relationship between two top politicians from the Southeast, who were first bonded by the June 12, 1993 presidential election fiasco.
Southeast Senators mediated in the crisis and at a press conference attended by majority of the Igbo Senators including Senator Wabara on February 10, they claimed to have applied traditional Igbo tactics to settle the matter.
“Fundamentally, we are Igbos and we have our traditional way of settling our matters (and) that was what we used and we succeeded,” Senator Fidelis Okoro (PDP, Enugu North) said.
Waving off questions on the nature of settlement reached Okoro said:“The important thing is that we have settled this matter and this matter is over,” he said in scornful dismissal of the right of the citizenry to demand probity in the nation’s upper legislative chambers.
About that time an executive bill seeking to oust the vice-President from his role as chairman of the National Council of Privatisation arrived the Senate enlivening the political pages of the nation’s newspapers on the latest effort to give Atiku Abubakar a humble pie.
That bill progressed through with most of the provisions sailing through, even though the President has now in his ‘magnanimity’ retained the Vice-President as chairman of the council.
Also significant was the money laundering amendment bill which the Senate rushed through in an effort to save the nation from sanctions by the Paris, Fance based International Task Force on Financial Crimes.
The Senate in cahoots with the House of Representatives also asserted the legislature’s control of the public purse when it passed through the 2004 budget that amongst others built in clauses to ensure compliance.
Speaking to newsmen after the passage of the budget last April, Senator Wabara emphasized that the budget as passed by the National Assembly was an implementable budget. He nevertheless, shied away from affirming sanctions for non-implementation.
The stability that marked the Senate leadership was seriously shaken in May when Senators peeved by allegations of financial misdemanour against the leadership moved to impeach the Senate President. Senator Wabara away at an international parliamentary conference in Mexico rushed home to appease the 86 Senators that endorsed his removal. What saved him was a plea by some Senators notably Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN) that an opportunity for fair hearing be given him.
In the end, Wabara survived after Senator Nzeribe made a mincemeat of some of the leading protagonist in the impeachment plot, which he admitted originated with him.
Following the impeachment threat, Senator Wabara has by all accounts also improved on his interpersonal relations with Senators, and as such erasing all such suggestions of haughtiness ascribed to him by some of his colleagues.
With the obvious exception of some two or may be three Senators from the Southeast, the Senate President is now generally known to go along with all Senators.
However, an appeal for self defence did not save Senator Isa Kassim Oyofo when he was on August 19 unanimously removed as Senate chief whip following a motion by 13 of the 14 South-South Senators present at the sitting of that day.
Oyofo was elected Chief Whip on the platform of the South-South following a resolution of the PDP. His protestations that the action defied the authority of the party is yet to reverse the removal. Despite some of its significant legislative initiatives including the budget and its boldness in reversing some of the more horrendous clauses in the labour reform bill, impressions about the Senate, however, continue to be smeared by accusations of the legislative body being a rubber stamp.
Critical to this impression is the rush the Senate took to endorse President Obasanjo’s bill seeking to reform labour.
Though the bill was fundamentally stripped of some of its more draconian clauses during Committee work, the rush by the Senate leadership to pass the bill, inevitably questioned the independence of the legislative house. It set off tales of collaboration between the Senate and the administration to strip labour of its legal potency to challenge the administration’’s policies.
The House of Representatives on its part, has played a more matured role on the labour bill, bending backwards to delay passage of the bill, to at least to douse tension.
The leadership of the House of Representatives has on its part not been shy in its effort at boosting the capacity of House members in lawmaking.
In August, the House divided itself into three parts to hold a three day retreat in Bauchi, Minna and Oshogbo.
As the Representatives concluded their retreat, the smouldering opposition in the House led by the shadow ‘‘Speaker’’, Dr. Usman Bugaje held its own retreat in the confluence town of Lokoja two weeks later.
The about 50 lawmakers who attended the conference under the aegis of Forum for Democracy and Good Governance asserted their right to hold alternative views to that presented by the House leadership even as they asserted that their group was not a standing opposition to the House leadership.
However, given that most of the members of the group do not hold Committee positions may suggest that power motivation may be an inspiration to many members of the group.
Speaker Aminu Bello Masari, has on his part tried and even beaten world record in his attempt to appease the troops in the House.
By having as much as 71 Committees in the 360 member House, the House leadership has attempted to fend off the opposition through patronage with Committee positions.
One fact is, however, remarkable in the oppositions presented by the minority parties in the Senate and House of Representatives. They have in all essence failed in calling attention to the failures of the dominant PDP and sometimes like in the labour bill in the Senate, helped to execute the agenda of the PDP.
It is the absence of opposition in the National Assembly that essentially highlights the predicament of the citizenry with the chaining of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC).
