A N1.2 million senatorial slap! By Emmanuel Aziken, Abuja With President Olusegun Obasanjo firmly in control of the tap on the public treasury through his due process procedure, rancour over money was bound to spill over from government institutions, and not least the Senate. However, few if any, would have expected the stupendously rich Senator Isa Mohammed or the motherly looking Senator Iyabo Anisulowo to have been the central actors when the bubble burst last Thursday in the Senate. When Senator Mohammed, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on States and Local governments allegedly slapped Senator Anisulowo, the Committee chairman over allegations of misappropriation of Committee funds, last Thursday the raging issue of money or rather the management of money in the Senate again came to the fore. Arguably one of the richest men in the Senate, Senator Mohammed”s wealth is buttressed by his several landed properties in Abuja among which is an estate rented by one of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
That estate according to some accounts fetches him an annual inflow of some one or two million pounds in yearly rent. His generosity to constituents and the public is regularly shown by the throng of hangers on that come to the National Assembly to shadow him. He is also reported to be a patron to several humanitarian causes including an orphanage. All his wealth, however, fails to cover one human flaw that flows from him at about the same rate as the money flows too. That is a high temper which led to the slapping incident of last Thursday. His “victim”, Senator Anisulowo a distinguished Senator who was recently in the news over her doggedness in standing by her Committee report which indicted officials of the Benue State government and its patron, Prof. Iyorcha Ayu over their roles in stoking the violence in Kwande Local government area of the State.
Her report in a seeming show of balance, also indicted the ANPP gubernatorial candidate in the 2003 elections, Dr. Paul Unongo. Senator Anisulowo made a name for herself when she reportedly spurned entreaties from both officials of the Benue State government and the Senate to drop the report. Following reports of some bargain between the powers that be in the Senate and agents of the Benue State government, that report has now been buried. However, Senator Anisulowo like a virtuous housewife carries her self with dignity in the knowledge that she was not party to the bargain. So with their dignifying antecedents, what could have led to the slapping incident of last Thursday? The incidence according to sources arose from the quiet arrangement in the Wabara Senate for Committee chairmen and their deputies to have a share of the allocation normally allocated for Committee activities.
Under the arrangement, when the Committee quarterly impress which varies between N1.4 and N1.5 million is released, the Committee chairman and his vice are supposed to butcher the loot in three parts, one slice for the chairman, another for the vice-chairman and the third fraction, normally a miserly portion is allocated for Committee activities. Sources privy to the financial transactions of the Senate Committee on States and Local governments told Vanguard that the misunderstanding between Senator Anisulowo and Mohammed arose after Senator Anisulowo collected N707,000 from the latest quarterly allocation through the Committee clerk. Senator Mohammed according to the same sources on learning that the Committee chairman had collected the bulk of the Committee fund now mandated the Committee clerk to release N500,000 to him. For the clerk to raise money from the allocation, he is supposed to raise a memo which should be endorsed by either the Committee chairman or his deputy for the Senate President to authorize the Finance department to issue a cheque for the amount. However, Anisulowo according to sources, was peeved by the decision of the Committee clerk to release the N500,000 to Mohammed without her consent and consequently asked him to refund the money.
The Committee clerk it was learnt now resorted to Senator Mohammed asking for the refund, a request that drew out the anger in him. Senator Mohammed it was learnt had been seeking an audience with his chairman to sort out the matter and could not get to see her until last Thursday”s encounter at the lobby. So when the two met, Senator Anisulowo had maintained her position asking Senator Mohammed to refund the money and to buttress her position, had effected the removal of the Committee clerk from her Committee. So, perhaps flowing from past altercations between the two Senators, Anisulowo had walked away on Senator Mohammed when Senator Mohammed met her on the issue and proceeded to the foyer of the main building of the National Assembly complex for a scheduled visit to Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. For one who is accustomed to people walking after him adoringly, it was thus not just unusual, perhaps Mohammed took it as an insult that Senator Anisulowo would have the effrontery to walk out on him.
He had thus rushed after her, turned her around and landed a slap on her face in a temper according to several eye witness accounts. In a statement released late Friday, Senator Mohammed in an effort in damage control has denied Anisulowo”s account of the incident even though he admits a heated altercation between the two of them. ““Honestly, what she did by accusing me of slapping her is an after thought. She only tried to play on sentiments having known her wrong doing,”” Senator Mohammed said. ““I accept I had a heated argument with Senator Anisulowo at the National Assembly, our voices may have been raised but it never went beyond mere argument between two Senators.”” The incident between the two Senators brings to light the raging issue of the management of the funds of Senate Committees. Senate Committees as all Senate Presidents since Senator Chuba Okadigbo have in words proclaimed that the Committees were the engine room of the Senate and should thus be properly funded. It is, however, regretful that not all the Senate Presidents since Okadigbo have in action backed their proclamations with action. As the point of interface between the Senate, the public and the government, Senate Committees are the equivalents of the ministries in the Federal Government.
They are manned at the head by a Committee clerk or secretary who in principle is the equivalent of a permanent secretary in the ministry. The Committee clerk like the permanent secretary is in principle supposed to be the accounting officer of the Committee. With the advent of democracy, the National Assembly was staffed with a complement of Committee clerks who were trained for their roles. However, political manouveres compelled Senator Okadigbo to increase the number of Committees to 40 +, a figure that doubled the number of Committees in the Untied States Senate. Senator Anyim Pius Anyim followed in Okadigbo”s footsteps increasing the number of Committees to a world record of 54, a situation that made it possible for all 109 Senators to be either Committee chairmen or vice chairmen. Senator Anyim did that as a matter of political survival in order to ensure that he courted as many as possible of his fellow colleagues.
The present Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, has followed in that step sustaining a ballooned Committee structure that has seen three different Committees in charge of upstream petroleum, downstream petroleum and gas. The struggle for Committee position by some Senators is understandably to enable them get some advantage over their colleagues in getting access to financial gain through contracts or other patronages from their oversight ministries. A number of level-headed Senators have been known to run into trouble with some of their Committee members over the disbursement of Committee funds. Some Senators see the Committees as channels for sharing money and Committee chairmen who do not behave either run into trouble or have their activities boycotted by their Committee members.
Lamenting the attitude of his Committee members recently, a Committee chairman told Vanguard of how he had to go to several engagements without several Committee members and his own vice-chairman simply because there was no money to share. ““Even though there was money available for estacode, flight tickets and hotel, they just boycotted my activities because I was standing by principle,”” the Committee chairman said. Under Okadigbo, Committee clerks were given a monthly impress that gradually peaked at N50,000 monthly from N20,000. A number of the Committee clerks just like the typical civil servant saw the Committee funds as their own democratic dividends and quite a number of them did themselves and their banks well. With the advent of Anyim, the system changed and Committee funds were channeled through the Committee chairmen and vice-chairmen. Well, Anyim”s action even though hypocritical of his much proclaimed effort at strengthening the Committee system helped to sustain him in office.
Senator Wabara had made a bold effort to reverse the trend by empowering Committee clerks and enthroning them as the accounting officers of the Committees. Senator Wabara”s effort was boosted by the reform efforts of the National Assembly Service Commission headed by the veteran civil servant and politician, Mr. Ishaya Akau, who has repeatedly tried to set the National Assembly service on a professional standing. However, the joint efforts of the Senate leadership and the National Assembly Service Commission, are eroded by the doggedness of some Senators in sustaining the system of vice that enriches either the Senators or the clerks at the expense of the system. Though the Committee clerks are the accounting officers and are to act under the instruction of the Committee chairmen, in reality it is generally not so.
With few exceptions, Committee funds are butchered in the executive sessions of Committee meetings during which Committee secretaries are asked to stay away. A few Committees headed by level headed Senators are, however, known not to be involved in such practices and are known to give respectable heed to the accounting roles of their Committee clerks. Some Committee clerks knowing that their bread could never be buttered by the Senators, have resorted to their own ways in making money. A federal parastatal three weeks ago had requested a Senate Committee to send a nominee to join it on a foreign travel.
The Committee clerk, according to one report, had, without the consent of the Committee, forwarded his own name and gone on the trip in the name of the Committee. Another Committee clerk was given a memo some two months back to a federal ministry and the Committee clerk according to a source had gone to plead for his own name to be placed in the ministry”s programme for the Committee, saying that he would not be given his share if his name was not included from the ministry.
Embarrassed, the permanent secretary walked out the Committee clerk from his office. The Committee clerk however, returned to give a different tale to the Committee chairman culminating in an exchange with the permanent secretary during which the true story came out. The relationship between the Committee clerks and their Committee members is a fractious one that have sometimes almost resorted to violence. When a Committee clerk once refused to hand over “all the allocation” to a Committee chairman, the Committee chairman physically went to the clerk”s office and with force packed the money. It is, however, worthy to note that amidst the rancour that exists among several Committee chairmen, members and their clerks, that there are reports of positive relationships existing between some chairmen and their members and clerks. For Senator Mohammed to whom N1.2 million may actually mean nothing or Senator Anisulowo whose virtue was upheld by her principle for righteousness in rebuffing the Senate leadership”s pressure to bury the Kwande report, last Thursday's incidence was simply unfortunate . But for an institution struggling to reinvent its image, it may have been a serious draw back for the Senate.
