Yakubu Dogara: We Can’t Completely Eradicate Corruption

Since his emergence as Speaker of House of Representatives on June 9, 2015 after a keenly contested election that initially polarised the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) caucus, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has been piloting the affairs of the lower chamber of the National Assembly.  The 49-year-old lawmaker, who is the 14th speaker of the House of Representatives, was first elected into the House in 2007 to represent the Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa-Balewa federal constituency of Bauchi State, and has secured the nod of his constituents in two other consecutive elections. Recently, Dogara spoke with some senior journalists on many national issues ranging from the relationship between the executive and the legislature, the fight against corruption, the call on the National Assembly to make its budget public, the feud between him and his state governor, to the on going face off between the Senate and the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service.  Iyobosa Uwugiaren was there

Mr Speaker, the perception out there is that the executive and the legislative arms of government are not on the same page. What is your disposition on this?

As politicians, sometimes we don’t attack the issues frontally. Well, let me say from the foundation of the principle of separation of powers, it was never anticipated that the legislature and the executive would work harmoniously on a continuous basis. There would always be frictions. Where you have human and individual factors, even in a family, there is bound to be conflicts. In the relationship between the executive and the legislature, there will be conflicts; the only problem is that sometimes we cast conflicts as intricately bad. Conflicts may not be bad, as a matter of fact, sometimes conflicts are necessary for progress to be made. If you have a collection of conformists, chances are that they will never make progress. Even if they do; it will always relate to an existing order that is sustained over time. For you to have innovation and progress, people must be free to disagree, and it is only in disagreeing that progress is made. When the legislature disagrees with the executive it is viewed as conflict, in most cases that is the interpretation. Conflict, however, can be a source of expression or release of energy that can lead to transformation. In the 8th Assembly we have had issues, certain issues that have pitched the executive against the legislature, and we will continue to have them. But the point is that as leaders, how do we interpret these issues? How do we overcome these issues in such a way that they lead to progress and advancement instead of retrogression? My own take even as I’ve said that these conflicts will continue is that the man who propounded the doctrine of separation of powers saw clearly through the lenses of time that these kinds of interface would take place. He invented another mechanism of checks and balances and he knew that if these departments of government, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary are separated in a water-tight fashion whereby they don’t relate, they don’t check each other, then the entire architecture of that system of government is bound to be static and there wouldn’t be progress. So, he invented the mechanism of checks and balances. For instance, if parliament conceives a measure, the Judiciary has no powers to stop it from exercising its functions. It’s only when they have exercised that the judiciary can now seize jurisdiction over whatever decision the Parliament has taken and pronounce it either illegal, unconstitutional or thereabout. At the same time too, the executive cannot adopt a measure that entails that the parliament shouldn’t do its work. In the same vein; if the judiciary is about to deliver on its job; the parliament cannot sit and say they are passing a legislation that alters the status quo or seeks to arrest the judgement. Our only interpretation of this separation of powers is that we should cooperate more as arms of government in the national interest, so that specifically we can deliver on the promises we made during the elections. Nigerians sacrificed a lot; it’s not been part of our history that the opposition defeats the party with the benefit of incumbency, the party that is in government; but it happened, so imagine the kind of sacrifices people made.

Taking your position as No. 4 in the hierarchy of national leaders, and you are one of the leaders in the APC government, by May 29, you’ll be two years in power, and by next year we will be approaching election year. Will you say that your party has not disappointed Nigerians?

I wouldn’t say that we have disappointed Nigerians. For you to come to that kind of conclusion, you’d have to take certain factors into consideration. Now what was it that we met on ground? What is it that we have improved upon as a government? And what is it that we are seeking to do? I guess it is after looking at the whole gamut of these issues that you’ll be able to arrive at the decision whether we have disappointed Nigerians or not. You can’t talk of disappointment in nature, that is a value judgement because it depends on the expectation; it’s only having an expectation that you can be disappointed. For me I can say that a lot has been achieved, even though unsung in most cases. In the context of our society, people want to see first-class roads and hospitals; they want to see the tangibles; but nobody places value on the intangibles. For us, that come from the Northeast, even some of us that live and work in Abuja, remember how dire this issue of terrorism was, we were all living on the throes of violence. The Nigeria Police Force headquarters here was bombed; U.N Mission here in Abuja was bombed; bombs exploded in Kaduna, Kano, Jos, in Nyanya as well and there was even threat of this mayhem being exported to the Southwest and other regions of this country. If you look at it we have exited from that. The biggest problem of democracy is that with violence you cannot take the benefits of democracy. Democracy as we practice: presidential democracy has three promises – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The number one responsibility of government is the security and welfare of the citizens. That was what our democracy was failing to do, the basic and constitutional guarantee of governance, and we couldn’t provide security. We have gone very far in trying to tackle this issue of insurgency. As a matter of fact, all hostile spots have been liberated. This government through various interventions has been able to ensure that the terrorists are not holding unto any spot of land. I believe this is one major thing that has given some hope to Nigerians, for the very first time that we are in a position to overcome this problem, and it is critical. Even if it’s for nothing else that our citizens in the Northeast zone down to Abuja can move around more freely than before, that is something. You can go to work and leave your family at home without exercising any fear that something may happen while you are at work or that your family is afraid that you could be bombed while you are at work, at least that is progress. Now if you look at the battle against corruption, some may say it is one-sided, but the good thing is that let’s start! And we have started, we are beginning to have results, and for the very first time public officials who even have the opportunity or window to misappropriate funds, the question that comes to their mind is: by the time I have taken this money, where am I going to take it to first, because anything could happen? So that to some extent has prevented people from engaging in the kind of looting of resources that we experienced in the past, at least sanity is returning. The economy was at a level whereby anything could have happened; it was heading south, no doubt about that. The only thing was that the signs were beginning to be apparent even though the conditions that later became the result of what happened were not there then; dollar wasn’t exchanging for N400; prices of commodities haven’t  skyrocketed; but they were just waiting for things to happen based on the fact that the price of the mainstay of our economy was going down and the fact that there was no savings and there was nothing we could do as a nation to earn forex, apart from just selling crude; virtually nothing we were exporting. So, the crisis was just waiting to happen, and we went into this crisis because there were no known preventive policies to apply, it was just the result of the choice we had made in the past, and no one could run away from them. So, I think progress is being made on several fronts. Of course there are issues we have not totally eliminated or dealt with – issues of kidnapping, sundry criminalities. Niger-Delta, thank God, through some mechanism of intervention we can begin to see peace, I think as at today, we are doing 2.1 million barrels a day, which is in line with our economic goals, so at least we are making progress. Progress is being made; a lot of people may not appreciate them, but the intangibles are really there; the fundamentals are very strong, very strong and robust foundation has been laid and I believe all that is left is to raise the structure and complete them, and I believe by the Grace of God, by the time we are done with the execution of this year’s budget, every Nigerian will now see the clear direction that we are heading to.

You talked about government having done well in exterminating terrorists, while government has done that, on the other hand, we have herdsmen ravaging almost every part of the country. I want your reaction to that. Again, some Nigerians think that there is corruption in the parliament; is there corruption in the House of Representatives? And the notion that the parliament cannot fight corruption without opening itself to public scrutiny by making public its budget and running costs. I remember there was a time you spoke of opening up the parliamentary budget. How soon can we expect this open parliament?

I know we have promised to open the books, and we will definitely open the books, certainly. I, however, don’t know in what form the corruption is said to be, but let me first say that parliament is not something that exists outside of Nigeria, and the issue of corruption itself is not something that can be eliminated completely out of any community, just like prostitution and other vices. But, what you can do is to reduce it to the barest minimum, to a level that is almost seen as non-existent. The advanced countries that we try so much to copy or speak so glowingly of what they have been able to achieve, it’s not that corruption has been eliminated 100%. We have seen this hydra-headed monster called corruption rearing its head even in elections of certain jurisdictions, clearly the signs are there, but our collective effort is that we reduce it to the barest minimum; anyone who thinks that he will eliminate corruption, I lack the English word to describe such a person. To eliminate it totally will amount to eliminating the totality of the human race. Because no human being is clothed in perfection, all we can do is to reduce it to the barest minimum. You can imagine a situation where we have the death penalty against vices like armed robbery, as you are shooting them somebody is busy robbing somewhere. So sometimes you can’t phantom the nature of the human mind, because you think that by the time you apply the maximum punishment, people will run away screaming if they catch you they are going to kill you. But as they are executing armed robbers, some people continue without care. Even when they are executing drug traffickers in some countries, more people are still doing it. So you see it’s a battle that we’ll continue to fight, there won’t come a day when Nigeria will sit and say: we have eliminated corruption, this is a perfect society, let’s work on. That is one notion we must discard. If we are ever going to achieve that, then there won’t be need for institutions like EFCC, ICPC, even the Police. They have been fighting crime since the age of Nigeria, but there are still crimes; so the National Assembly is not an institution that exists on its own, it’s part of the society and I cannot say you cannot trace any iota of corruption into the affairs of the National Assembly. Honestly speaking, there could be cases; but the point is when we discover them, they should be properly apportioned punishments not just to express dissent but apportion punishment that is appropriate, punishment capable of deterring that. And for us as per the issue of budget, we all know that the National Assembly does not command more than 2per cent of the national budget, budget for infrastructure, whether they are for bridges or building of hospitals, whatever it is, is not embedded in National Assembly budget. The entire 98% of our nation’s resources are not spent by the National Assembly, but by other arms of government. But sometimes our citizens focus on that less than 2% as if that is the bane of our progress in this country; as if, if we use the money for National Assembly Nigeria would just become an advanced nation. It bothers me a lot; where you have 98% resources, nobody bothers about it, or maybe we have grown used to it, that as a matter of fact, monies meant for housing, bridges, hospitals and agriculture can be misappropriated; but it’s just that 2% they give to the National Assembly that nothing must happen to it. I’m not defending the legislature; I’ve said if we detect corruption, we try as much as possible to apportion the kind of punishment that is capable of speaking loudly that we detest it and that we don’t want it to happen. For us, since we represent the people, we get their opinion and represent them here. The people have said they want to know what we do with the entire budget that comes to the National Assembly, it’s not a problem; we have directed the management, and hopefully with the 2017 budget, this issue will come to a rest. Each agency that draws from the money appropriated for the National Assembly has been mandated to bring its budget and at the end of the day, when we are done, everything will be published, I can guarantee that 100%. So we can end this discussion when people see it, even if we are getting it wrong in any section, we will not run away from wise counsel. This is how best to do it; because we want to improve on standards and improve on the image of the National Assembly. Some people even claim that the entire money, like now what we get is N115 billion, hopefully it will go up this year, I’m not too sure, but it’s N115 billion now that is given to the entire National Assembly and National Assembly is an arm of government. Some aggregate this N115 billion and divide it by the number of Senators and members of House Representatives and say that is what we take home as our allowances, they call it jumbo! Is that the case? They fail to look at the bureaucracy; we have over 3,000 people working within this bureaucracy who are paid salaries, claims and entitlements all from this N115 billion; the Senate President or Speaker doesn’t know what goes to them. Apart from that, we have the aides, each sitting member has five aides each, Senators have seven each; so multiply five by 360 and see the number of aides, then seven by 109. They draw their salaries, their trips and others from the budget. The last count made, when I was Chairman, House Services, we were  budgeting N12 billion for legislatives aides a year. Then we have the National Assembly Service Commission, it’s an agency not even here, they have their offices outside, unfortunately they don’t even have permanent structures, they are paying rent where they are; I don’t know the number of staff they have, but they also take rent and all from the N115 billion; we have like 500 staff, we have commissioners representing the six geo-political zones, plus the Chairman – all of them draw funds from here. Then we have National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), I’ll employ you to go to where NILS is building their headquarters, with a facility that will also serve as a university, go and see what they have been able to achieve; you’ll be shocked. The headquarters is being built by Julius Berger. NILS draws funds from this N115 billion and they will account for it as well. We are going to put it there in the press, what do they do with the money given to them? Then we have the Public Complaints Commission, they don’t have any provision in the budget except from the funds they draw from us; so they will account for themselves. Then we have the National Assembly Budget and Research Office just like you have the Congressional Budget Office in the US. Our goal is that they will be non-partisan in the analysis of annual budgets and they provide members with timely tools for debate and engagement across board with the executive when it comes to budgetary matters. Then we didn’t have them, but now we have them and they also draw funds from this N115 billion; so they will bring their budget and tell the world what they do with their money. At the end of the day when we publish these details a lot of people will be shocked, but it will be published. And I hope that will put paid to the perceived corruption in the National Assembly.

What about the issue of herdsmen?

For the herdsmen we have made it very clear and I think the President made it very clear that whether kidnappers, herdsmen or whoever is in the act of terrorism, they should be grouped as one; anyone wagging war against innocent citizens of the country must be dealt with squarely as if he is a terrorist, even if he is not one. I don’t see the distinction between whomever that is waging war against Nigerians or unleashing terror on innocent Nigerians, it doesn’t matter their description. Unfortunately what has not helped this issue is the fact that we have an extensive border. If you look at it, how many Customs and Immigration officers do we have? If they were able to join hands and line up across our borders, they wouldn’t even cover a quarter of our borders. And most of these people coming to unleash terror on Nigerians aren’t Nigerians themselves. So these are serious security challenges that would be met with the same kind of force shown against Boko Haram and other terrorists.

The Senate resolved that the Comptroller General (CG) of the Nigeria Customs Services was not fit to be in office and came out with an interesting phrase to write the House of Reps to make it binding, what is your take on this? How comfortable is the National Assembly with the level of compliance with their resolutions by the Executive?

On the resolution concerning the CG of Customs, whether the House is on the same page with the Senate or the Executive, I can’t speak for the House. The House will have to speak for itself through a resolution of the House, but one thing I have to say is that we walk closely with the Senate and if we don’t do that, we won’t achieve any progress as an arm of government. The reason being that in a Bi-cameral legislature an issue that dies in one Chamber is almost automatically dead in the other Chamber. And if we do not find a common ground to work with the Senate it means so many measures will either stagnate or die at the level of the National Assembly. I believe that the matter relating to the circumstances that led to the Senate’s decision may come up on the floor of the House and I cannot pre-judge what the outcome of the debate will be, if I do that, it wouldn’t even be fair and it won’t be right for me to preside over it. Could it be that the Senate is misinterpreting the law? You can speak to some lawyers or some Judges on the matter and then render your own opinion. Now, the whole issue that gave rise to this conflict was that the CG should appear before the Senate in uniform, to talk about issues surrounding the policy of collecting duties on cars purchased even long ago. The only thing was that he should appear in uniform and then the CG said no. I need legal advice as to whether I must wear the uniform or not. Now can I ask you what the view of your paper on this is? Not what the Senate is saying, but what the law says about the CG wearing the uniform or not? If we continue to have these kinds of debates, we may not even have to engage in the kind of fights we have in parliament because by the time all the newspapers come up with their opinion, a lot of people will now know and be educated and know the position and it saves this institution from clashing. So you have to look at all these issues before you come to a conclusion. As far as I am concerned these are mere distractions; they are not supposed to be; the main issue is delivery, what is it that we are delivering? That is it. But for a decision to be made in line with what the Senate proposed to the House, you can only wait till the matter comes before the House and that decision will be taken and Nigerians will know.

On whether we are satisfied with the level of compliance with our resolutions, the answer is no, and that is why in the last House we established a committee known as the Committee on Legislative Compliance. The essence of that committee is to seek to compel compliance with resolutions of the legislature and the committee is working; it has a record of the resolutions that have been complied with and resolutions that have not been complied with. And for those that have not complied with the resolutions of the National Assembly what we are trying to do is to give the committee more bite. They will move a motion on the floor of the House specifically that will indicate that these are the numbers of the resolutions we have passed, these are the ones that have been complied with, these are the defaulting agencies. Through the mechanism that is in Section 88 of the Constitution, the parliament as a whole can then empower the Committee on Legislative Compliance to then summon all those agencies that have not complied with the resolutions and ask them why, and as to whether sanctions cannot be applied provided for under the Legislative Powers and Privileges Act. So it’s something we are aware of and doing everything possible to ensure that there is more compliance with the resolutions of the National Assembly through the instrumentality of that Committee.

Mr. Speaker one of the issues that continue to worry Nigerians is the issue of local government autonomy, with NULGE insisting that as far as they are concerned there should be autonomy for the local governments, a situation that has completely eroded development at the third-tier of government. Is it possible that under your leadership, there could be an amendment of the Local Government Law to ensure this autonomy is attained?

The current system is not working, and if we keep sticking to it and expecting it to work someday, I don’t know who termed it as the very definition of foolishness, for you to keep doing the same thing and expect different outcomes. It has become a system whereby some have constituted themselves into middle men along the lines; they grab the resources meant for the development at the grass root and appropriate it the way they deem fit. And there is a twin evil, that of state independent electoral commissions that gave birth to this; it is a total mockery of democracy for elections to hold even in the local government and you say one political party won all the seats. I have never seen where democracy is mocked like in Nigerian local government elections. So, I don’t know how we can continue to mock ourselves, that we are practicing democracy at the third-tier of government. We all know the reason for the insistence that one political party will win all councillor and local government chairmen seats, so that at the level where the middle-men are hijacking, not all the middle-men though, there would be no single voice of descent, they are all my boys. We know why this system will not work as long as it provides the resources at some level and these resources are being misappropriated, then it won’t work. And this is the bane of development in Nigeria, if we have more money, assuming we are able to clothe local government with autonomy, it will improve the pool of quality leadership at that level, and when you have quality leadership at the local level, the resources going there can better be managed. And at the end of the day we can have an oasis of prosperity in the desert of nothingness instead of all our people migrating to the cities; they will be able to find some kind of prosperity at the local level that can sustain them. Sadly in the Constitutional review, because the whole problem is in the provision of the Constitution, to reflect this in the Constitution, we did that in the last House; unfortunately it didn’t scale through and we all know the reasons it didn’t scale through. If care is not taken it will still not scale through. It will take a general resolve from Nigerians, from media, journalists, civil society organizations, civil based organizations, from the Local Government staff themselves to insist on their state assemblies that when this Bill is submitted to them, that they must pass it. If that doesn’t happen, I’m telling you just forget about the three-tier of government, because we don’t have anything at that tier and nothing good will come out of it, because it has failed. And when we do this we will be able to free members of the State Assembly from the near stranglehold control of the governors.

What is the current status of the PIB? What informed your recent push for the reduction of prices of petrol and kerosene?

The PIB has gone through first reading; we’ve had to segment the Bill because we used to lump them together, but in most cases, some issues are pulling against each other and so much interest; so we want to deal with the regulatory sector of the entire sector first of all, we believe that we can get this one done because there are no much controversies. After we are done with the regulatory aspect of the sector, we can now move to the operational aspect and to a reasonable extent, I am convinced that we’ll be able to get the job done before the tenure of this present National Assembly lapses. On pushing for the reduction of prices of petrol and kerosene, well we all know the importance of these products to our people, when prices of petroleum products go up; prices of virtually everything go up. And kerosene you know is the major fuel in most families, so we cannot over emphasise the importance of these two key products. There was a motion on the floor of the House and we set up an Ad-Hoc Committee to look at all those issues.

There’s the assumption that you can’t visit your state, Bauchi, as you are on exile; that the relationship between you and your governor is not cordial because you are eyeing 2019. It’s not out of place, what is really the crux of the matter? Why are you not working in harmony with your governor?

On this matter I can give you a straight answer that I am not on political exile anywhere; I can go home any day, anytime that I like.  I went home in December and very soon I am going home; so I want to use this medium to announce to everybody that I am going home, for those who think I am already on political exile that is not the case at all. As a Speaker, you know that virtually every week, members are having functions, and I have to be there every week; so it’s not easy to escape from those schedules. You need to fulfil your obligations to members and work closely with your constituency; but it’s something that is always in my mind, my constituents are very close to me and I am close to them even though I can’t be there every day, otherwise I won’t be the Speaker; the Speaker has so many other responsibilities. On my relationship with the governor, I don’t think anything has prevented me from working harmoniously with him, maybe he should be asked the questions. For me, he is someone I supported. Everyone in the state knows, if it was not for very few of us, with all modesty I can say this, God uses people and God used us to put him where he is and we will be fools if we use the same hands we used in building him to this position to destroy him. Having said that, it doesn’t mean we will agree to work where we have no agenda. What bothers me is the people that we sold this agenda to, and I know how politically sophisticated Bauchi State is, it is one of the most politically sophisticated states in Nigeria. Since 2007 you can hardly rig elections in Bauchi, if you win elections in Bauchi, you have won it. So, you can imagine the sitting 2007 governor wanted to be a Senator and he didn’t win. He won in only one local government out of seven. The immediate past governor, having governed for eight years wanted to run for Senate and won only one local government. So for us who are members of the political class, that is like a red flag warning, that you must perform. Even though I will never engage in confrontation with the governor, I will never support a situation where we are not delivering the goods. That is just where the problem is, it doesn’t matter. Anybody who is delivering, who is fulfilling is my wonderful person; but if you are not doing that, I cannot be party to it, so that when the destruction comes as it is certain to come, I will be excluded.