The ninth national assembly is a let-down, contends Josef Omorotionmwan

From the very beginning, our founding fathers realised that the concentration of too much power in the hands of one man or in a single institution is an open invitation to tyranny. They, therefore, introduced the Doctrine of Separation of Powers, which divided governmental powers into three branches with specific functions: the Legislature makes laws and policies; the Executive branch executes the laws and policies, and issues of interpretation are referred to the Judiciary. 

These divisions were, however, not made into a water-tight compartment. It was sometimes allowed for one branch to play the roles that ordinarily belonged to the other branches. For instance, to become law, any bill passed by the National Assembly must be signed by the President. When the Ministries and Executive Agencies make subsidiary regulations to ease the performance of their assigned functions, they engage in legislative functions.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria specifically states that no determination by the Legislature under the impeachment procedure shall be challenged in a court of law. Here, the Legislature carries out a function that ordinarily belongs to the Judiciary. 

Again, when the court strikes down laws validly passed by the Legislature and replaces such laws with remedial provisions, they engage in legislative functions. 

Essentially, the doctrine of Separation of Powers was not intended to create absolute independence but a situation of mutual interdependence among the branches of government. Nothing here vitiates the fact that no branch of government shall abandon the roles assigned to them. History bears eloquent testimony to the fact that any branch that fails to perform its functions and surrenders its powers to another branch in the name of cooperation destroys itself, the branch it is surrendering to, and eventually the country. 

A robust opposition is perhaps a panacea for government performance. This is one way of explaining how the Ninth National Assembly- particularly the Ninth Senate- shall go down as an Institution that was derailed by its success. The ruling party was just satisfied with having a comfortable majority in the Senate. It bundled itself and surrendered to the Executive branch in the name of cooperation. From the very beginning, the National Assembly surrendered to the will of the President on every issue. 

Year after year, when the Executive submitted the Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly, you could tell with relative ease how it would come out. It was invariably passed as submitted, except that they added their nebulous Constituency Projects. 

In other climes, the Appropriation Bill is nothing but Budget Estimates. The Executive submission could be dismantled, torn apart, and properly rearranged to suit the interest of the electorate. After all, the legislators are the representatives of the people.

That explains why the annual recurrent budgets performed at a 100% level while the capital budgets hovered around the 13% level. This meant that the government was on leave throughout the year – executing only the sham constituency projects scattered all over the country, with no value for development.

In the name of cooperation, all measures submitted to the National Assembly by the Executive were passed as submitted. On a few occasions, the National Assembly made some worthy amendments, which were ignored by the President. The National Assembly could not summon the courage to override his veto. 

The President kept dipping his hand into the Excess Crude Account as a slush fund for all forms of illegalities and they watched on.

The President today is accused of nepotism when all the nominees for all those appointments passed through the Senate. Thus, the Senate effectively reduced the Advice and Consent Procedure to total nothingness. They bowed to the will of the President while he ran the country as a Sole Administrator. 

Once he became a sole administrator, the President embarked on reckless borrowing – borrowing to finance fraud! And no one cared to check him because the National Assembly had abandoned its duty post. The idea of oversight had been tossed out of the window!

Better a confrontation than a cave-in! Where the Legislature cannot constantly keep the Executive on its toes, the nation is doomed. Cooperation is good but when cooperation between the Legislature and the Executive becomes excessive, it becomes an open invitation to conspiracy. As it is in other spurs of life, so it is in government. When politicians come out of a meeting and they are smiling and back-slapping one another, there is something wrong. They did not tell themselves the truth. A polygamist whose two wives suddenly become very friendly among themselves has cause to worry. His life is at stake! 

Fair is fair. It would be unfair to heap all our present predicament at the doorsteps of the Legislators. For one thing, they were operating on a faulty Constitution – a Constitution that was horridly put together from extracts from the two immediate-past Constituent Assemblies when the Abdulsalam Abubakar regime was beating a retreat from Government. The Reports of those Constituent Assemblies were self-succession documents of those who impanelled the Assemblies. 

Secondly, the Ninth Senate inherited a system that was already compromised to the extent that the Advice and Consent Procedure had become an exercise in fulfilment of all righteousness, reduced to a cheap process of “take a bow”. 

For instance, even where the Senate had rejected the nomination of Mr. Ibrahim Magu as the Chairman of the EFCC, President Buhari still retained him as Chairman in an acting capacity for his entire tenure.

Again, the President and his men have since found a way of maintaining that the Inspector General of Police does not require Senate confirmation in utter defiance of the Constitution. 

On balance, though, the stark reality is that the Ninth National Assembly did not scratch beyond the surface. It failed woefully. The government failed. We are all in this together. The people deserve the poor government they elected. 2023 probably resents the earliest opportunity for amendatory choice.

May the time fly faster! 

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada