‘Fire in the House’ over budget

THE relationship between the House of Representatives under the leadership of the Speaker, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal is yet to record the best of times with the Presidency. As the House went on recess, the mood suggested that the House leadership was perhaps facing a major test in its relationship with the Executive. In the face of the exposure of fraud during the probe of the subsidy on petroleum, the House is caught in a major crisis of confidence with the Executive.

Significantly, the emergence of Tambuwal as Speaker has been disregarded as a reason for the sour relationship between the lawmakers and the Presidency. According to a lawmaker, “the manner in which Tambuwal has related with the Presidency in the last one year has erased the impression of any sour relationship.”

For many lawmakers, recent events have pointed to the fact that “the honey is over, as we will now sit up and do our jobs.” Last week, many of the lawmakers rallied behind the issue of the implementation of the 2012 budget to register their displeasure with the Executive.

Days to the debate on the budget implementation, many lawmakers expressed anger with what they termed the “unyielding posture by the Executive regarding the budget.”

Although no mention had been made of any specific factors, there are indications that the official reasons include the fact that the House “simply wants to execute its legislative agenda.”

The agenda includes monitoring of budgets to achieve value for money and putting mechanisms in place to achieve best practices based on mid-term budget implementation review.

Also the House said that it will require the Executive to give a breakdown of progress in implementing the budget, including explanations of significant divergences between forecast and actual amounts.

Investigations show that many lawmakers believe that the Presidency is not relating well with the House particularly when compared with it relationship with the Senate.

A People Democratic Party (PDP) member in the House, who preferred not to be identified, said: “The relationship between this House and the Presidency at the moment is highly characterised by suspicion, caution and some levels of distrust. But we have on our own part tried to make things work better but as you know, it takes two to tangle. It is like the executive is not very comfortable with us in so many things but nothing is on the table for anybody to see.

“An obvious instance is the presentation of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). Apart from submitting it on a day we are going on recess, only three copies of the Bill were brought to a House that has 360 members. But we hear that about 200 copies were taken to the Senate with its 109 members.”

There is also an issue of alleged deliberate attempt by the PDP-dominated House to yield the floor for opposition parties in the House to hit at the Presidency.

During his last media chat, President Goodluck Jonathan mentioned that the opposition sees the National Assembly as the only place it could make itself relevant. His comment was based on the fact that the motion that resulted in his invitation to the House was moved by the House Minority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila.

Another PDP member from the South-South said that the impression was created that the Action Congress of Nigerian (ACN) controls and influences decisions in the House.

But the House in its legislative agenda had said that its decisions and resolutions on any matter would not be guided by political partisanship.

Meanwhile, the handling of the Farouk Lawan alleged bribery scandal was seen by some sections of the House as an agenda of the Executive tailored against the House leadership.

Spokesman of the House, Zakari Mohammed, repeatedly said that the way in which the matter was handled suggested that the Executive wanted to rubbish the image of the House and make the implementation of the subsidy report impossible.

In the meantime, the recent furore as the House proceedd on recess is linked in some quarters to allegations that the Presidency had not been forthcoming on the issue of welfare packages to lawmakers most especially as they were going on their annual legislative end of session recess.

But a member of the House Appropriation Committee, Chudi Nwazurike, simply pointed out that the House was just doing its duties as enshrined in the constitution.

He said:  “There is absolutely nothing like that. You cannot tell me that 30 per cent performance seven months into the year is something that you are comfortable with. Nobody is comfortable with it. I know we are in a land of conspiracy theories, so whatever we do even when we do not talk. If we sit down without doing anything, they would say that the Executive has bought them over.

“And when we raised our voices to do our function of exposing issues, somebody will say ‘oh they want to get something and so on.’ The issue is that the key aspect of the budget is still not being implemented. How are we supposed to keep quiet? Why won’t we be worried? I mean anybody can say whatever they want to say; that is just the nature of the process. But very clearly, the parliament has genuine issues at least in this particular respect.

“We cannot rule out whether some people are not ready to do this or not, but the buck stops at the desk of the President. The presidential spokesman said that the President is indeed in agreement with us. So the appeal, if that is what it is, is for him to know that we are very frustrated. Other things that we are entitled to should not be the issue.”

Although Uwazurike agreed that there was need for tough measures to be put in place by the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office before releasing funds for execution of projects, he did not believe that this should constitute a clog in the wheel of progress as far as budget implementation was concerned.

According to him: “There is no doubt about the fact that there are so many requirements as it were; there are international best practices as to distance between budget being appropriated and announced and the implementation of it. In Nigeria, we are talking of almost five months. That is way too long. In many other places it is just a matter of weeks and so on.

“I appreciate what the Budget Office is trying to do in terms of putting in place some controls and be sure that there is full capacity. Yes, there is a lot of corruption in the system, there is no doubt about that and to the extent that they are trying to monitor and plug these holes, I am not going to campaign against that. But the point has to be that the budget must be implemented. If we fail to implement like we have failed in the past, it does not help this country. So whatever is being done, we think they can be done and fast too.

“We had an interactive session with the Budget Office as well as the Minister of Finance and they explained some of these things. And we also pointed out to them how things can be made to move a whole lot faster; how they should make things more effective, straight to the point. You know it is almost like justice delayed is justice denied.”

The displeasure expressed by majority of members of the House during the debate on budget implementation last Thursday was a key indicator to the fact that there are more loose ends to the relationship.

Days to the debate, it was clear that there was no stopping the onslaught against the Presidency as many lawmakers had become very bitter and displeased with what they called unyielding posture by the Executive.

A chairman of one of the top committees in the House said, “a debate on the matter had become imperative so that Nigerians would appreciate the concerns of the House.

“We cannot continue to keep quiet because as we go on recess, the wrong impression might be created. The most important issue is checks and balances and we cannot enforce that without performing our oversight functions. Of what use is the oversight function when we cannot ensure that the budget is fully implemented.”

The urgency in the House as the debate commenced was unmistakeable. Lawmakers hastily concluded pending issues in the Order Paper to ensure that enough time was granted the discussion on the implementation of the budget. Some lawmakers even threatened to sanction the leadership of the House should there be an attempt to prevent members from expressing their views on the issue.

The Chairman of the ad-hoc committee that conducted the investigation into the Capital Market, Ibrahim el-Sudi traced part of the discord to that investigation. He told his colleagues that the recall of the suspended Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Arunmah Oteh, was meant to jeopardise the investigation. El-Sudi noted that the Executive ought to have waited for the outcome of the investigation before taking any action.

In the heat of the debate on the implementation of the budget, lawmakers accused Jonathan of breaching the 2012 Appropriation Act and a poor implementation of the budget. President Jonathan was therefore given up to September to achieve “100 per cent execution” of the budget or face impeachment proceedings. The argument that ensued almost produced a round of uproar in the House.

Matters took a turn when Gbajabiamila, advised that an impeachment process be initiated against the President for allegedly failing to implement the budget.

Gbajabiamila said: “It is my suggestion that by September, if the President continues to fail to comply with the provisions of the Appropriation Act, we should begin to draw up and invoke the article of impeachment.”

But Karibo Nadu, who represents Ogbia Federal Constituency in Bayelsa State, drew attention to Order 9 of the House Standing Rule, which states that members must during debates restrict themselves to the subject matter of the debate.

According to Nadu, the issue for debate was the implementation of the budget “and this has nothing to do with the impeachment of the President.”

Tambuwal sustained the point of order raised by Nadu and cautioned against further references to impeachment. But the Speaker’s ruling failed to stop suggestions of impeachment as Gbajabiamila submitted that the House was empowered by the constitution to impeach the President.

Curiously, many members of the House, including members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) applauded Gbajabiamila.

The Minority Leader accused the Executive of allegedly breaching the Appropriation Act 2012 by engaging in “selective implementation” of the budget.

Gbajabiamila added: “What we have in our hands today is a budget of abracadabra; a budget of voodoo economy. I like Mr. President; he is a fine gentleman, but I like my people, the Nigerian people more.”

The original motion, which was moved by the Chairman, House Committee on Rules/Business, Mr. Albert Sam-Tsokwa, sought an interface between Jonathan and the leadership of the House on why it had been difficult for ministries departments and agencies (MDAs) to implement the budget.

As the debate raged, lawmakers amended the motion, saying that a meeting with the President was not necessary. Another amendment to the motion advised Jonathan to direct the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to “stop forthwith” the violation of Section 6 of the Act.

The amendment, which was proposed by the Chairman, House Committee on Works, Mr. Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, demanded the immediate release of all the funds earmarked for projects in the first and second quarters of the year. He said it was a breach of the law to hold on to funds budgeted for projects.

Author of this article: From Azimazi Jimoh Momoh, Abuja