Democracy, social contract and the parliament

OVERSIGHT is a very crucial function of the Parliament. It is through this function that the parliament holds the Executive arm of government accountable. This function derives from the power of appropriation which is exclusively vested in the legislature. Sections 80, 81, 88 and 89 of the Constitution gives the National Assembly the powers over the application and deployment of  public funds by the executive arm. Under these Sections no expenditure can be incurred from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation without the authorization of the National Assembly.

There are other crucial functions that are performed by the National Assembly like receiving and addressing public petitions, confirmation of executive appointments and ratification of treaties etc. But basically it is through its oversight and appropriation powers that lawmakers attract the dividends of democracy to their various constituencies.  The most important bill that the legislature passes is the money bill. This is because the entire venture of politics is concerned with allocation of scarce resources of the society.  Politics therefore is the struggle to secure the authority from the electorate to legitimately allocate their resources. As soon as appropriation laws are made, the legislature follows up by ensuring that all approvals are faithfully implemented. This is the central anchor of oversight.

Any breach of the appropriation law is a capital offence which should constitutionally be accompanied with heavy sanctions, such sanctions sometime come in as impeachment of the executive head. Compliance and breaches are only identifiable after oversight is faithfully conducted. As the 8th House of Representatives progresses, we undertake this with all seriousness and I should tell you that we are respected by all ministries, departments and agencies of government.  We will continue to ensure that the right things are done in the process of implementing the national budget for the attainment of our common good, this is at the heart of the delivery of democracy dividend.

Apart from lawmaking and oversight, members of parliament are elected to represent the interests of the people in the legislature. In the House of Representatives, we have 360 constituencies in the country. Every constituency is represented by an elected member whose responsibility it is to speak for his people, protect and defend their interests and draw attention to their needs.

Representation in the House is on the basis of population while that in the Senate is proportional regardless of the size and population of the various states in the country. The House of Representatives is referred to as the house of the people and has the major function in the appropriation process due to its large number of members. In the House we represent the complexities of Nigeria and its numerous images have the opportunity to sit together and come up with their peculiarities with a view to arriving at a decision which is normally national. The fact that every part of the country is represented in the National Assembly creates the feeling and truly so that everyone is represented in the decision making process. The representative function of the legislature makes it a unique arm amongst the three arms of government.

The hallmark of constitutional democracy, is the enthronement of the people as the sovereign authority and source of the power of government. A constitutional and political reality ordained since the inception of the United States of America Constitution in 1787 and also re-echoed by the preamble of the 1999 Constitution on the now popular democratic concept of “We the people”. The provisions of section 14(2)(a)-(c) of the 1999 Constitution is trite that: sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority; the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government; and the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.

The above undeniable feature of social contract was emphatically on fore as from May 29,1999, when Nigeria returned to civilian rule after fifteen years of military dictatorship that started on December 31,1983. Thus, it is in the mind of all Nigerians that the democratic government bearing their ownership emblem as instituted through their votes, will in turn, attend to their numerous needs and expectations by means of articulate policies, projects and institutional frameworks that will address and alleviate their problems and challenges, which hitherto under a military dispensation is arbitrary, not guaranteed, subject to whims and caprices of the person in state house, and cannot be held to account or be accountable, except to military hierarchy.

In the face of the overwhelming expectations of the masses and teething problems of the new and fragile democratic government in the three tiers of government, the then Minister for Information in the President Olusegun Obasanjo regime, Professor Jerry Gana, in 2001, devised a development assessment scheme whereby that Federal Government will spotlight the infrastructural projects of all the tiers of government. It entailed, on the spot inspection of government projects with media teams from all the tiers to rate the relevance and value for money of the projects and determine the extent of the impact of the same as a measure of the “dividend of democracy”. That scorecard initiative after the inspection and visit to barely seven states, was frustrated and truncated by political controversies, but its catchword the “dividend of democracy” has attained regular usage in Nigeria’s political discourse”, therefore become a phrase in our political lexicon.

Lagos State House of Assembly at the inception of the democratic dispensation in 1999, initiated a Bill that will enable every legislator to attract a project in his/her constituency as a representative landmark in the state’s annual budget or Appropriation Law. The underlying object of that Bill is that the executive capacity and viable sensitivity to the basic appropriation tenets of “need assessment”, “beneficiary analysis” and “expenditure etiquette” is limited. Therefore, the representatives of the people who bear and share their needs together are better informed and more realistically attuned to the needs of their people. In essence, the legislators wear the very nagging and endless list of challenge shoes with their constituents and know the precise pinching spots of their needs.

• Yussuff is Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives and First Deputy Speaker, ECOWAS Parliament.