Why is the House fighting governors?

In recent times, altercations have filled the air between the House of Representatives and state governors. Why are the two arms at war? Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, examines the issues.

The House of Representatives has been at the head of a battle with the 36 state governors in recent weeks over the call for open governance. Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, called it #Open NASS, when he addressed the closing ceremony of the retreat for the management staff of the National Assembly in Kaduna, last week. The series of actions that followed can only elicit the question: Is the House fighting the governors?

Far from that, said the member representing Okitipupa/Irele Federal Constituency, Honourable Mike Omogbein. He told Sunday Tribune, that the House was only interested in setting the records straight.

“We are not fighting the governors at all. We are only keeping the records straight. It has become like the issue of a pot calling kettle black. Overtime, there has been a deliberate plot, a deliberate arrangement among the executive, both at the national and state levels, to blackmail the legislative arm of government. Unfortunately, the people that we represent do not know that we are the arm of government that really gives actual representation in a democracy. We are being blackmailed to discourage and prevent us from performing our constitutional responsibilities. So, it became pertinent to take these accusations back to the governors, more so when these allegations bothered on huge spending.

“It is sorry to note that the total budget of the National Assembly for 2016, the bureaucracy inclusive and all the other arms of the National Assembly, the Senate and the House of Representatives, was just N115 billion. The judiciary was around N85 billion. If you add these two and deduct it from the budget of N6.06 trillion, it will be glaring who spends the huge chunk of the national budget…

“The 36 state governors, from the information reaching us, take between N100 to N150 million monthly as security votes. But they are concerned with the paltry sums we take as running grants which their SAs and Ministers are also entitled to anyway,” the lawmaker said.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Yakubu Dogara, has never hidden his desire to get the local government areas freed of control by the state governors. He had spoken about this in a series of interviews and at the inauguration of the Constitution Amendment Committee of the House. And since the Speaker is largely seen as the face of the House, it would certainly not take long before the Bauchi politician and the House he leads lands in an open confrontation with the chief executives of the states.

That was to play out on Friday, April, 7 at the closing ceremony of a one-week retreat for management staff of the National Assembly, as Dogara came face to face with Governor el-Rufai. The meeting had produced sound bites that continued to dominate the airwaves all through the past week.

el-Rufai, while speaking at the closing of the retreat, challenged the leadership of the National Assembly to a debate on open government, saying the secrecy surrounding the budget of the legislature was not helping the system. He also declared that the public sees the National Assembly as a cog in the wheel of progress of the anti-corruption war.

“The National Assembly, the Senate in particular, is seen as fighting against the anti-corruption fight of this government. It is an image problem the National Assembly has to work on. There are many publications out there seeking that you make your budget public. Several publications are made on your salary. Even though I don’t believe them, we cannot defend them because the budget is not made public,” the governor said.

Dogara, who declared that event closed, did not shy away from handling el-Rufai, when he asked the governor to ensure that the call for transparency should be taken to all the arms of government. He said: “I will like to challenge him (el-Rufai) to champion this cause for transparency in the budgetary process from the National Assembly, to other arms of government. The judiciary first. We want to see clearly how chief executives of states… how they are paid. What do they spend monthly as security votes? And if they can publish what happens to local government funds under their jurisdictions, that will help our discussion going forward.”

Senate’s Majority Leader, Ahmed Lawan, who attempted to calm the nerves before Dogara took the floor, said the two arms of government must work together and ensure the delivery of dividends of democracy. He said that rather than engaging themselves over unnecessary arguments, all hands must be on deck to deliver to the people.

But the altercation between Dogara and el-Rufai had its preamble written, days before the Kaduna incident. In a recently widely circulated interview, Dogara had hit at the governors for strangulating the local government system, adding that their failure to allow local governments operate had escalated the poverty in the land.

The House had followed up that with the debate of a Bill seeking to empower the National Assembly to impeach governors and their deputies, as the case may be. That was a huge jolt that shook the governors. The Bill, debated on the floor of the House, on April 5, sought to repeal Section 11 subsection 4 of the 1999 Constitution to empower members of the National Assembly to impeach governors.

The Bill, sponsored by Honourable Gyang Pwajok (SAN), intended to give the legislature the right to remove a governor and/or his deputy. Pwajok, who represents Jos South/Jos East Federal Constituency of Plateau State, had told his colleagues: “The makers of the Constitution anticipated that, in the event of a situation of disorder or insecurity arising in any state which would prevent the House of Assembly from sitting, there should be no vacuum in the very essential work of law-making.”

Though the bill was eventually shot down by the House, the message had already been passed to the governors that the House could go for their jugular if the need arises. The fact that el-Rufai took the battle further by publishing his pay slips a few days after Dogara had thrown the challenge to the governors meant that the camp of the governors was not taking the matter lightly

el-Rufai, on April 10 in a statement by his spokesman, Samuel Aruwan, made public his salaries and security spending. The statement lectured the National Assembly, especially the House, on the need for transparency.

The statement read in part: “Our attention has been drawn to a challenge by Honourable Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, calling on Kaduna State to make public its security votes and local government expenditure. This challenge was thrown as a response to Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s request to the national assembly (NASS) to provide further details on the opaque N115 billion 2016 NASS budget. Malam Nasir el-Rufai welcomes this challenge as a necessary step to improve and strengthen our democracy and would like to respond as follows:

“The budgets of all state governments in Nigeria are detailed out and presented at least under the headings of: (a) personnel cost (b) overhead and, (c) capital expenditure. This is unlike the budget of the National Assembly which is a single line item of over N100 billion that divulges zero information or details. NASS can, at least, break down its own single line budget into the hundreds of line items that are detailed in every state government budget in Nigeria. It is disingenuous to respond to every request for transparency by casting aspersions.”

He also disclose that the Kaduna State government had, last year, published the budget of the 23 local governments in the state. He said: “On our part, the Kaduna State government has consistently made public all its budget details. In 2016, in an unprecedented step, the state published not only its own budget, but also that of all the 23 local government councils online on the www.openkaduna.com.ng website.”

The governor also disclosed details of his earnings by releasing his pay slips to show a net pay of N470,521.74, in the month of February 2017. He then gave the clincher: “The call to #OpenNASS is not a personal one. It is one which the leadership of the National Assembly owes to all Nigerians. It is therefore disingenuous for the Speaker to use state government budgets as the excuse for the opacity of the NASS budget. There is no state government in Nigeria with a budget nearly as opaque as that of NASS. In March 2016, this national assembly, led by its chairman, promised to provide a detailed breakdown of the National Assembly budget. Nigerians are waiting.”

In his reply to el-Rufai’s jab, Dogara, on Tuesday, asked the spokesman, of the House, Abdulrazak Namdas, to release his six-months pay slips, which indicated the monthly pay of the nation’s number four citizen. It was the first time the argument over an open National Assembly will go this far but the Reps believed that the decision was justifiable.

Namdas, who chairs the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, accused el-Rufai of misrepresenting facts about the House budget, adding that the budget does not take care of the 469 elected officials. He said the budget takes care of “salaries and allowances of about 3, 000 legislative aides and salaries, equipment and maintenance of about 5, 000 staff in the bureaucracy of the National Assembly.

“To continue to repeat the same call made three days earlier smacks of propaganda and cheap blackmail. Maybe, he will give further details of actual security expenditures at the appropriate time. It is most uncharitable to ignore the fact that the National Assembly is an arm of government, not a department in the executive branch. The budget of so many agencies in the executive is higher than that of the National Assembly, an arm of government.”

Claiming that the nature of NASS budget was not opaque as claimed by el-Rufai, Namdas said the National Assembly is on first line charge just like the judiciary and the electoral body, INEC. “Its (NASS) budget became part of statutory transfers, together with the Judiciary, INEC and others. You cannot find details of the Budget of the Judiciary and INEC in the national budget. It exists elsewhere. Of course, from 1999 to 2010, the detail of the National Assembly budget was contained in the national budget,” he added.

The last has definitely not been heard about this raging controversy, as more analysts are expected to join the fray on either side. As far as the debate continues, the search for an open NASS and open governance may not remain elusive for too long.