Ninth Assembly Will Pass All four Component of PIGB and Secure Assent —Senate leader, Yahaya

The Senate Leader, Abdullahi Yahaya, APC Kebbi North, in this interview with journalists speaks on the Ninth assembly and how the Senate will pass and secure presidential assent to the four documents of the Petroleum Industry Bill. OSARETIN OSADEBAMWEN brings excerpts.

 

The Medium Term Expenditure Framework has been released by the executive, suggesting that the 2020 budget will come out before the end of October and also an indication that the executive seeks to be on the same page with you on budget cycle. What is your take on this?

We have been on the forefront of calling for this. Immediately after we elected the presiding officers they also announced that one of the major things that the National Assembly is embarking on was to insist that the executive should present the budget.

The president of the Senate has also been on it for a very long time, saying that the executive arm of government should submit the budget immediately we resume from our vacation.

And we promise that if that is done we are going to see how we can get the committees to start work immediately so we can get the budget out before the National Assembly closes for the Christmas vacation. What this means is that we are determined to bring the financial year back to January to December.

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This is very important and very vital for an economy like Nigeria’s where at least about 60 per cent of economic activities are dependent on the direction of federal government expenditure and its expenditure patterns. If there is no certainty about the economic cycle of the government expenditure, businesses, households among others, nobody can really sit down and plan properly and you know businesses don’t like unpredictability.

If we can turn back the economic and the financial year to the normal January to December cycle, it will enable businesses to plan their operations. But when the pattern of government expenditure and duration cannot even be determined, then you have a problem there.

The economy cannot really move the way it should be. In addition to that, there are several other issues. You’ll find that over the years, there are certain times where we operate about two or three different budgets at the same time. That is not so good. It disorganises financial operations too, not only for companies but also for government too.

It also creates a lot of loopholes for a lot of corruption and lack of accountability can easily creep in. If you are operating in both the 2018 and 2019 budget at the same time when you have not even planned expenditure on so many lines on the treasury, what money is the treasury releasing, is it releasing money for 2018 or money for 2019?

You find out that you have so many kinds of unnecessary movement of finances and expenditure of government that is not in the interest of the public and it is not in the interest of the legacy that this government is trying to bring about. The Federal Executive Council has okayed MTEF, I am sure the executive has already transmitted it to the Senate. So when the Senate resumes, we should look at it and others as a matter of priority. After that, the president will present a budget.

 

Apart from seeking to change the budget cycle from January to December, one other issue is the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB). What’s happens to the bill?

The PIGB has been there since 2006, before the Sixth Assembly and it has suffered a lot. At one time it was a government bill submitted to the National Assembly and because of a lot of debate that has gone on and lack of clarity, particularly as it relates to oil communities and what part of the revenue should go to who and all these, it created a lot of problems the legislature could not resolve.

When the Eighth Senate came it said that for the ease of passage, the bill was broken into four: The governance bill; the financials; the community bill and all that. We tried that and were able to pass the governance bill, but it was turned down by the executive arm of government.

And a lot of the reasons for that were because of poor communication and the issue of trust between the National Assembly and the executive arm of government at that time. Right now we are trying as much as possible to bridge that gap to make sure that the executive and the legislature are on the same page. There is only one government and the executive involves both the legislative and the judiciary.

The government has to work together. This is the commitment of the President in the Ninth Assembly. He believes and rightly so, that we should build our trust together. We should trust the executive and the executive should reciprocate the trust as we do our job as prescribed by the constitution and they will do their job as prescribed by the constitution and if there is any conflict between us, it is Nigerians who will suffer.

Therefore, if there are differences we should meet to resolve those differences amicably instead of fighting ourselves in the media over these issues. Well are all elected to work and serve the interests of Nigerians we should come together and forget all other things and leave all other extraneous matter that brings discord. I think there is no way that if we are really sincere with ourselves that there is an issue that cannot be resolved.

 

In practical terms, are you saying the Ninth Senate will deliver on PIG Bill?

We are already working on it, in fact one of the things we are going to do is sit down with all the stakeholders in the petroleum industry; we will sit down with the people in the legal department, sit down and have a conference and examine the entire gamut of the PIG Bill.

What are the major issues that we need to resolve, we sit down and resolve them to the satisfaction of everybody. Then either they allow us to bring the bill as a legislative bill or they can take it back and bring it in as an executive bill and reach an agreement.

That is why the first thing we did when God brought us to the leadership of the National Assembly, we emphasized that once you are a member of the National Assembly, you a senator or member of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The partisanship and other dividing issues should be de-emphasised so we can sit down and work for Nigerians. That is how we are taking the issue in the National Assembly and in the Senate.

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As you resume on Tuesday, how soon are we expecting the list of the Senate committee members?

When the President of the Senate comes, on the first or second day of legislative sitting on our resumption the whole thing about the committee will be resolved. Recall that the committees have already been formed. In fact we do not need to announce it on the floor of the Senate; it will be published on the votes and proceedings because we have already completed work on it. We are only going to announce that it is there on the votes and proceeding with all the members of the committees.

 

Between June 13 and July 30th that you adjourned it was more of motions with no bills?

There are some bills. We did not present them on the floor, we kept them because by the time a lot of the bills came, we will do the first reading and then we will say take them to the committee. That time the committees had not been formed. So we kept the bills and said let us have the committees then we will bring the bills. When we are done with the first reading of the bills we will hand them over to the relevant committees that would now work on them for the second reading. There are a lot of bills that are there, but this time round we are going to have due diligence on the bills. We are going to depart from the way we were treating bills in the past.

Now any bill that comes is going to go through the first reading, it will go through a process whereby we will check whether there is a law on those issues, we look at what the bill requires to address or if it seeks to kill that law or to amend the existing law. We can advice the proponent of the bill to note that there is a law here, why not go for amendment to avoid the issue of rejecting of bills. We will subject the bill through all the necessary process so there will be a processing office where all the bills will be looked at in accordance with existing laws.

We will not just pass them through our own processes. While the bills are there, we will invite all the institutions related to the bill even before the public hearing to come and make their contributions to the bill. What has been happening before is that when we finish with the bill even after the public hearing, some people will go at the level when the President was supposed to assent to the bill, they will raise some objections.

You know, when the bill gets to the President he will call all institutions that are going to be guided by the law of the bill to say that there is a bill here look at it. At that point what happens is that there are certain institutions that would something which is not there, and because we were not engaged with them they will say it will harm the sector. At that point the President withholds his assent. For instance say the Central Bank does not fully agree with something in a bill, then they will advise the President against signing it. So why not engage the Central Bank and then tell the President that this position of the Central Bank is wrong because this is what we want to do and that objection to the bill is not going to be in the interest of Nigerians.