WHEN President Bola Tinubu recently hosted members of the House of Representatives to the traditional breaking of the Ramadan fast at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, he placed a request before the Speaker of the House, Honourable Yusuf Abbas. The president simply asked the lawmakers; ‘let my appointees breathe!’
Because the occasion was a moment of camaraderie, the message, even though weighty, and with serious implications for executive/legislative relations, was also dropped in a friendly manner and everybody laughed it off.
The president had said: “I have been watching various committees summoning ministers and heads of agencies. I have complained to the Speaker to let the poor breathe. Let these people do the job. We are not saying that you are not influential. We are not saying you cannot do your oversight.
“But consider the primary duty of each agency, its personnel, or the responsibilities of the Governor of the Central Bank or the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance to you and the entire nation.
“If they are distracted or disturbed, maybe we will shift parliamentary sitting all through the night. We must find a way to accommodate one another. This is an appeal to you. See if you can accept representatives in some instances or even documentations.”
The president’s remarks did not come strange to watchers of executive/legislature relations in this Fourth Republic, though. But that it is coming from someone, whose administration has enjoyed one of the warmest handshakes from the parliament, looked somewhat discomforting.
But President Tinubu has not spoken in isolation. His predecessors in office have also felt the urge to caution their appointees from listening to the parliament. It was a thug of war with appointees of President Olusegun Obasanjo, while the parliament had to take its activism to a certain height when it gave zero allocation to the Security and Exchange Commission under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. Despite having one of the most pliable assemblies to work with, in his second term in office, appointees of President Muhammadu Buhari had the lowest compliance rate to the summons of the National Assembly. During his first term in office, the Senate went on strike in April 2017 following the then president’s decision to side with two of his appointees -the then EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal in their face-off with the lawmakers. Again, during Buhari’s second term, when the ministers and appointees were allowed free reign, the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan had to beg the president to mandate his appointees to attend budget defence sessions in the parliament.
It is usually the same trend. The lawmakers are seriously courted before the appointees are screened and confirmed. They received delegations upon delegations crawling to their homes and offices and pleading for mercy during the confirmation exercise. But as soon as the chamber draws the curtains on the confirmation exercise, the presidential appointees would be like, ‘May we never meet again!’
The ministers and other heads of agencies always find excuses to evade summons of the legislature, many times in the name of attending to one presidential assignment or the other. When you dig deeper, you will discover that most of the appointees were only making excuses either to engage in personal rendezvous or avoid the “wahala” of the probing lawmakers. Of course, the summons must come with its uncertainties as well. They know that no matter how friendly the head of the parliament is to the executive, committee sittings are mostly no-holds-barred sessions and that journalists are always on hand to cover such sittings. Some opposition lawmakers would have packaged petitions and controversial inquiries and nobody would be on hand to stop the appointee from being taken to task. Not a few Ministers and appointees have been embarrassed at sittings of Senate and House of Representatives committees in the past. Most of the time, you will discover that many appointees who were “busy doing their job” would only spend half of the day in their offices and prefer to spend the rest half sitting out in the Villa, even when the president did not send for them.
While it is true that some Ministers work very hard to keep up with their schedules, I do not agree that parliamentary summons would distract any minister from the performance of his or her duties, especially when all the lawmakers are interested in are questions about the extent of service delivery in the ministries, departments, and agencies.
Even though we are running a democracy, which has generally been defined as the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, appointees into government and the civil servants that work in there believe that the more they keep their activities out of the public glare, the better. But that is strange, going by the fact not a few countries around the world are today signatories and acclaimed practitioners of Open Government principles.
Some of the key principles of Open Government include the right to transparency and access to public information; the right to reuse public information; the right to take part in public decisions; the right to renewal and democratic pluralism; the right to truthfulness and reliance on government and the right to a responsible government, to mention but a few.
If the above are some of the conditions that could guarantee Open and good governance, may we ask, which arm of government is best placed to see them through? I want to submit that save for the right to renewal and democratic pluralism, which an agency like INEC has to actualise, the National Assembly is best placed to guarantee all the other key principles.
Rather than fall for the usual blackmail of the National Assembly by his appointees, the president, as a former senator, himself, should help cultivate the democratic culture in our politicians and technocrats. He should help to end the culture of mute governance, which many appointees prefer and encourage the ministers and heads of agencies to appear as regularly as possible before the legislators. I know that the lawmakers won’t insist on having a head of an agency, who has genuine excuses not to attend to a summon.
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