What is your pressure group doing about an alleged plot to impeach the Speaker, Honourable Yakubu Dogara?
Well, we keep hearing about it. They are those who still believe that anything is possible even after losing out in the speakership election. These are people who don’t believe in God, who don’t believe that only God gives power. And when God gives power, there is nothing that anybody can do about it. So, at every interval, at every given opportunity, when there is any crack in the House, they are always waiting in the wings to make mischief. Since Hon. Dogara’s election, up to this moment, when we have only a few months to go as the eighth National Assembly, some people still want to be Speaker. Dogara has not failed us. He has demonstrated capability. He has demonstrated legislative experience, knowledge and courage. I don’t think his opponent would have done better than him. More legislators are on his side, especially those who didn’t vote for him. They feel that they can perpetrate illegality in the National Assembly.
As I said earlier, some people are just waiting to capitalise on any crisis, any eventuality and any loophole but you don’t become Speaker like that. This is not a state House of Assembly where there are 24 members and then the police would arrest 16. How many policemen would arrest 360 people? How many policemen would arrest 109 senators? We were elected; we have people who are supporting us, who take critical positions anytime we go wrong. They criticise us and we accept it. So, people don’t hate us; they support us. They voted for us; we didn’t come from heaven. So, if anybody thinks that it is the police, or security, that would make them Speaker or Senate President when their peers, their colleagues have rejected them for the post, then it is daydreaming. Let me tell you, even if security agents impose a Senate President, he would not last one week. He would have to go to his house or the APC secretariat with that Senate President seat; he wouldn’t dare coming to the chamber the next day because all the senators who are in the majority will beat the hell out of him. So, those who are contemplating such a thing should perish the thought. They can’t do it in the Senate where they have 109 members, not to talk of the House of Representatives with 360 agile young men [and women]. It will not happen. If they come up with a motion for the impeachment of the Speaker, we are not only going to resist it, but it is going to be fire-for-fire. Just watch out.
Will it be correct to say that there is crisis in the House of Representatives?
Absolutely not. There is no crisis because there are people who understand the workings of the legislature. Even if one or two persons try to create crisis, they get support from outside, from the executive. That is what they usually depend on. It is their source of strength. They cannot do anything within the House because this is a place where decisions are taken by every person; the Speaker does not take decisions alone but together with the Senate President and then they extend them to the members for approval. He always tables issues and we debate and agree and disagree on so many things. So, if you say that you are in the leadership and you are not satisfied with things and you cannot voice your opinion and you go about instigating a few members of the House, such a person cannot lead the House.
You said there is no crisis in the House as a whole. Are you saying only the All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmakers are the ones fighting among themselves?
Yes, there are only APC issues. We don’t have any crisis in the House. Even when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost people to the APC, there was no crisis. The Speaker just allowed everybody based on the uniqueness of their political environment. He didn’t declare the seats of those people vacant even when the PDP members insisted that he must do so. He said no. Is that not something that should be cherished by the APC and the Presidency? He is increasing the rank and power of the APC in the House, yet they are undermining him. They have refused to acknowledge his importance in the House. But the President does not have a vote in the National Assembly; neither does the Vice President or even the APC National Chairman. So, I don’t know why they always want to push. You can only push using the security agents but the security agents also do not have a vote. The National Assembly is not a ground for any kind of behaviour. With its size and its bicameral nature, it is not possible for any president or political party to pocket the National Assembly as the APC is trying to do.
So, you are warning against any thought of bringing any motion of impeachment against the Speaker when the House reconvenes?
They cannot even bring any motion because it would amount to brigandage. Look at what is happening in the Senate. They should have waited till after the recess. Do the DSS and others have a motion to make in the chamber? They said they had a list of senators that should be allowed in. That happened in daylight. It is a disgrace to Nigeria. We claim to be the continental democratic giant. Any small thing in Togo, we will rush there to reinstate democracy, yet, we cannot obey simple rules of law. We cannot obey simple rules of democracy. You think any country can respect us if we pretend to solve their democratic problems? We would love our integrity. The president would lose his integrity if he allows illegality to continue here because it means that no country will respect him. You can only give what you have.
I am happy that President Muhammadu Buhari is realising this. I am happy that the president is coming to terms with this reality. They are pushing him, those who surround him but thank God he sacked the DG of the DSS. Only God knows what would have happened. God saved us that day, if not, there would have been bloodshed. These people would have killed people because they came with their faces masked. They would have said those were not Nigerian security agents. The DG-DSS would have said he didn’t send anybody there, just like the police said they didn’t send anybody to Senator Bukola Saraki’s house. So, who were the policemen that came? We have not heard anything. The IGP has not said these were fake policemen. Who were those policemen that came to Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu’s houses since they said they didn’t send anybody? Where were the policemen from? This means all of us are in danger. It means everybody, including the president, is in danger, because fake policemen will just take over this country and that will be all. The same police uniform, the same cars, the same number of the Nigeria Police and they moved to the federal capital from whatever country they came from. They moved into the city centre without our policemen tracking them, and you think democracy should accommodate something like this?
Why have the two chambers of the National Assembly not reconvened as being agitated if their leadership is not afraid of possible impeachment?
It is blackmail by the presidency and the APC that we are finding it hard to reconvene now. Has the National Assembly ever asked the Federal Executive Council to reconvene? Even when we passed the budget in the National Assembly, did we ever ask or direct them as regards the date to sign the budget. We are the number one arm of government. The fact that they have the money in the executive – they control the money, they control the security apparatus – should not make them think they are above the law. We are the only symbol of democracy. For the fact that we respect the principles of checks and balances and separations of power, they should respect us. They can’t tell us what to do. We declared a recess on our own. We didn’t seek permission from them. So, we can reconvene any time. Is the election taking place today? Is the election taking place this month? Are 2019 elections taking place in December? So, what is their hurry?
But the executive is expressing fear on the passage of the 2019 election budget of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
So, are they just waking up? They knew there was the need for preparations for the 2019 general election and then they couldn’t bring the budget of INEC together with the main budget of 2018. You think they don’t know what they are doing? It was a deliberate attempt to blackmail the National Assembly, to add to the crises that they have deliberately created. I am the chairman of the House of the Committee on Legislative Budget and Research and I have been asking why they couldn’t bring this thing. This item, it is not like we are doing election this year. Well, maybe they want to spend it through the service-wide vote, which will also be illegal because everything that will be spent must be legal. What will be spent from the service-wide vote is supposed to be purely on security matters. That should not concern any specific line item that is known. The election is a line item that everybody knows that will take place so, we don’t need a secret budget for it; we need an open budget for it. They did not bring it. When we were about to go for recess, that was when they brought it. We have our calendar; nobody can decide for us, what we should do.
You say you are bringing a supplementary budget. Fine. We can sit down and discuss it even during public holiday, just like they called us, we members of the electoral committee of the two chambers. We came and sat on it. We are working on it now. Why the haste? The purpose is not for us to come and do this budget thing, because if it is an emergency to them, they would have rushed the thing. They want to come so that they can remove the leadership of the National Assembly. That is their plan. They want to come and achieve something else and use the fact that they are on holiday and so more people would not have be on. But they were surprised most of us in the House of Representatives were on ground. We are waiting. We are everywhere doing monitoring so that we can see what will happen. If democracy cannot be protected by law then it should be protected in physical terms. We will be there to protect it since they don’t want to use the law to achieve what they want to do. They want to come physically and they will meet us physically at that place.
Given all that are happening, do you think there will be a general election come 2019?
I believe very strongly that there will be elections. Nobody can stop the election from taking place. Those who are afraid of the election can quietly stay away. This country belongs to God. The whole world is in the hands of God, the Creator. If anybody is looking at it from their own calculation, God will disgrace them.
and then