By Fredrick Nwabufo
Former President Olusegun
Obasanjo is one person who has felt the sting of the avarice of the national
assembly. At different points, he described the institution in blackened terms.
Though the former president may hold a provincial grudge against the
legislature for ‘’obvious reasons’’ – the botched third-term agenda — the
institution is just as he has daubed it.
On November 26, 2014, at the book
launch of the late Justice Mustapha Akanbi in Abuja, Obasanjo evoked
pejoratives on the national assembly. He said it was an ‘’assembly of thieves
and looters’’.
He airbrushed the iniquities of
the legislature with a mural of disgust thus: “Apart from shrouding the
remunerations of the national assembly in opaqueness and without transparency,
they indulge in extorting money from departments, contractors and ministries in
two ways.’’
“They do so during visits to
their projects and programmes and in the process of budget approval when they
build up budgets for ministries and departments, who agree to give it, back to
them in contracts that they do not execute. They do similar things during their
inquiries.”
The senate president at the time
Ebora Owu spat fire was David Mark. The budget of the national assembly – a
single-line item — was N104 billion under Mark. In fact, when Mark became
senate president and invariably the head of the legislature in 2007, the budget
of the assembly ballooned from N66.4 billion to N104 billion in 2008. And by
2014, it peaked at over N150 billion.
On August 18, 2017, at the public
presentation of a book written by Professor Mark Nwagwu in Ibadan, Obasanjo
caught the ‘’bud’’ again. This time he described the national assembly as a
‘’bunch of armed robbers’’.
“It is even worse for the
national assembly. They will abuse me again but I will never stop talking about
them. They are a bunch of unarmed robbers,’’ he said.
“They are one of the highest paid
in the world where we have 75 per cent of our people living in abject poverty.
They will abuse me tomorrow and if they don’t, maybe they are sleeping. The
behaviour and character of the national assembly should be condemned and
roundly condemned.”
Bukola Saraki was the senate
president in 2017 when Obasanjo ‘’verbally assaulted’’ the national assembly.
The annual budget of the legislature was about N115 billion at the time, and
was a single-line item as well, until a few months after the 2019 election when
a breakdown was published.
From 2007, the budget of the
national assembly was kept in wraps like Pandora’s Box. No transparency, no
accountability.
In her book, ‘Fighting corruption
is dangerous: The story behind the headlines’, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former
minister of finance, revealed the intrigues, blackmail and backhand deals that
denote budget passage by the national assembly.
She said the national assembly
exceptionally added N17 billion to its budget of N150 billion before it agreed
to pass the 2015 appropriation bill.
On Tuesday, a report by Premium
Times asked President Muhammadu Buhari to beware that the 2020 budget passed by
the national assembly contains N264 billion fraudulent projects.
The national assembly under the
leadership of Ahmad Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila is yet to publish details of
its budget of N128 billion for 2020. We are back to the days of ‘’sour yore’’.
Plus ca change. Nothing really
changes here.
One thing is clear; the national
assembly is an institution which orbits around pecuniary concupiscence and
gluttony. ‘’Always hungry and always eating’’.
Besides the N128 billion budget
of the legislature, the president approved an extra N37 billion for the
‘’renovation’’ of the national assembly complex.
It is really puzzling. Is the
extra ‘’N37 billion’’ a backhand package to the national assembly for being a
good lapdog of the executive? Is it a token for compulsively being a rubber
stamp legislature? Or is it as Okonjo-Iweala described in her book?
On Tuesday, Gbajabiamila asked a
question to which he is the answer. ‘’Are we rubber stamp legislators?’’. Mr
Speaker should look in the mirror.
As a matter of fact, this national
assembly which is in bed with the executive as a consort is a great threat to
our democracy.
Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and
journalist.
@FredrickNwabufo
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