Rethinking The National Assembly

Lewis Obi

It took the distribution of exquisite luxury cars that cost N57 million apiece to members of the Senate to shock Nigerians from their slumber and resignation. To a great many Ni­gerians, the National Assembly has become like the malady without cure, which must be endured. Perhaps the nearly N3 billion spent on vehicles the senators did not need, at a time the nation could not afford it, might be the overreach that finally serves as the last straw.

It might not. But the “Occupy National As­sembly” protests which began earlier in the week was a signal that at last Nigerians are beginning to lose their cool and are starting to voice it out.

The demands of the protesters were modest: immediate resignation of the Senate President, Dr. Olusola Saraki; the return of the expensive vehicles by the senators; and the revision of the 2016 budget. In a real democracy, the stu­dents and others who staged the “Occupy Na­tional Assembly” would never have needed to protest. A senate president facing something akin to felony and perjury charges would not need a reminder to step aside. It’s expected to be automatic. The vehicle purchase by the senate was a clear case of abuse of power, a flagrant misuse of the constitutional power of the purse, and the senate cannot point to any country in the world where such a purchase would be contemplated much less executed.

Nigeria has never been a nation of pro­testers, a fact which tyrants have exploited to perpetrate all kinds of enormities in the military dictatorship era. Now the National Assembly has latched on the same theory to stand democracy on its head and to contin­ue to assume that Nigerians wouldn’t know the difference.

Senate Majority Leader Ali Ndume took on the protesters and was quoted in a newspaper as saying that no form of pro­test would force anyone to resign from the National Assembly because the protest­ers were not the people who elected them in the first place. The 107 vehicles would not be returned because they were meant for the senators to carry out their various committee assignments and the vehicles remain the property of the National As­sembly. On television Senator Ndume said that the National Assembly was the differ­ence between autocracy or dictatorship and democracy. In other words, take away the National Assembly and all you have is dic­tatorship.

Senator Ndume is never given to mod­esty and when he speaks Nigerians see a tyrant in democratic garb. The reason no form of protest would force anyone to re­sign from the National Assembly is because the National Assembly is not a democratic institution in the first place. With very few exceptions, the seats were bought and paid for in millions, sometimes, hundreds of mil­lions of Naira of dubiously acquired wealth which partly accounts for the desperation of members to claw at everything and use all kinds of machinations in their quest for wealth in order to retain their positions.

Senator Ndume assumes that Nigerians wouldn’t believe that the controversial ve­hicles purchased by the senate would be used for senate work. He is right. Nigerians do not believe most things said in the National Assembly. After President Buhari publicly declared his assets, Nigerians expected all senators, who are next in the hierarchy of na­tional leadership, to follow his example. But none did except the Honorable Shehu Sanni who is perhaps the only one in the senate to­day deserving of that distinction: ‘honorable.’ How are the leaders of the governing party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), wish to convince Nigerians that the party is leading in a fight against corruption when its senate lead­ers could not demonstrate the most basic ex­ample of personal integrity by publicly declar­ing their assets? If President Buhari is leading, who is following? Anyone?

The claim that the National Assembly is what makes this dispensation a democracy is not only fallacious, it is also false. Yes, Nige­ria’s aspiration was for a national parliament that would truly reflect the country, and be a true representative of the people. Eric Hoffer must have had the assembly in mind when he wrote that “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventual­ly degenerates into a racket.” So the National Assembly as presently constituted is a con­clave of plutocrats by plutocrats for plutocrats. And it has been so for years.

Members like Ndume would wish to call their gathering a democratic one in the same manner that North Korea addresses itself as the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. Indeed, the one organization that constantly reminds Nigerians of dictatorship is the Na­tional Assembly. It operates like a cult, and has been that way because members had no faith in democracy. They had imagined the democratic experiment would soon fail as it did in 1983 after four years. Why not grab what you can while it lasts? And so for 16 years the National Assembly, the only par­liament in the world which has successfully hidden its compensations from the people it claims to serve, remained an enigma wrapped in mystery to the Nigerian people.

That is the opposite of democracy. So, to make hay while the sun shone, it decreed for itself compensation eight times more than that of its counterpart in the United States. Never mind that the Nigerian economy is less than 4% (four per cent) that of the US. It has re­mained the highest paid legislature in the universe. Thus, what the National Assembly members earn has no bearing to the Nigerian economy, which also explains their outlandish purchase of vehicles at a time 27 states of the 36 states of Nigeria are unable to pay the sala­ries of teachers and civil servants.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo who could claim to know the National Assembly more closely than most has been a crying in the wilderness. “When the guard is the thief,” he said of the Assembly some months ago, “only God can keep the house safe and se­cure.” Obasanjo is not perfect, but he is often a straight arrow and validates all the country’s fears about the National Assembly because he knows the beast.

The National Assembly reminds Nigerians of dictatorial impunity, abuse of power, graft and gross incompetence. Nigerians should be­gin to rethink the National Assembly because it is the antithesis of what a Nigerian people’s assembly would look like in a truly democratic dispensation.

Except Mohammed Sani Zorro and a few like him who reflect ordinary Nigerians, the rest are the fat cats of Broad Street who repre­sent only their kind. It might mean replacing the National Assembly with men and women chosen from labor unions, professional organi­zations, civic organizations, social institutions, civil society organizations, women’s groups, youth organizations, farmers, traders and other grassroots groups that would truly look like a democratic Nigeria.

*Mr. Obi,  former editor of the defunct African Concord magazine, is a columnist with the SUN newspaper (lewisobi66@gmail.com)