A vote for independent 8th National Assembly

In the past few weeks the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has engaged in intense search for new leadership of the nation’s bicameral legislature, the 8th National Assembly that will be inaugurated in June. The party appears to have arrived at a consensus on which zones to produce the next Senate president and speaker of the House of Representatives.

There is no contention about the role of a ruling party anywhere in the word in the determination of principal officers in the parliament. We are aware that anybody who contested and won election on a party’s platform must abide by the decisions of that party which is supreme.

To that extent, we agree with the view of Itse Sagay, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), that you cannot win an election on a party platform and then decide to go on a wild goose chase, or become a misguided missile. “No, it does not happen that way. Any disciplined party member must abide by the rules of that party. There are leadership decisions that must be carried out, otherwise the party will collapse.”

Zoning is a party’s matter; it is neither a Senate nor a House of Representatives’ matter. This is to ensure that a ruling party does not begin to have an opposition in the legislature that is under its (the party’s) control. But we strongly canvass that the legislators must be allowed to vote for the best candidate that they think will lead them more properly and more efficiently.

In our view, a rubber-stamp National Assembly emerges the very moment the executive shows interest or manipulates the formation of leadership of the federal legislature. If we are going to have the promised “change”, it must begin from the selection or election of principal officers of the National Assembly.

It is therefore our belief that if we are going to have a clean 8th National Assembly, an independent legislature that will perform its own constitutional responsibility, the two chambers must be allowed to determine the leadership from the inside. Forces from outside of the NASS influencing decisions of leadership could be very detrimental to the country.

A few days ago, Aminu Tambuwal, speaker, House of Representatives, called for the autonomy of the legislature to enable it function optimally. Citing instance with his experience at the National Assembly since 2011, Tambuwal said, “Here at the national level, we have secured our independence; that is why both the Senate and the House of Representatives function with or without the cooperation of the executive arm of government.”

It is ennobling that some elected members of the National Assembly, on the platform of the APC, are already speaking up against any act of imposition of officers and have voiced their determination to withstand outside interferences in that regard. Ahmed Sani Yerima, a former governor of Zamfara State and deputy minority leader, was vehement that they would not want to be dictated to in the choice of their leader(s), saying that the senators might defy the party if the Senate presidency was not zoned correctly.

Shehu Sani, human rights activist and senator-elect, Kaduna Central, also said he was opposed to external influence in the selection of principal officers in the Senate.

It is also reassuring that Muhammadu Buhari, president-elect, the other day said he was not in any way trying to influence the choice of leadership in the National Assembly, saying, “I am prepared to work with any leaders that the House or Senate selects. It doesn’t matter who the person is or where he or she is from.”

The president-elect also reminded Nigerians that the much-expected change had truly come and it would not be “business as usual”. “Nigeria has indeed entered a new dispensation. My administration does not intend to repeat the same mistakes made by previous governments,” he said, adding, “There is due process for the selection of leaders of the National Assembly and I will not interfere in that process.”

It bears mentioning that legislative oversight over the executive encourages checks and balances; it enthrones fiscal discipline, good governance, accountability and transparency in public offices. It promotes accountability in government through enforcing efficiency and cost effectiveness in course of generating people-centred policies and programmes necessary to address the numerous challenges confronting governments at all levels.

We therefore urge the incoming lawmakers to strive to be independent-minded in choosing their leaders and resolve to serve the Nigerian people that gave them the mandate. Anything to the contrary would amount to a return to the square-one.