On Immunity and life pension for leaders of the legislature
Like a really bad breath that won’t go away, Senators at a two-day retreat on Constitutional Review organised by the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Constitutional Review in Lagos a fortnight ago, demanded immunity and life pension for presiding officers of the National Assembly after their tenure in office. According to them, presiding officers of the National Assembly such as President of the Senate, Deputy President of Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Deputy Speaker of House of Representatives should enjoy life pensions. The Senators also demanded that these presiding officers should also enjoy immunity from prosecution just like the executives, and to a lesser extent, the judiciary were enjoying it. The deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who is also the Chairman, Senate Ad hoc Committee on the Review of 1999 Constitution, stressed that it was necessary for the presiding officers to enjoy such benefits. According to him, “This has nothing to do with an individual. It is about the institution. Let us not politicise it. Nobody elected the Chief Justice of Nigeria but he enjoys pension….“But if we cheapen our own institution, so be it. Let us not make this a personal thing.”
We recall that last year the minority leader of the House of Assembly, Leo Ogor dropped a hint that “the legislature would soon sponsor a constitutional amendment to confer immunity on the Senate President and his deputy, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and his deputy, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).”
The logic of the legislature in making this proposal is simple. For them, if the head of the executive arm of government and his deputy enjoy immunity, the heads of the other arms should equally enjoy immunity. Obviously, and as confirmed by Mr Ogor, the legislatures are worried by what they described as the constant external influence and manipulations in the choice of presiding officers of the National Assembly. No doubt most of them view, and maybe rightly so, the trail of the Senate President as attempt by external forces to determine the leadership of the National Assembly. Their long term solution to the constant harassment and intimidation of the leadership of the legislature therefore would be to grant them immunity from arrest and prosecution.
That agitation isn’t new. What is new is the proposal for life pension for the presiding officers of the National Assembly. True, the nature and manner of the cases against the Senate President at the code of conduct tribunal and the forgery case recently institute against the leadership of the National Assembly and its bureaucracy by the executive point to the fact that forces outside the legislature were determined to impose the leadership of the legislator. This is expressly unconstitutional and runs counter to the spirit of separation of powers, personnel and functions of the arms of government. Clearly, there is a need for better appreciation of the role of the legislature in a democracy.
However, the solution to this problem does not lie in extending immunity to the leadership of the legislature. This would end up creating more problems in the polity than solutions. As we have seen over the last 16 years of our democratic experiment, immunity was taken more as a license and cover to perpetrate crime, engage in unbridled corruption and looting of the public treasury without fear or let. So great was the impunity perpetrated by elected Chief Executives that not long ago, there was a national outcry for the removal of the immunity clause in our constitution to allow elected officials face the consequences of their nefarious activities even in office.
Similarly, the proposal for life pension for presiding officers of the National Assembly is wrong, insensitive and even unconscionable. Just as a right activist postulates, it was improper for the nation’s lawmakers to think of ways of additional perks at a time the nation’s economy was bleeding.
We urge the legislatures to show maturity and love of country on these matters. We already have a problem with immunity and the huge cost of maintaining government or democratic institutions.