Abba Hamisu Sani
Africa-Press – Nigeria. Nigerian National Assembly is a bicameral legislature that comprises 109 Senators and 360 House of Representative members from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.
The 10th National Assembly was inaugurated on 13th June 2023 and will run its course until June 13th, 2027.
The red chamber of the National legislature is headed by Senator Godswill Akpabio as Senate President while the green chamber is headed by Tajudeen Abbas as the speaker House of representative
Nigerians have high expectations of these two chambers to make meaningful laws that will change the present situation of the country from bad to good interns of social amenities, food security, education, and health provision.
The leadership of the National Assembly is yet to be hundred days unlike the President and State governors that clocked 100 days in office on 6th September 2023.
Tinubu’s government Policies in 100 days
It was a coincidence that President Bola Tinubu reached 100 days in office while away in India attending the G20 summit. It was also the same day that the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal validated his victory in the February 25th general election.
On his first day in office which is 29th May Tinubu took a drastic decision of removing the fuel subsidy. This single policy created so much economic uncertainty among Nigerians particularly the poor as the prices of goods and services skyrocketed to a level beyond the reach of the major percentage of the Nigerian population.
Historically the 100-day tradition is the making of former American President Franklin Roosevelt, which celebrates his
Policy and governance The successes amid the making of an amid ravages of the Great Depression. This perfectly fits the need for a preliminary assessment of the direction of Tinubu”s administration given the poisoned chalice he inherited on all fronts from his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari.
The second policy initiated by President Tinubu’s leadership is floating the Naira in a bid to merge the official and the parallel foreign exchange market rates.
Even though these market-driven reforms have been lauded by economic experts, the world Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
But the gnawing socio-economic impacts on 133 million Nigerians that are multi-dimensionally poor , are life threatening .The Inflation is over 300 percent.
The Nigerian money ( naira) has been on a free-fall against the dollar; it exchanged for 950 naira to $1 at the parallel market recently. Evidently, the policy has so far failed to achieve the purpose for which it was designed to stabilise the market.
A move to reposition the economy inspired the setting up of a Presidential Task Force on the Fiscal and policy and Tax Reforms in August and forensic scrutiny of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)activities
The Apex Bank governor Godwin Emefiele’s suspension and prosecution for over 6.9 billion Naira (9,073,813.26 Dollars). corruption charge and equally the suspension of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa and his detaintion since 14 June this year for an offence that has not been made public are all part of Timubu’s renown actions within his 100 days in office
National Assembly as the law making body
The two chambers of the National Assembly as the highest law making organ in the country need to provide laws that will have direct impact to the general populace as Nigerians need to experience positive changes in all spares of life.
From the process that produced the Federal law makers leadership at both senate and House of representatives ,the National Assembly is perceived by many spectators as a robber stamp of the President Tinubu.
Although the 10th Assembly is the most cosmopolitan parliament in Nigeria since the return of Democracy in 1999 as seven political parties such as the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) with 59 seats,the main opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) with 36 seats,
Labour Party (LP) with 8 seats, New Nigeria Peoples’ Party (NNPP) 2 seats, Social Democratic Party (SDP) 2 seats ,All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) 1 seat and Young Progressives Congress (YPP) 1 seat all in the senate.
While at the lower chamber too, the story is the same unlike in the previous Assemblies were two Political parties dominate the legislative arm.
The need for the 10th Assembly to be proactive to avoid the past mistakes
During 9th National Assembly under the leadership of Ahmed Lawan as Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila as speaker of the House of representatives there were allot of legislation that was just passed to please the executive arm under the former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Serial approval for loans to President Buhari’s regime to pay salaries and defray overheads which was contrary to the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007. The Act, in Section 41, stipulates that borrowing shall only be for capital expenditure and human capital development, just as Section 44 (1) emphasises that the government must specify the purpose for borrowing and a cost-benefit-analysis should be attached to the request.
The failure to comply with these imperatives explains why the country’s debt stock of $10.3 billion in June 2015, two weeks after Buhari assumed office, had spiked to $40.06 billion by June 2022. The recklessness that underpinned this is overwhelming. The World Bank has warned that this debt profile is unsustainable in the long term. It will even be more with the $800 million recently secured for palliatives to the most vulnerable in the face of the imminent increase of hardship that the fuel subsidy removal imposed on the citizenry.
With constant fiscal deficits in the budgets and the absurdity of using 96.3% of revenue on debt-servicing in 2022, according to the World Bank, the 10th legislature should stop further loan approvals and help the government to look inwards
There are leakages to be blocked via legislation, while painstaking oversight is critical, and the recovery of public funds in private and corporate portfolios must be pursued. The country’s total stamp duty revenue, which is curiously a matter for conjecture, is being probed by the House. The money is still with banks that collected it on behalf of the government.
The need for effective oversight functions to attract revenue from the oil sector
In the oil sector, multinational corporations owe Nigeria royalties, taxes and other fees regularly. Their indebtedness stood at $6.8 billion in 2019, which is an anomaly highlighted in NEITI’s report. There is a verified case of $17 billion worth of stolen crude between 2011 and 2014 by some firms, which the government vowed to recover. Sixty government agencies failed to remit the 3 trillion Naira ( 3,799,873,200.00 dollar) they generated in six years, the Senate Finance Committee discovered in 2021. From every direction, the public treasury is being pillaged. It is a painful manifestation of the National Assembly’s woeful performance as the watchdog of public accounts, expressed in Section 80 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, which deals with powers and control over public funds and expenditure.
However, the celebration of 100 days in office by Nigerian politicians is an established norm since the return of civilian rule in Nigeria from 1999 to 2023 . Both the President and 36 state governors regard the first hundred days of their administration as the starting point of their policy and program implementation.
But Nigerians should see this as just the beginning of a journey of years as more needs to be achieved through good governance and judicious resource management to care for the needs of the electorate.
The legislative arm of government also should consider itself as a people’s representative not an extension of the executive organ as what Nigerians had experienced during the 9th National Assembly.
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