Nigerian lawmakers, because of their antipathy towards laws put in place to guide their behaviour, are often derisively dismissed as law-breakers by Nigerians who believe they are out only to serve themselves and not those they represent. We didn’t need to search far for evidence. Our lawmakers so far have not tried to invalidate the claim by well-informed Nigerian opinion leaders that lawmakers in breach of the constitution and the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission’s (RMAFC) salary ceiling for lawmakers awarded themselves outrageous monthly salaries of between N20m-N30m in a nation where many states cannot pay the N30,000 minimum wages. Nigerian lawmakers have since acquired the unsavoury reputation as the highest paid lawmakers in the world with the influential London Economist in 2013 ranking Nigeria as “the country with the most unjust and lopsided pay structure in the world”.
Beyond humongous salaries they are allegedly paying themselves, it was obvious from RMFAC published details of the remuneration package for political, public and judicial office holders, that lawmakers are not entitled to operational vehicles, but an optional car loan of between N7.9m and N8.1m for each lawmaker. But the senate in spite of this went ahead to spend N4.7 billion on Peugeot 508 saloon cars for themselves in 2015 and similar amount on Toyota Camry saloon cars in 2020. If Nigerians are outraged with the 10th assembly’s N160m financial frivolity on “operational vehicles” for each of its 469 members, at a period when Nigerians are experiencing economic pain, it was because the action was considered insensitive and treacherous.
First, this was at a time the voters on whose back the lawmakers rode to power are unable to go to work daily because of increase in cost of transportation as a result of fuel subsidy removal. It was a period of an ongoing government negotiation with Labour in order to prevent a general strike and a lock-down of the economy. It was also at a time the government was desperately trying to work out palliatives in form of money transfer to some thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable in the land.
With the naira in free fall against the dollar, many believe the time is most inauspicious for legislators to spend our scarce foreign exchange on importation of toys when we have local brands such as Innoson, Nords, Pro-Force and others producing high-end vehicles, including SUVs currently patronized by some state governments in the country. As one local manufacturer puts it: “The National Assembly buying foreign-built vehicles at this time is dispiriting especially when you consider that we are all trying to promote buy Nigeria to grow the Naira”. “Exporting jobs by ordering from foreign brands instead of local brands” as the Centre for Social Justice also recently observed, many believe is a crime against the nation.
But if you ask me, I will say the antics of our lawmakers; their betrayal and corruption are but symptoms of greater malaise assailing our nation. We are probably expecting too much from our lawmakers who unfortunately cannot give what they don’t have.
The military destroyed our political socialization process and when finally forced to step aside after almost 30 years, what was bequeathed onto us was a military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians that behave like army of occupation groomed in the art of sharing loot of conquered territories.
It was therefore not an accident that within three months of coming to power in 1999, the new government and legislature populated by retired Generals and other ranks and their business fronts came out with petroleum importation policy through which fuel import licenses were allocated to over 100 companies fronting for them. A House probe was to later confirm the theft of about N1.7t through the fuel subsidy regime exploited by lawmakers, PDP stalwarts and their children without importing a pint of fuel.
It was not a surprise that with Obasanjo’s privatization policy, they sold to themselves Nigeria’s total investment of about $100b for a paltry $1,5b while with Obasanjo/Jonathan monetization policy, civil servants and lawmakers including Speaker Dimeji Bankole, Senate President David Mark and CBN Governor Chukwuma Soludo allegedly bought their official residences at a fraction of their real cost.
It was not also a surprise that the new-breed successive leaders of the National Assembly were all discovered to be men with feet of clay. Senate presidents Evans Enwerem was removed from office on November 1999 for falsification of name, Chuba Okadigbo was removed as Senate President in August 2000 by 81-14 votes over inflation of contract costs while Anyim Pius Anyim out of office was grilled by EFCC for shortfall of about N396 billion in ecological fund deductions as well as over $1.3B Centenary City project. Bukola Saraki sold the victory of his party to the opposition by cutting a deal which ceded the deputy senate presidency to the opposition, in what Itse Sagay described as “a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline”.
In the Lower House, Speakers Salisu Buhari was removed for certificate and age falsification, Patricia Ette was removed in 2007 over award of about N628m for the renovation of her official residence and that of the deputy speaker, Dimeji Bankole bought his palatial official quarters for N45m after N200m provision had been provided in 2008 budget for its renovation. There was also Abdul Mumin Jibrin who, when accused of ‘unilaterally padding the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State, attributed his travails to his inability “to admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker Dogara and the three other principal officers”.
The excesses of our lawmakers did not go unnoticed by Nigerian concerned opinion leaders. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as governor of Central bank on December 1, 2010 during a lecture at the University of Benin was the first to inform Nigerians that federal legislators had cornered about 25% of federal government budget. The late former Justice of Supreme Court, Justice Kayode Eso on November 21, 2010 warned that ‘for any senator including absentee senators to take home N30m every month without accountability as a foundation for revolution”.
While ex-President Obasanjo at the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, in November 2014 ridiculed the National Assembly, as “largely an assemblage of looters and thieves”, it was the view of Biodun Jeyifo that “if you want to know why looting and thievery became so pervasive in the 4th Republic, you must pay attention to the legalization and institutionalization of greed and sleaze in our predatory legislature”.
Lawmakers’ infidelity, perfidy of ethnic nationalities and political intrigue and economic sabotage by those who have no faith in the country are but symptoms of our greater malaise. Our malady is our superstructure. General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s Decree 24 as Pa Ayo Adebanjo has repeatedly warned, will not take us to the Promised Land.
President Bola Tinubu might have tried to prove that separation of power in presidential system is an illusion, the N5.7b Prado toys’ treachery is a sad reminder that even if an angel operates a unitary constitution in a multicultural society, he will fail. To guard against the fate of his predecessors therefore, the president must ensure we stop playing the ostrich and return to where the rain started to beat us.