By Raheem Oluwafunminiyi
At a time when we ought to have learnt one or two lessons from the Ibori trial by the Southwark Crown Court and the declaration of the former governor as ”a thief in government house”, we are confronted with yet another brand of kleptocratic tendencies, this time around, perpetrated by the Nigerian federal lawmakers. It is not an uncommon knowledge that corruption permeates all strata of Nigerian establishments, most especially those that involve policy makers in high places and the offices they control, but one establishment, however, stands out in all respect.
The Nigerian legislative chamber and all its vestiges of lawmaking stinks with corruption and thievery that one begins to wonder how we got ourselves into this opprobrium.
When one looks at the connection between Chief James Ibori on the one hand and our lawmakers on the other hand, one would discover that the former stole money from his own people and state, secretly defying all laws to achieve this and went as far as keeping such wealth in the trust of foreign banks through the help of financial shenanigans, while the latter openly steals the wealth or to use the word ‘appropriate for themselves’ monies belonging to the vast majority of the people all in the name of legislating, yet leave nothing but stagnation, mysery and poverty upon the land. To sum it up, the lawmakers are therefore, ‘pretenders of thier respective offices’ (to borrow the words from the Southwark Court) because what they where voted to do is the opposite of what they are doing.
It is quite sad that the House of Representatives many felt was going to show more concern towards the feelings, plight and aspirations of the people, having had fresh individuals or representatives from other political parties within it, went berserk by raising their quarterly allowance from #15 million to #27 million. As if that was not enough, the Senate whose actions in the last twelve years have been nothing short of misunderstanding of the practices of legislative duties and functions, awarded for themselves #45 million each. By the time one does the simple mathematics, we are confronted with a House of 360 representatives whose allowance is #38 billion, while the Upper Chamber with 109 Senators has #19.62 billion per year. These staggering amount of money are aside the emoluments prescribed by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission, the only statutory body empowered by the law to fix salaries and allowances of civil servants of which our federal legislatures belong.
It is very unfortunate that despite the alarm raised last year by the Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi that the #158.91 billion spent on the legislatures as overhead amounted to 25 per cent of all federal overhead expenditure in 2010, the federal legislature went ahead to increase their allocation to #232.74 billion from #111.24 billion earmarked for it by the Presidency.
It seems the act of lawmaking in our hallowed chambers has turned into money-making where the bellies and financial gratification of a few has become the norm. The fact that millions of Nigerians live below a dollar should have sent a signal to our legislatures that living in opulence at the expense of those who had voted them into power is not the step to take at this time when economic meltdown is busy tearing apart many nations.
This writer is of the opinion that the speech made by the President during the fuel subsidy brouhaha which stipulated a huge cut in government spending had failed to materialize within the Executive arm of government, else such initiative ought to have been extended to a kleptocratic legislature.
If Ibori had been accused of being a thief in government house, our lawmakers too cannot be too far from such nomenclature. The vast majority of the people who are bled on a daily basis by these set of few hijackers of our commonwealth must stand up for what is our right and bring our lawmakers to book. It is not enough to criticize on paper and hope all would be well. We must ensure that the good old days of lawmaking is brought back to life, while the bad eggs within the chamber, whose urge is to further enrich their pockets should systematically be flushed out and punished through enabling laws. The law must always take its course so as to keep more thieves in government house away for good.
- Raheem Oluwafunminiyi is a social commentator and political analyst. Reach him at creativitysells@gmail.com