Presidency-N/Assembly wrangling: Homily for Osinbajo peace committee

In a development that promises better days ahead for Nigeria, the Presidency has been reported to adopt peace with the National Assembly, as a priority. The Minister of Information and National Orientation Lai Mohamed, revealed to the press that to achieve such an objective, a fence-mending committee with the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, as Chairman, […]

In a development that promises better days ahead for Nigeria, the Presidency has been reported to adopt peace with the National Assembly, as a priority. The Minister of Information and National Orientation Lai Mohamed, revealed to the press that to achieve such an objective, a fence-mending committee with the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, as Chairman, was set up during last week’s meeting of the Federal Executive Committee (FEC). 

Other members of the Osinbajo Peace Committee include all ministers who are former senators, such as Chris Ngige, (Labour and Productivity), Udoma Udoma (Budget and National Planning), Heineken Lokpobiri (Agriculture – Minister of State), Hadi Sirika (Minister of State for Transport – Aviation). Others are Ita Enang (former senator and now Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters – Senate) and Samaila Kawu (Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters – House of Representatives).

Understandably, the committee’s mandate was informed by a matter of concern to Nigerians, and which is the frosty relationship between these two arms of government. Since the advent of the present administration in 2015 there has been unmistakeable friction between the Presidency and the National Assembly, with unpleasant and undeserved consequences for the ordinary Nigerians. 

Against the backdrop of the foregoing therefore, several aspects of this presidential peace initiative commend it as well thought out and therefore welcome. 

This is just as the revelation of Osinbajo’s deft diplomatic skills as played up in his liaison sorties to the restive Niger Delta, and other trouble spots in the country, qualify him for the task ahead. 

Nevertheless many observers had expected the initiative to have come earlier, given the strong presence of ex-legislators in the Buhari cabinet whose enterprise would have changed the story.  Just as it is said that to whom much is given much is expected, their presence in the cabinet of President Muhamadu Buhari had afforded them the opportunity to advise the Presidency on the tenets of harmonious interface between the two arms of government. 

How far they, as cross-over factors had deployed their individual and collective experiences to advise the administration remains a matter for another day.  However, now that they have been fished out and assigned to finding a meeting point between the two arms of government, all is fair and good. And in line with the cliché that it is better late than never, this is welcoming the Osinbajo Peace Committee.   

Except with the advantage of a convincing counter argument, it is tempting to believe that the fence-mending initiative was spawned by the series of recent flashpoints that originated from the acts of omission and commission by elements in the Presidency, which the National Assembly refused to concur with. 

These tendencies would include the trending instances involving the Senate and Hameed Ali in a ‘roforofo’ show, its ‘red-card’ for Ibrahim Magu, and the body’s tiff with the hard-to-pin-down Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal; just to name a few.

From the lessons of history, it may not be unlikely that the mindset of the Presidency in setting up the Osinbajo Peace Committee is to contrive ways and means to ‘whip’ the National Assembly into line and vitiate its ‘hostility’ towards the Buhari presidency. 

This is the vintage perception of a cross section of apologists of the Presidency. However this anomalous situation did not originate with, nor is confined to the Buhari presidency. With its roots in the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the relationship between the Presidency and the National Assembly has degenerated over time to a tradition where the latter must play a subservient role to the former, for peace to reign in Nigeria.

A more disturbing dimension to the unbalanced interface between the Presidency and the National Assembly is its replication in a state of executive subjugation of the legislature,  through outright master-servant relationship between state governors and the respective state legislatures, whose members are routinely consigned to the role of mere ‘errand boys’. 

The leverage exercised by the state governors to muzzle the state legislatures, in turn   facilitates the capacity of the former to marginalise the all important local government councils, by even denying that tier the benefit of elected leaders, which remains the basic dividend of democracy. 

A recent report by the National Assembly reveals that less than 10% of Nigeria’s 774 local government councils are run by elected leaders while the rest are operated by proxies of the respective state governors as Care-taker Committees. 

How meaningful democracy can thrive in this state of affairs where a section of the nation’s leadership community belonging to the executive arm, wilfully rides rough-shod over the rest of the country represented by the legislature, remains the ultimate weakness of the country’s democracy.

Interestingly, the present state of umbrage of the legislature at the instance of the executive, was absent during the First Republic since the country operated the Westminster brand of government in which the executive and legislative arms of government were technically ‘fused’, and provided no room for rivalry among themselves. 

Even in the Second Republic under President Shehu Shagari, which marked Nigeria’s first experience with the doctrine of full separation of powers between the arms of government, the executive – legislative rivalry was not pronounced. When asked why it was so, the then President of the Senate Dr Joseph Wayas noted that their system was driven by mutual respect for each other by both the Executive and Legislature, with leaders consulting one another extensively on the way government should run. 

And as far as he could remember, there was no single incident of conflict between himself as President of the Senate and Shehu Shagari as the country’s President. Little wonder that politicians and older Nigerians of that era view the present state of affairs with concern.

 As for the Osinbajo Peace Committee, their job is well cut out for them, since their assignment does not go beyond restoring the integrity of the country’s democratic process as envisaged by the Constitution. All they have to do is to promote respect for the legislature as an institution beyond the consideration of the individual legislators. 

For the problem many observers have with the legislature lies in the failure to distinguish between operational circumstances of the institution and the actions as well as inactions of individual legislators,   which may often fail to capture the consensus driven positions of a respective legislative chamber.