Time to take Speaker Abbas seriously

Some view him as an undeserving beneficiary of the quota system, while others dismiss him due to his background as a hotelier. However, none of that matters now. Whatever reasons the public had for not taking the Speaker seriously must be reconsidered. I am speaking of the Speaker who is acting in an unprecedented manner […]

Some view him as an undeserving beneficiary of the quota system, while others dismiss him due to his background as a hotelier. However, none of that matters now. Whatever reasons the public had for not taking the Speaker seriously must be reconsidered.

I am speaking of the Speaker who is acting in an unprecedented manner without considering national consequences. I say so because our institutions desperately need reforms. But instead of pushing for reforms to strengthen them, the leadership of the National Assembly is pushing to weaken them. I will provide my justifications for these claims.

For academic purposes, the House of Representatives has a constitutional duty to make laws for the peace, order, and good governance of the Federation. This includes debating bills, passing legislation and overseeing the executive branch through inquiries and investigations. The Speaker leads the legislative agenda and ensures that all actions comply with the Constitution, including good governance—the agenda of the August protest.

However, we have a Speaker who went on record to tell Tinubu that the House will ensure everything Tinubu brings to them is approved—a rubber stamp National Assembly, basically. No regard for scrutiny or adherence to good governance. He even gave the example of delivering bills within 48 hours, all because of Tinubu.

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The country has never encountered a House leader who speaks in submission like this. If someone like that leads the lower chamber of the National Assembly, then we must worry about the potential cost of appointing an incompetent person to a critical political position like the Speaker.

Without any doubt, his submissive behaviour has made him an integral factor in the administration. Budgets and supplementary budgets were passed without any serious scrutiny.

A recent example is the purchase of the Presidential aeroplane—Airbus A330. It is already in use as the president used it to fly to France on Monday. Aside from the high cost of the plane, which calls for investigation, it is reported that the National Assembly did not approve the procurement. If true, this is a violation of the Public Procurement Act of 2007. But as we expect, the leadership of the National Assembly will disregard this gross misconduct given that it is an impeachable offence under an uncompromised legislative leadership.

As we call for fiscal prudence and the irrationality of the CBN printing money to finance the government’s spending, he has supported the bill to weaken the law that helps. The credit facility obtainable by the federal government from the CBN’s Ways and Means, is now raised from five per cent to 10 per cent of the revenue of a fiscal year.

It is under his leadership that the CBN Act is being considered for an amendment. The amended act includes some controversial clauses that will remove CBN’s independence. Specifically, they want to amend that the Minister of Finance will be involved in a committee that coordinates monetary policies. This means politics will be involved when setting the interest rates—the main tool for central banking—instead of economic conditions. But this is just one of so many ways he is being used to weaken our institutions.

In the face of fuel subsidy removal, the National Assembly is not even considering investigating several doubtful issues, even though Nigeria is making the highest subsidy payments in 25 years. Thanks to his leadership, the House dissolved the Joint Downstream and Midstream Committee amid corruption and racketeering allegations in the petroleum sector.

The committee was investigating the importation of adulterated petroleum products, the non-availability of crude oil for domestic refineries, and other critical energy security issues.

It goes without saying that Tinubu and the government administrators have found a useful tool in the legislature. Of course, the Speaker is in good company. His counterpart in the upper chamber also approves what they send from the House.

If the public does not pay attention to these heads—then we can find our system of governance is threatened—the body will eventually stink. Nigeria will have more authoritarian governance than democracy, which is frightening in a democratic setting.

I say this specifically following last Wednesday’s withdrawal of the draconian Counter Subversion Bill. This bill was meant to penalise Nigerians who protest in various ways, including refusing to recite the national anthem, disrespecting government officials, and other forms of disruptive protests. Let’s be clear: Such a bill contradicts citizens’ rights under the Nigerian constitution.

It is unimaginable that a Speaker of the House of Representatives would ever consider sponsoring such a bill and even passing its first reading.

In all seriousness, I am not surprised that it is happening under a person who has submitted himself to making the administrators of the Tinubu-led government comfortable. The actions of this Speaker are directly linked to the actions of this government. The quick withdrawal of the bill must be taken seriously. If Nigerians get distracted, they will spring up with more harmful, draconian bills.

As things stand, there is little surprise that the House of Representatives has been dithering over the controversial Samoa Agreement under this Speaker. Yes, the issue of LGBTQ has been established, but as earlier reported, they refused to call for the suspension of the Agreement. This is an outcome of taking the legislative arm less seriously. And if the government were to secure any loan agreement from the Samoa deal, we should not be surprised to see the National Assembly tabling a debate to tweak the law just to suit the agreement. It has happened before, and we heard the Speaker committing to rubber-stamp everything the government brings.

For his constituency, Zaria local government, he chose to rename it Zaria South in the midst of a cost-of-living and hunger crisis. Of course, the people, including myself, are not supportive of this. We have written several letters to reject the renaming of the local governments. One key issue for the Zaria locals is water shortage. The water crisis was so bad that Peter Obi went to drill a borehole in a neighbourhood community in the Speaker’s Ward, where his relatives live. I have not seen his acknowledgement; this is unlike the Zage-zagi, who are known to be appreciative.  I apologise on behalf of my people. To be fair, he made attempts to share rice palliative during Ramadan for quite a few people across polling units.

This Speaker presents a significant threat to our democracy, the economy, his constituents and even himself. I include him in the damages because any rejection of APC will cost him his seat. How he emerged victorious in the 2023 election should be a lesson to him. But still, he keeps supporting what the administrators of this government want him to do without predicting the consequences.

Nigerians must now take him seriously, given the damaging impact he is having on our democratic institutions. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal should be to attempt to do the greatest good—good governance—for the greatest number.