Time to review FG, states, LGs duties – Senate Leader

Majority Leader of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, in this interview with MUDIAGA AFFE, explains the challenges facing the Seventh Senate and the need for continuous amendment of the constitution, among other issues. Excerpts:

What constraints do you envisage the Seventh Senate will face?

We expect a greater sense of urgency and focus because quite a number of the new Senators I have interacted with are very clear on the agenda they are coming to pursue in the Senate. Nevertheless, we are going to have constraints and one of which is the ‘learning curve.’ Our experiences have shown that after each election, we lose so many Senators and for a peculiar institution like the parliament, what constitutes our capacity as an institution is the aggregate and memory of each member. When you aggregate their capacity that is what now becomes the institutional capacity or memory. So, when you lose so many members, it means that that much that you lose is the amount that is eroded.

Invariably, you are going to be starting from the beginning. The enthusiasm and determination of the new Senators notwithstanding, they will still have to go through that learning curve and will only be as fast to negotiate that curve. However, I see a lot of urgency because Nigerians are getting impatient with the slow pace of delivering on their expectations. Nigerians will want to see things happening quicker; they want to see a faster upgrade in infrastructure; improvement in security; stability in power supply and so on. So, we are being driven by the public mood. It will be a Senate that will be more responsive to the public mood but it will be constrained by this loss of institutional capacity and memory.

What then are the expectations?

Nigerians expect some significant improvement in the economy. They want to see job opportunities for the young men and women who are currently roaming the streets. We also want to see an improvement in the security situation. What we will be doing is by intervening by way of legislation to facilitate the delivery of these expectations.

On infrastructure, do you think the Senate will put any strategy in place to ensure that those areas needing quick attention are urgently tackled?

The Senate can only legislate. The strategies will have to come from the Executive. But I see the Senate working closely with the Executive to meet the expectations of the people. We can only intervene by way of legislation and through oversight to ensure that whatever is appropriated is judiciously utilised for the purpose for which it was appropriated.

You were in the Fifth, Sixth and now Seventh Senate. What difference do you think this new Senate will make?

Most often, my experience is that we assess the Senate outside the scope of its constitutional responsibilities. Our responsibilities are to be passing laws and we have been doing that and in the area of oversight we have been doing it to the best of our capacity. Except maybe it will be in the areas of budgeting and oversight that we should make considerable improvement, but even at that, we still have some difficulties. Because of the problems we have had as an institution, if you remember we had military rule for so long.

During that period, each time the military struck that institution was abrogated and for that reason it did not grow. We have not developed capacity in a consistent manner; our growth had been what I refer to as ‘episodic growth’ and the capacity has not developed to the extent where we can compare it with the executive. If you take the budget process for instance, the indices that we use are the ones provided for by the executive; the parameters for oversights are the ones also provided by the executive and as they say in the computer language ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ So, until we get to that point where we develop independent capacity that can develop its own indices and parameters for budgeting and oversight, we would substantially be relying on what the executive gives us. If you take the United States budget for instance, there is what they call the congressional budget office; it has its own expertise, independent of the executive.

Nigerians are still expecting that the Constitution be amended, how possible will that be under the present Senate?

Well, let me say that at least the Sixth Senate broke the jinx of constitutional amendment. In our 50 years of post-colonial constitution, there was only one amendment and that was the one that led to the creation of the then Mid-Western State in 1963, after that no democratic dispensation was able to amend it until the Sixth Senate. With that, we have set the tempo for constitutional amendment. Given our history, a wholesale amendment to the Nigerian Constitution will not only be unreasonable but it will be unrealistic. If you recall in 2006, we came close to a wholesale amendment of the 1999 Constitution, about 110 proposed amendments, but for just one proposed amendment, which was tenure elongation, the 109 proposed amendments were thrown away.

Now, the lesson for us is that a wholesale amendment will always suffer the same fate because Nigerians will find one issue that they do not agree with and that will stall the entire process. So, what we have learnt from the 2006 experience is to take an instalmental approach to constitutional amendment. If you look at the mechanics for constitutional amendment you will see that the process does not begin and end with the National Assembly, the process also involves state houses of assembly. Now the implication is that for you to be able to successfully seal one amendment through, a national consensus would have been built around that issue after extensive national conversation on the issue and Nigerians will arrive at an agreement before it can pass. I can therefore say categorically that the process will be continuous.

Why has it been difficult for the Federal Government to change the revenue sharing formula over the years?

This is one area that the National Assembly has been blamed for something that is not its responsibility. Under the Constitution, the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, is supposed to table proposals to Mr. President who in turn now forward the proposal through the commission to the National Assembly. We do not have the constitutional responsibility to initiate the process; we cannot change the revenue allocation formula. It is like the budget process, no matter how well the intention of the National Assembly is, constitutionally it cannot initiate a budget process. We have to wait until we receive proposals from the executive before we act. Until there is a proposal from the Executive on a change in the revenue formula, we can only be worried bystanders.

Does it then mean that the revenue formula can only change if Mr. President so desires?

Mr. President himself cannot even initiate it. Do not forget that these commissions are envisaged largely as independent commissions, so, he too is Armstrong in a way because he has to await the proposals from RAMFAC. I do not know much about their processes but I learnt it requires a lot of studies and consultations. However, for us as parliament, when they do what is constitutionally required we will also do what is expected of us.

You recently expressed desire that the states should have upper hands in the revenue formula because of their responsibilities. Could you explain further?

For instance, if you take our budget every year, so much is voted for agriculture but under the Land Use Act, land belongs to the state. But the money you are putting into agriculture, whose land are you putting it? One of the things we are going to critically look at in the process of constitutional review exercise is the responsibilities of the various tiers of government. We will have to streamline them. In a federation, I am a strong believer in the strength of the component units and not the strength of the centre. The centre should be strong enough to hold all the units together but the units at the same time should be strong enough to move at their own pace. What is happening now is that because of the strength of the centre, every unit is being made to move at the same pace and in the same direction.

If you take the days of regional government, the regions were very strong and that was why politically, the first eleven of any region stayed at the regional level, it was more or less the second eleven that was sent to the centre and there was a lot of competitions among the regions and you could see focus. For me, from a philosophical point of view, we need to strengthen the federating units. But in giving them more money, you also should give them more responsibilities, you just cannot give them money without responsibilities. We must look at those areas that are best handled by the states while the Federal Government can only intervene. Look at education and health for instance, they should be the primary responsibilities of the federating units, then as you go higher you can get the Federal Government to intervene at the tertiary level. This redistribution of powers and functions is something we need to take a second look at.