In a federal system of government, you have the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary as “co-equal” arms of government. Each has its own distinct, constitutionally defined functions. The legislature debates and makes laws, the Executive implements the law of the land, while the Judiciary interprets those laws. That is the picture in its simplest form. Of course, nothing is that simple in real life. There is a need for something to make the three arms function as a unit. The characters inside the three houses are temporary occupiers, or tenants at the behest of the landlord: the people. Left to their own devices, they would run amok, creating chaos and disunity, thereby bringing the entire edifice crashing down.
The genius of the federal system is in something called; “checks and balances”, without which the legislators could pass laws inimical to the interest of the people, the executive could become authoritarian and employ draconian means to implement the law, and the judiciary could strike down validly passed laws by the other two houses, thereby usurping their functions. This is why, in a federal system, the President does not even run a government; the President presides over an “administration”. At any one time, there are three immutable branches of government in a federal system. Power to govern is interspersed amongst the three “co-equal” branches. That explains reference to the “Trump administration” rather than the “Trump government” in the US; the “Buhari administration” rather than the “Buhari government” in Nigeria.
“Checks and balances” is the ability of one branch to prevail over the activities of the other on certain issues of governance, like the National Assembly refusing to pass a budget proposal from the executive pending certain amendments. Or, the President nominating judges, who are then “confirmed” by the Senate before being sworn in. A push in one direction by one house is balanced by a pull in a different direction by another. Question: Can a member of one branch arrest or threaten to arrest a member, or servant of another “equal” branch? That would sound rather bizarre to a reasonable observer, would it not?
Do not let your imagination run too wild, ladies and gentlemen, for, that is precisely the scenario playing out in the National Assembly in Nigeria before our very eyes. The National Assembly has jettisoned the spirit of its parliamentary oversight function. It now exerts authority by coercion rather than persuasion; applies brute force rather than the force of argument; goes ballistic in order to be heard, rather than quiet influence through reason. How on earth did we come to this?
In February, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Wale Oke, threatened to issue an arrest warrant against the heads of the Ministries Departments and Agencies for failure to honour an invitation to appear before them. The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, and Auditor General of the Federation, Anthony Ayine, were also included in the threat. The following month, in March, the same House of Representatives gave the Chief Executive Officers of telecommunications service providers a seven-day ultimatum to appear before its finance committee, or face a warrant for their arrest. Last week, the Public Accounts Committee Chair, in the Senate, Mathew Urhoghide, said any head of the MDA who fails to honour the invitation of his committee would henceforth be compelled to do so “through issuance of warrants of arrest against them”. He also roped in the ministers for information, petroleum resources, power, women affairs, and solid minerals in the threat. “Their failure to appear before this committee amounts to outright disobedience to constituted authority” the senator insisted.
The lawmakers’ unique view of the lofty doctrine of “checks and balances” is astonishing to say the least. For them, it as an invitation to a mud fight; a relic of the discredited strong-arm tactics of the bygone era. We have to assume that the threats are well-meant. So, imagine, if they were actually followed through, how many members of the executive branch would end up in jail at a particular period in time? It would no longer be the federal system of government; it would be the institutionalisation of an elective dictatorship. On its part, the executive does not cover itself in glory by not subjecting itself to scrutiny as mandated by the constitution. It vacillates, prevaricates and obfuscates so often, until pushed to a corner. But, is the nuclear option the best way to remedy executive tardiness in this country?
Disagreement among the three arms of government should not appear to anyone as something extraordinary; it is in-built. The creative tension between the branches of government is supposed to bring the best out of them. No executive really wants its inadequacies exposed to the full glare of publicity, but the requirement of democratic accountability and open governance compels it. It is for the legislature to coax facts out of the executive through the requisite parliamentary channels. That will involve taking the executive to the judiciary sometimes to force accountability. It may sometimes require filing a lawsuit against the executive. Other times, it may require the legislature to find other tactical manoeuvring in the Assembly to frustrate the executive, to punish the administration in some covert manner. Addressing the public directly in speeches at conferences to denounce the executive is another way of applying pressure. The cynic would say, oh yes, this is all well and good only in advanced democracies. We do not understand fair play and the long game in our own politics; we live in a militarised political environment where the currency is with immediate effect, here and now, show of might by the “constituted authority”. Well, if that is so, why then do we have one of the best paid legislators in the world? Is it to take a leaf of their senses, and lurch from one extreme to another?
To the careful observer, the problem is in the selection process. The character and values of those we elect to represent us in the legislature is the big elephant in the room. Some of them are indeed highly educated, highly motivated and highly qualified individuals, but the majority are sadly not. Many cannot even believe they are sitting in the National Assembly as lawmakers. The motorcades that accompany them around town, the bodyguards, the waiters, and a coterie of officials at their beck and call, connive to give them the illusion of grandeur they find difficult to shake off. Over time, they develop an exaggerated sense of self, forgetting they are actually servants of the people. This is not peculiar to the legislature though, it is also prevalent across the other branches of government, although much less so with the judiciary. If a barely literate individual suddenly has all the trappings of power and prestige of the legislature thrust upon him, he sees parliamentary scrutiny in black and white only. No middle ground, no subtleties, and no grey areas to negotiate, to understand, and to assess. If truth be told, most of Nigeria’s legislators are operating far above their natural talent. They have the mandate to be in the National Assembly regardless, they would say. That, precisely, is the heart of the problem. As long as our legislature does not allow room for the well-informed and the enlightened (as it is in advanced countries), and as long as the well-informed and the enlightened continue to feel it is not worth their while to get their hands dirty entering into politics, we will remain in a vicious circle of legislative pain and paralysis that is the hallmark of post-independence Nigeria.