Following the glaring cordial relationship between the executive and legislative arms of government under the current administration, which many have attributed to the cognate legislative background of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and some members of Federal Executive Council (FEC), ADAMU ABUH looks at the benefits from such and its impact on democracy in this report.
Ahead of the June 12 democracy day, there are mixed feelings over the harmonious relationship between the executive and legislative arms of government, which hitherto were at each other’s throats. While the coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) and the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) have called to question the benefits derivable from such a relationship, some insist that it is required to ensure the delivery of democracy dividends in the polity.
Proponents of the existing cordial relationship between both arms adduced the speedy passage of the Bill to revert to the old National Anthem, the 2024 Appropriation Bill, the Electricity Act 2023, the Access to Higher Education Act (students loan) and the Data Protection Act as some of the reasons the development is in the best interest of the country.
The current relationship between both arms is in sharp contrast with what obtained in the first term of former president Muhammadu Buhari was in office. The Buhari administration then had a topsy-turvy relationship with the Senator Bukola Saraki-led National Assembly.
In the 4th Republic, the garrison approach of former president Olusegun Obasanjo caused a frosty relationship between the executive and legislative arms to the extent that there was a gale of impeachments leading to the emergence of three Senate Presidents – Chuba Okadigbo, Evans Enwerem and Anyim Pius Anyim within a span of four years.
Obasanjo on the other hand survived impeachment plots in the hands of the House of Representatives led by the late Ghali Umar Na’Abba, widely applauded for his resolute pursuit of legislative independence and revolutionary approach in the running of the lower legislative chamber.
In the current dispensation however, the executive and legislative arms have enjoyed an unprecedented cordiality that has made some schools of thought to believe that the legislature has been cowed by the executive, hence the tag of “master-servant” relationship.
Their position gained traction on the heels of a recent report by OrderPaper Nigeria, which focused on the transition of politicians ‘From the Legislature to the Executive (FLEX).
In the report, OrderPaper, Nigeria’s foremost independent parliamentary monitoring organisation and policy think tank that bridges the gap between people and parliament, posited that the Tinubu administration would exert the highest influence on the National Assembly in the history of the country’s presidential democracy. The report submitted that President Tinubu’s appointees with cognate legislative background and experience like the Chief of Staff and immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, who served three terms in the Senate, can facilitate the optimal delivery of the vision, goals and manifesto of the Tinubu administration.
However, HURIWA and CUPP contended that Nigerians live in worse economic conditions than a year ago, faulting the claim that President Tinubu, alongside his Vice, Senator Kashim Shettima and 20 other members of his cabinet with rich legislative backgrounds could have positive impact on the governance of the country.
HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, claimed that the independence of the legislature has been heavily compromised under the prevailing circumstances.
Onwubiko, who served as a commissioner with the Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, warned that Nigerians stand the risk of grappling with dictatorial rule under the current administration.
He said: “The three arms of government ought to operate in line with constitutional provisions of checks and balances so that the principles of good governance, accountability and transparency can be actualised. The idea of having the President and his Vice, in addition to many of the cabinet level appointees having legislative experiences in their previous political offices as lawmakers, is important. But in the context of the kind of government we practice in Nigeria, it is not so useful.
“It is totally irrelevant because if we have the impression that because there is a higher number of federal appointees with legislative backgrounds, therefore there is no need for the separate tiers of government to carry out their mandates towards protecting the sacred principles of separation of powers, then we are missing the point.
“The essence of having clear delineations in the tiers of government is for all three branches to work in such a way as not to compromise the overall essence of safeguarding good governance, transparency and accountability. We must insist on ensuring that members of the three arms of government do not mutually agree to work against public interest and public good.
“Although partnership is good, when the members of the three arms of government work as if they are all the same, then the possibility of experiencing good governance or having strong institutional platforms to instill the needed impetus for observance of accountability, transparency and separation of powers will be weakened.
“For now, the relationship between the legislative houses and the executive is that of a master versus slaves kind of existence because the legislative houses have caved in and allowed the so-called powerful executive heads of governments at the national and state levels to overwhelm the legislature and therefore Nigeria is inching rapidly towards a dictatorship or tyranny of one man and this is anti-people, undemocratic and unconstitutional. The people of Nigeria must be worried and concerned about the prospect of Nigeria becoming a dictatorship.”
When asked to substantiate the claim, he argued: “For instance, the National Assembly has consistently approved all the requests made to them for approvals of appointments or applications for loans. The National Assembly under the current leadership has spectacularly failed to meticulously look at petitions against the approvals of the appointments of some of the current ministers to an extent that the Senate failed to investigate the information that the ministerial nominee that later got assigned to the Ministry of Arts and Creative Economy was a serving NYSC member and had three months to complete her service year and yet the Senate approved her nomination without asking the hard questions.
“The Senate has approved all the requests for loans from the World Bank and the IMF and the Senate and the House of Representatives have excused the FCT from the Treasury Single Accounts only because the President wanted them to do that. This exclusion of the FCT from the TSA encourages corruption because if the financial integrity of the government is put to this sort of favouritism and selective removal from the task of rendering adequate accountability of how public funds are utilised and the system of oversight by the law makers is diluted as it has, there is the possibility that procurement corruption would become the rule rather than exception in the FCT. But the National Assembly went ahead to do the approval.
“In return for these slavish approvals, the President also approved the alleged padded budget in such a way that the allocations to both the Senate and the House of Representatives dwarfed those of Ministries of Health, Education and Police Affairs put together. Also, the legislators each got exotic armoured jeeps from the Federation Account, which is antithetical to the rising absolute poverty situation afflicting over 133 million Nigerian households.
“The National Assembly has failed to carry out oversight of such strategic ministries like that of the Power Ministry to the extent that even when the legislature asked that the new tariffs for electricity should be suspended, this legislative intervention was overlooked just as the National Assembly is not able to wade into the ballooning costs of living because the President of the country approved huge monetary payments to the lawmakers as palliative to cushion the cost of living even when each member of the National Assembly earns hundreds of millions of Naira as Constituency allocations periodically. The legislators are effectively caged by this kind of bribe and financial inducement and therefore can’t speak truth to power as they ought to do as lawmakers.”
CUPP’s National Secretary, Chief Peter Ameh, who spoke in the same vein, argued that the impact of the legislative background of the President, his Vice and several other cabinet members has weakened the doctrine of separation of powers and neutralised legislative oversight.
Ameh likened one year of Tinubu’s government to an unmitigated disaster.
“This disaster is a result of the twin evil of ‘subsidy is gone’ and naira floatation.” How do we measure the impact of a government on the citizenry? We have always believed that it is by the quality and quantity of life of the majority of the people, and in the case of Tinubu, are Nigerians better off than they were a year ago? The answer is the absolute negative,” Ameh argued.
He added: “Lives of Nigerians have become something close to the biblical passage of passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Businesses are going belly up. Those who have not gone under are retrenching workers at an alarming rate.”
Others have taken the option of going abroad to continue their businesses.
“We now sleep with our two eyes wide open because of insecurity. Interstate movements have become an agonising proposition because of the probability of not getting to our destination in one piece. Nigerians now walk on the streets with hunger written all over their faces, sometimes soliloquising; one square meal has become a luxury and an abstract concept. Our markets are now saturated with unsold goods because the little funds in their pockets can no longer purchase anything of significance to feed a single mouth.
“Farmers no longer go to farm because those that went before now have either been killed or in the custody of their abductors. The number of school dropouts are on the rise as a result of the inability of their parents to pay the increased school fees. Please remember that in the presidential system of government, the buck stops at the table of the president, and all the other cabinet members serve at the pleasure of the president.
“The government of President Tinubu is populated by people who have performed below average in their various ministries except the FCT and Minister of Aviation, who have been up and running in their assignments.
“As for the vice president, he has offered and shown himself to be a loyal vice considering the circumstances he has found himself in. The president should rejig his cabinet, drop those who do not know why they were appointed ministers in the first place.
“The relationship between the executive and the legislators in this government is not only cordial but that of master and servant relationship. It is as if it is still a continuation of the second term of the Buhari administration when every bill, proposal and request were passed without scrutiny and input from the legislators. The concept of separation of powers demands that the legislature acts as a check on the executive to prevent the tyranny, which we are beginning to see in this government.
“A typical example is the ongoing Lagos- Calabar Coastal Highway, where no appropriation was made for it in the 2024 Appropriation Act. For our democracy to inch forward, our Parliament or National Assembly must fight for its independence and free itself from the apron strings of the executive.”
Founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, admitted that a harmonious relationship between the executive and the legislative arms is on one hand advantageous and on the other hand disadvantageous.
He said such a relationship remains advantageous when the goal is public good as was the case in the 8th Assembly when Sen. Bukola Saraki-led National Assembly and the executive worked harmoniously to amend the constitution and obliged the state judiciary and state legislature financial autonomy.
“This was in spite of their less than harmonious relationship. The truism is that the doctrine of separation of powers did not envisage a wide gulf or rubber stamp legislature,” he said.
The OrderPaper report, which focuses on the transition of politicians ‘From the Legislature to the Executive (FLEX), is a niche edition of OrderPaper’s Quarterly Policy Review (QPR) series.
The FLEX edition established that the character and composition of the Tinubu government are defining factors not only of its relationship with the National Assembly but also the legacy of governance and the democratic imprints the president will leave behind in office.
At the sub-national level, the report identified 10 state governors elected into office from the National and State Assemblies, thereby creating a common denominator for a specialised performance rating regarding governance and relationship with their state legislatures.
The report revealed that 22 out of the 48-member federal cabinet appointees were members of the National or State Assemblies, thereby giving President Tinubu the record of transitioning the largest number of politicians from the legislature to the executive in one fell swoop.
Besides the fact that President Tinubu and Vice President Shettima are both FLEXes (having served in the Senate at various times), the President has a horde of other appointees with cognate legislative background and experience.
In line with tradition, President Tinubu’s two liaison officers to the National Assembly, Abdullahi Abubakar Gumel and Ibrahim Olarewaju Kunle, who officially serve as presidential aides to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate and House of Representatives respectively), are FLEXes.
Going by these, OrderPaper asserted that the FLEX phenomenon would play defining roles in determining President Tinubu’s legacy concerning service delivery and democratic consolidation.
According to the QPR report, a knowledge product of OrderPaper, the legacy of 10 state governors, like that of President Tinubu, would also be substantially determined by the fact of their transition from the legislature to the executive branch of government.
The state governors are Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa; Bassey Otu of Cross River; Umar Bago of Niger; Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta and Bala Mohammed of Bauchi. Others are Douye Diri of Bayelsa, Hope Uzodimma of Imo, Ademola Adeleke of Osun, Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi and Uba Sani of Kaduna. In addition, there are three deputy governors of Bayelsa, Bauchi and Akwa Ibom, which produced the lone female FLEX in the class of governors and deputies.
In a statement, Founder/Executive Director of OrderPaper Nigeria, Oke Epia, said the FLEX report delves into critical but hitherto unexplored facets of Nigeria’s governance architecture and sheds light on the intricate dynamics between the legislature and executive branches of government.
He added that the work presents a challenge to academics and research institutions, policymakers, media practitioners and public analysts, among others, to deep dive into the phenomenon in a bid to enhance governance and democracy in Nigeria.
“FLEX is our modest contribution to the quest for democratic accountability in Nigeria, laying a solid and objective basis to not only gauge the democratic temperament of the current administration, specifically in its checks-and-balance relationship with the legislature, but also measure the ongoing stewardship and legacy of President Tinubu and the state governors concerned,” Epia said.
Epia expressed the readiness by OrderPaper to partner with relevant stakeholders to establish FLEX as a viable performance-tracking platform.
In a foreword, former Minority Whip of the House of Representatives, Samson Osagie, commended OrderPaper for the novel work, saying: “This publication unarguably, given its unique analytical focus, represents a unique perspective into studying and evaluating the implications of some developments in the polity that have hitherto escaped the attention of public affairs analysts and even academics.
“This is undoubtedly a commendable contribution not only to the advancement of knowledge but to the deepening of the understanding of the dynamics that characterise the growth of democratic governance in Nigeria and OrderPaper’s submission on the populace’s huge expectations for a positive impact on governance is well placed.”
Similarly, former Member of the House of Representatives and ex-DG/CEO of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dakuku Peterside, challenged FLEXes to live up to public expectations by bringing their “experience and exposure in parliament to smoothen relations between branches and advance the delivery of policy outputs that fulfill democratic dividends” and not “become instruments of willful and inordinate subjugation of the legislature and, by extension, undermine the core principles of separation of powers and checks and balances upon which modern-day democracy is built.”
