The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, and an erstwhile Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Dimeji Bankole, yesterday lamented that lawmakers in the three tiers of government were too weak to tackle corruption and economic sabotage.

Lawan and Bankole stated these at the 2022 convocation ceremony of the Post-Graduate and Higher National Diploma programmes of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, an affiliate of the University of Benin.

The Senate President, in his remark on the occasion held in Abuja, noted with regret that Nigerians were always blaming the National Assembly which was getting less than one per cent of the national budget, and failed to ask questions about the 99 per cent being controlled by the executive arm of government.

He said, “The revelations about funds for the National Assembly and the budget of the other side of government are things that Nigerians know but ironically Nigerians don’t care about whatever happens to the 99 per cent of the budget.

“All they care about is the one per cent is collected by the National Assembly. How does the one per cent influence our lives? We hardly know beyond people voting.

I think the reality is the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended as it is today has left the legislature prostrate.

“Prostrate because section 88 (of the1999 Constitution), talks of the legislature exposing corruption, waste and embezzlement, and so on.

“So, when you expose something and you can’t do anything, how does that solve the
problem? It is like seeing a thief and you say, “Thief! Thief!! Thief!!!. And you can’t act as police personnel to arrest the thief nor can you try and prosecute the person and the suspect goes away.

“The legislature is incapacitated, that is the fact because we can’t do anything.
If you sign the warrant of arrest against someone and the person refused to appear before the National Assembly, nothing will happen because we have no police of our own in the National Assembly to
send to go and arrest that person.

“We have to go through the Inspector General of Police. Where does he belong? To the executive. There you are, and the IGP will have a choice.

“If you ask him to send police to arrest somebody in the Ministry of Justice or any part of the executive, he will weigh whether he will create a problem for him- self by obeying that warrant or at the end of the day if he doesn’t, there will be no consequences because we can hardly do anything.

“It is for the people to insist and ask questions about what happens to 99 per cent of the budget. You can pile pressure on members of the National Assembly that they must do oversight, but when they carry out the oversight and revelations are made, you must insist on sanctions and insist in the right quarters.

“Don’t say these members of the National Assembly they have said this has happened they can’t do anything. That would be the end of the story.

“They have little to do at that point the rest is yours, push, pile pressure until something is done. And we can do it.The National Assembly has never been favoured in the political evolution of Nigeria. Never!

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“The truth is we are endangered. The reality is that the legislature in Nigeria is incapacitated. Probably the framers of the Nigerian constitution did not do it deliberately.

“If someone could be jailed for four months in the USA because he refused to turn up having been subpoenaed that cannot happen in Nigeria. It can’t happen because if somebody refuses to turn up who will jail him?

“Until the people are mobilised to stand for democracy, not against the legislature because each time they will say if you want to revamp the Nigerian economy reduce the budget of the National Assembly.

“In the 2022 budget, we have just 0.8 per cent of the national budget. How does that revamp the economy? But people will always talk about the National Assembly.

Once I said that the budget of the National Assembly is the budget to develop democracy in Nigeria but I was misquoted by the media.

“How much does a committee of the National Assembly get? One million naira. How can N1million help a committee conduct a thorough investigation and deep oversight? It is difficult.

“However, if we say that, in 2023 we are going to add to the budget of the National Assembly to cater for better oversight, people will say no that the National Assembly already has too much money.

There is no money in the National Assembly. Those of you who work in the National Assembly know.”

He also lamented that the high rate of turnover was affecting the quality of legislative exercises of the parliament.

“The turnover is a big issue of development of democracy in Nigeria. Because you need people who you have already trained, who you need little to train further and you bring in a fresh set of people.

“You now have to spend more resources that are not there. If you don’t, they won’t know what to do. In some cases, some people are happy that members of the National Assembly should continue to be ignorant of most of what happens in our agencies of government.

“Thank God, most of the people who come to the National Assembly today are people of great experience in many spheres of life. But the chopping off of heads, continues and because of the nature of politics that we have here in Nigeria, I think the ‘chopping off’ will continue until the people decide enough is enough.”