•Dogara
If Nigerians were not the optimists they are, their country would have been raped to death by the venal and brazen men and a few women that find their way to political office in all forms and at all levels. When citizens are not being entertained by news of bureaucratic corruption, they are being embarrassed by reports of the tricks of budget making. If they are not being confused by the inordinate adjournment of cases of corruption involving top politicians and bureaucrats, they are being confounded by reports of display of omniscience by their leading lawmakers, to the extent that words imbued with value are emptied of the wholesomeness the word signifies.
Although there are many “top lawyers’ in the National Assembly according to the Speaker, fortunately, there are other professionals: doctors, engineers, accountants, academics, all of whose disciplines do not allow them to see human actions as value-free, the way Speaker Dogara spoke of law in relation to allegation of padding after his recent visit to President Buhari. There may be a clear line between legality and morality, in most democracies in the Anglophone world in which there are more lawyers in their legislatures than we have in Nigeria, politicians are still expected to act in a way that shows that they have value for morality in public affairs.
Still in the Anglophone world to which Nigeria was drafted by colonialism, to pad is a value-laden word. In communication in particular, padding means to add unwholesome, undesirable, superfluous, misleading matter to a material. Even the Webster dictionary has not outgrown the definition that to pad is a word that kicks against indiscipline: “to expand or increase with needless, misleading, or fraudulent matter.” So, padding of budget is not the opposite of what a backbencher in the Commons once warned fellow British MPs against, “rubber stamping tablets of stone handed down by the executive of the day.” It is legitimate for legislators to engage in pork barrel politics, as it is done in many other democracies. But in doing so, lawmakers are supposed to engage in lobbying fellow legislators and the executive to site projects in their constituencies, not for personal interest but for community growth and verifiable public good. Pork barrel politics does not include arranging for special constituency allowance to be managed by lawmakers; nor does it allow lawmakers engaged in scrutinising budget to insert their own pork barrel projects directly in the budget. This has to be settled with the executive before the budget is presented to the legislature before all representatives of the people.
Padding may not be illegal in Nigerian jurisprudence, but it is offensive all the same. A lawyer friend of mine told me that if a budget document sent by the president to the national assembly for approval benefited from added materials in the open during plenary session of the house and the added material got approved by the whole house after such open debate, such may not be a crime. However, any padding that takes place in camera or when many lawmakers are not within earshot, is not just unwholesome but patently criminal. The criminality of such addition is larger than uttering and forgery, it may also be treasonable, as it misrepresents the will of parliament, by presenting materials unknown to parliament as originating from parliament.
However, it is too soon for anybody to talk about criminality in respect of allegations of padding until a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the sequence of events from President Buhari’s submission of the 2015 budget to the National Assembly to the point that the approved copy of the parliament was sent to the Clerk of the House and the final copy delivered to the president as approved copy from the House. The two documents that require rigorous scrutiny are the copy of the document sent to the clerk immediately after the approval and the copy of the budget that finally got to the president. It may not be just the lawmakers that Jibrin had described as agents of padding along with himself that need to be investigated, the bureaucracy of the house should be investigated, just as it was in the case of forgery of the Rules of the Senate. But attempts by top members of the ruling party to settle the matter as internal affairs of the party are not helpful in promoting politics of change. Nobody from the legislative to the executive should be afraid of investigation of the issues raised by Jibrin who acknowledged his own participation in the act of padding. Probing the allegations do not amount to attempts by the executive to intimidate the legislature; it may very well turn out to strengthen the legislature, once the facts of Jibrin’s allegations are laid bare for all to see.
After thorough investigation by the police, EFCC, or ICPC, the allegations much touted by Jibrin may become just serve as an exercise of purification for all concerned, especially if nothing criminal is not established. The Yoruba saying: enitikoba se nnkanitofikiiboju wo ehinkule, (those who have not done anything that sparks suspicion need not look beyond their shoulders) is apt to assure those resisting investigation to remain calm, if they have nothing to feel uncomfortable about. What threatens to offend moral sensibility of citizens is the sudden polarization of the House into pro and anti-Dogara groups, especially claims by hundreds of legislators that Jibrin’s allegations are politically motivated. This kind of herd instinct by House members sounds similar to the response of senators to charges of perjury and forgery against the Senate President when senators gladly shut down the senate in order to accompany their president to court and the stridency of claims by senators loyal to Saraki and Ekweremadu that any allegation against the two is tantamount to an indictment of the senate as an institution. These are matters that should be of urgent concern to the new engineers of state from status quo to change.
Sensitive and sensible citizens ought to get worried about the legislative culture of the country even in the post-Jonathan presidency that had been perceived as the epicenter of venality in governance. It is unfortunate that every time since beginning of this administration the fighters of corruption act right, something happens in the legislature to suggest that its principal members prefer to gravitate to the left on the moral spectrum. This development should worry patriotic or change-loving citizens. Worse still, public discourse is being reduced by the day to 9th grade level, especially by legislators who are eager to spin the narrative of executive persecution of the second branch of government anytime the former moves to invoke the principle of ethics and public morality, particularly in respect of members of the National Assembly.
The Speaker has already announced that no institution has a right to probe the House because it has not done anything beyond its power to tinker with the budget: tinkering with the budget. In the last one year, citizens have been psychologically assaulted by incessant news of individual and institutional corruption, particularly during the preceding administration. Now that Jibrin has alerted the nation about acts of budget padding under the new administration and persons Jibrin has accused of padding have said unequivocally that there was no such thing, investigating the claims of accuser and accused will help reduce citizens’ anxiety, even if all the probe can achieve is to establish the innocence of those fingered in Jibrin’s claims. Doing this will go a long way to remove the perception (or misperception?) outside the houses of power—legislative and executive—that the country’s political leaders see governing Nigeria essentially as an enterprise to profit from, rather than as a service to perform in the interest of public good.
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