Nigeria Needs A More Dictatorial NASS

 SAM NDA-ISAIAH

Last week, Dr Doyin Okupe, one of the numerous presidential spokesmen but by far the most confused and convoluted, said the National Assembly was becoming too dictatorial towards the president. Of course, not many people take comments from Okupe seriously. Okupe obviously needed a job and made that very clear from his conduct, and Jonathan had to create one for him. Since then, he has done everything to prove to the president that he is a very grateful man. But he has done so in ways that are sometimes cheap and devoid of self-respect. However, even if we do not take Okupe’s comments seriously, they should at least give us a window into the thinking of his masters. That is why, when he said the National Assembly was becoming dictatorial in the aftermath of the president’s budget speech, we could take it literally that it was President Jonathan speaking.

If the president and his people think the National Assembly has been dictatorial in the discharge of its responsibility at a time many of us are upset with the National Assembly for being too soft on him, especially regarding the theft of N2.6 trillion subsidy money, then, it just shows what the president thinks of Nigerians. If the Senate and the House of Representatives were really doing their job, there is no way Jonathan would still be president at this time. Under President Jonathan, budgets are not implemented and yet N2.6 trillion could be stolen under his watch for a cost centre that only N245 billion was voted for, and yet nothing has happened to such a president. No, there is nowhere else this kind of thing happens in the world. Not even under military governments. Nigeria should actually do with a more dictatorial National Assembly if that would stop the executive from the kind of excesses we have been forced to see under Jonathan’s government.
It was the National Assembly that exposed the fuel subsidy scandal, among several others. The executive has not bothered to follow through the findings and recommendations of both houses of the National Assembly. The president is more interested in protecting felons that have been exposed by the National Assembly than in acting in the best and larger interest of the Nigerian state.
During the presentation of the 2013 budget by the president to a joint session of the National Assembly last week, both David Mark, the Senate president, and Aminu Tambuwal, the speaker of the House of Representatives, signalled that both houses would now perform their oversight functions more dutifully. Both men spoke about non-implementation of past budgets and let it be known that such transgressions would not be tolerated again. The Senate president hinted that they would not just be rubber-stamps for the president’s adventures. The speaker also made it clear that they would work in the best interests of the Nigerian people who elected them even if that meant stepping on the toes of the president.
The president and his boys actually think the National Assembly should massage their egos even if they are destroying the country. Both the Senate president and the speaker have appropriately responded to Okupe’s silly statements but I hope it doesn’t just end there. If the National Assembly desires to serve the nation and the people more diligently, they should dust up all their public hearings of the last one year and insist that the president must start working on them. And there would be no better place to start than the most scandalous of them all – the fuel subsidy report that showed that the president’s men expropriated N2.6 trillion for fuel subsidy as against the N245 billion appropriation of last year. This is a very, very grievous offence that must not be allowed to pass.
And if the president does not take the reports seriously, then, commencement of impeachment proceedings by both houses would be in order. Someone has to put a stop to the rubbish that is currently going on in Nigeria at some point anyway. Just maybe a little dictatorship from the National Assembly is all that would be required to get Jonathan to sit up and to stop taking the nation for a ride.

EARSHOT
Again, Where Are All These Guns Coming From?
Again, yesterday, unknown gunmen opened fire and killed at least 22 people at Dogon-Dawa village in Kaduna State. People just came from nowhere with guns and started shooting innocent people, and that’s it. Last week, 14 people were killed in Plateau State while two road safety marshals were shot dead in Kano. A few days earlier, more than 40 students were similarly murdered at Federal Polytechnic, Mubi; and, a few days later, it was the turn of several students from the University of Maiduguri to be similarly murdered. For God’s sake, shouldn’t the government start looking into where these arms are coming from? Shouldn’t the Jonathan government be under intense pressure to find a solution to these gruesome murders? So far, the president and his government do not appear to be under any kind of pressure whatsoever. It used to be fashionable to just dismiss all killings under the franchise of Boko Haram. Not anymore please.
The government must shape up and carry out its most basic responsibility to the people without resorting to cheap excuses, or simply ship out!
 Leadership