The Pendulum (Column)
By O’Ray Osawe
The Navigator Newspaper
Governance,
everywhere, is instituted, in the first place, to ensure that proper
administration of the people of the country, state or community is
achieved. This, to a large extent, is true, especially of governance in
Europe, the United States of America and other advanced countries of
the world. But in the African continent, and in some other parts of the
Third World, governance is more or less mainly at the whims and
caprices of despots, who see power as their private property, to be used
for their own interest alone.
Those
who fine-tune the art of governance insist that there must be the Rule
of Law and Separation of Powers amongst the different arms of government
for equity and balance to be achieved. While the Rule of Law brings
all and sundry, the high and the low, under the moderating influence of
the laws of the land, the Separation of Powers gives fillip to the
existence of a shared control of state powers, so that no arm of
government is unnecessarily granted such absolute powers as to hold
others to ransom. The existence of a strict and unambiguous separation
of powers creates and facilitates an endearing atmosphere of checks and
balances that invigorates the health of governance for the general
well-being of the people.
The
Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers are so sacrosanct in the art
of governance that governments, the world over, whether autocratic,
monarchical, military or democratic, often create the impression,
genuinely or otherwise, that they value such arrangements by creating
bodies in the semblance of power-sharing, to win the support of the
people. In Nigeria, for instance, the military regimes that have ruled
had the semblance of governments that respected the rule of law and the
separation of powers. But they all ended up not upholding any of such
valued qualities of effective, people-oriented government.
In
a democratic setting, like what obtains now in Nigeria, power is shared
between the three arms of government, namely: the Executive,
Legislature and the Judiciary. While it is often said that the
legislative arm formulates laws, the judiciary interprets such laws
while the executive applies those laws to the effective governance of
the larger society. To ensure that those who make laws are
representatives of the people in the larger society, democratic
arrangement approves the election of quality persons into the National
Assembly at the federal level, State Houses of Assembly at the state
level, and the local legislative arms at the local government level.
There
is no doubt that the quality of legislation plays a major role in the
successful governance of the people. This is because the executive is
supposed to be regularly called to attention and to question, if it
begins to act in ways contrary to the laid down laws of the land, or
against the dictates of the legislature or the judiciary.
In
a democratic setting, the executive should not be left to make reckless
or selfish decisions. All the hue and cry now coming from the mass of
our people with particular regard to the actions or inactions of the
executive should have been championed by those in the legislative arm
who are truly the representatives of the people.
But,
that they have all along remained silent is a threat to democratic
norm. Some have accused the legislature of being bought over by the
executive, that that is why they have literarily transformed themselves
into the rubber stamps of the executive. If this is what obtains at the
federal level, then what we see at the state and local government
levels is a slavish attachment of the legislative houses to the apron
string of the executive.
In
some states, the Honourable members of the State Houses of Assembly,
not only go cap in hand to solicit for funds from the governors, some
see the governors as the determinants of their political aspirations and
future, and so the attitude becomes that of a puppet who catches cold
each time the master sneezes. It has become that bad.
The
legislature is supposed to be the bulwark, the mouthpiece, and the
chief campaigner for the masses, outside of the Press, which is the
Fourth Estate of the Realm. But over the years, at least since 1979, we
have continuously witnessed a crying negligence or an arrant show of
incompetence on the part of our elected representatives in the
legislature, which is supposed to churn out people-friendly laws that
would straighten the standard of living of the people and create a
salutary impact on their well-being.
Critics
have argued that it is not as if the legislative arms at all levels do
not know that they are constitutionally assigned to be checks on the
excesses of the executive, but that they impress it on the executive
arms that they needed to be lobbied, settled or bribed for them to turn
blind eyes and deaf eyes to the frivolities and the recklessness of the
executive. This, they say, has been the bane of the legislature; like
the biblical Esau, who had to sell his birthright to his younger
brother, Jacob, for a mesh of porridge.
Because
of this obvious ineptitude of the legislature, there now exists a void
in the governance of the people; a situation that has created the
impression that when we talk about government, we only can have the
executive in mind. Sadly, the legislature has almost become
non-existent because it has almost, without knowing it, fused, on its
own accord, into the executive arm as an appendage. Do we, therefore,
need any explanation as to why the people now feel they have been
alienated from government?
In
fact, a situation in which the legislature enjoys a pleasant romance
with the executive is anathema to effective democracy. The void created
by the non-performance of the legislature has become too wide and too
deep for the people themselves to traverse before reaching the executive
with a catalogue of their complaints and needs.
Do
we, therefore, need any telling as to why a majority of Nigerians has
seemingly decided to take their destinies in their own hands? Do we
need any telling why the Niger-Delta youths have become so restive about
their plight, when they have representatives in the state and national
Assemblies, who should have pleaded their case?
It
is high time the legislature looked inwards with a view to sanitizing
itself and repositioning itself to take up the enormous responsibilities
bestowed on it by the constitution to, so to speak, police the
executive into implementing policy programmes and projects that would
transform the lives of the people for the better.
If
the legislature fails in this regard, then it would become imperative
for the people to chase their inept representatives out of the Assembly,
or a fresh constitutional conference should be held to fashion out
another system of governance that would create a better and more
acceptable picture of the appropriateness and sanctity of the separation
of powers. Only then would we have a true Assembly of the people’s
representatives, which would talk and do things that would ease the
burden of existence for the people.
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