In recent weeks, attention has been shifted to the National Assembly-the lower chamber to be precise following series of unwarranted incidents.
The House of Representatives has been bedeviled by scandals since the beginning of the present republic. First, it was the call for the resignation of the Speaker, Salisu Buhari who claimed to have graduated from the famous Toronto University, Canada but was later discovered to have lied.
A female Speaker, Hon. Patricia Etteh, followed suit. She was allegedly involved in corruption or misappropriation of funds meant for the speaker’s accommodation and others. She was forced to resign after so much heat was brought to bear on her.
Now her successor, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, is on fire. Allegations against him were on misappropriation of funds meant for capital projects in the House. Last year, charges on embezzlement of funds meant for the purchase of car was swept under the carpet as the Speaker wielded an overwhelming supports in the House.
However, recently the group called the “progressives” forwarded a petition to the chairman of Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, accusing the Speaker of misappropriating alongside his principal officers a total sum of N9 billion being the capital vote for 2009.
Forwarding the petition, the leader of the group, Hon. Dino Melaye, said “what we are doing is in tandem with the provision of section 88 (2b) of the public funds Act, once it has been appropriated by the National Assembly in the budget. This country is not only sick but it is suffering from continental abnormality. What we have today in the House is abuse of public funds”.
He noted that N11 billion was allocated to the House in 2008/09 budgets for capital projects and N2 billion was returned to the treasury but it is still unclear how the House’s principal officers spent the remaining N9 billion.
Hon. Melaye maintained, “if the House is questioning Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) through oversight functions, we need to oversight ourselves so that the public can have confidence in us”.
The radical legislator who posited that his group was in possession of documents to prove that some items approved by the body of principal officers of whom the Speaker is the Chairman, were inflated, revealed that “A unit of 40-inch LCD TV set was purchased for N525, 000 each, contrary to the price list by the Bureau of Public procurement and markets price of N180, 000 by Samsung.”
He stressed that the three bullet-proof Mercedes Benz cars bought for over N50million each and two range Rovers bought for N57 million each were waste of public funds.
This action of the progressive leader infuriated the leadership of the House. This obviously, heightened tempers prior to the resumption of the House after its break.
Perhaps, the House leader, Hon. Tunde Akogun, has the premonition of what would befall the “House Radicals” when he said, “as we resume today, I can not predict the decision that we will take on what we were away, but the truth of the matter is that the leadership does not have a crisis that it can not resolve”.
He concluded, “all I can plead now is for Nigerians to allow us take a decision which in my view will return the house to the path of progress”.
Indeed, the House took a decision that returned it to the “path of progress” as promised by the House leader as the lower House ‘caught fire’ during its plenary seating as all members of the “progressive Group” seeking the resignation of Speaker Bankole were beaten black and blue before being thrown out of the chamber to stay out in the cold indefinitely.
As the fracas gathered momentum, Hon. Doris Uboh was thrown to the floor several times by Hon. Ishaku Bawa and others who tore her clothes into shreds. Hon. Dino Melaye and Hon. Austin Nwachuku also had their clothes torn. Hon. Chinyere Igwe, who participated in the fight against the Melaye group, had his right hand broken as he was raised up and thrown to the hard floor by Hon. Nwachukwu.
The trouble started when the so-called House rebels were ordered to leave their seats and they refused to comply. And so, the pro-Demeji group had to force them out.
Earlier, Hon. Chile Ugbauwa had tabled a motion for the suspension of the “House Rebels” but before he could finish reading the motion, Melaye rose to his feet and raised a point of order but was ignored by the Speaker who insisted that Ugbauwa must complete his motion.
However, before Ugbauwa finished his motion, or before Hon. Bankole could call for secondment, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha approached the Speaker and handed over a paper containing names of members to be suspended and Bankole subsequently pronounced them suspended.
Those suspended are: Dino Melaye, Nwachukwu Austin, Doris Uboh, West Idahosa, Independence Ogunewe, Solomon Awhinawi, Abba Adamu, Bitrus Kaze, Kayode Amusan, Gbenga Oduwaiye and Gbenga Onigbogi.
It was after they were dragged out that the Speaker called Hon. Ugbauwa to properly move his motion for the suspension which he did before Garba Matazu seconded it.
Meanwhile, Media and Publicity Committee Chairman, Eseme Eyiboh; Petitions and Public Complaints Committee Chairman, CID Maduabum and Education Committee Chairman, Farouk Lawan, later told a press conference that the suspension was justified. “The progressive erred by going to the press to expose the alleged financial misdeeds of Bankole without exploring all avenues provided in the House rules”, maintained Lawan.
Also, the Minority Group in the House berated the members of progressives on the allegation of mismanagement of funds against the Speaker, stressing that no leader of the House had the authority to spend any money belonging to the House.
The minority leader, Hon. Mohammed Ali Ndume, who responded on behalf of the minority members, said anti-Bankole members had proved their ignorance on how funds budgeted for the House were spent, a reason they made such hollow allegation which they said, portrayed them as desperate, disorganized and ill-in formed.
He stressed that “the law had never made it that easy for an officer of the House, including the speaker to dip hands into the vault to take money under any guise”
A popular legal practitioner in Kogi State who pleaded anonymity, expressed dismay on the primitive behaviour of the progressives in general and Hon. Melaye in particular who is one of the Kogi State representatives in the House.
He posited that notwithstanding the facts at their disposal, they should have obeyed the House rules and presented their grievances through the proper channel, lamenting, “What they did which the whole world saw was nothing but an act of thuggery”.
The lawyer cautioned the electorate to be careful about those they elect to represent them in political offices.
Also, the Kogi State House of Assembly described Hon. Melaye’s behaviour which led to his suspension as “irrational, condemnable and disgraceful to the state”.
They unanimously flayed the embattled lawmaker for allegedly causing trouble in the House, saying “not only has he ridiculed the House of Representatives but he has also brought disgrace to the people of Kogi State in particular”.
The House therefore, resolved to write a letter to plead with the leadership and members of the lower chamber to reduce the period of Melaye’s suspension “so that the people of his constituency would not suffer innocently.”
Besides, an elder statesman in the state, Mr. Sheneni David, condemned the physical combat in the lower chamber of the House of Representatives.
While refusing to take a side, he however, noted that the progressives would not have acted in that odd manner when it was obvious that a plan to suspend them has been hatched even before it was mentioned on the floor of the House.
Mr. Sheneni however, expressed regret that it would have been better if the fight was centred on their bid to attract dividends of democracy to their constituencies but rather, the fight was influenced by personal interests.
On the other hand, so many Nigerians see the incident in the lower chamber of the National Assembly as the push needed for a total clamp down on corrupt legislators by the anti-graft agencies.
Former President, Nigeria Academy of letters, Prof. Segun Odunuga, said that the probe of allegations of corruption by the EFCC will help sanitize the House.
While charging the anti-graft agency to fast-track its investigations into allegations and bring the offenders to book, the professor lamented that the lower chamber had been overwhelmed by constant allegations of corruption of various misdeeds.
“As a result of this, Nigeria may be on its way to sanitize the legislative system, which has not been serving the interests of the masses they are supposed to represent”, he posited.
Prof. Odunuga stressed that instead of being the watch-dog in checking abuses surrounding wastage built into our budgets, the legislators are helping to inflate them in order to benefit thereafter.
He further lamented, “Not even the Federal Government seems to have the courage in letting these lawmakers know that they are predators of the Nigerian economy-otherwise, how can anyone in authority explain that a whooping sum of N1.3 trillion out of the total budget of N3.1 trillion was expended in 2009 on 17, 500 people in a country of about 150 million people?”.
In the same vein, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) National Chairman, Balarabe Musa, described the fracas and the suspension as shameful and a strategy to cover up the allegations.
“What is happening in the House is simply a pointer that there is something they are trying to hide. Some of these things are linked to bad politics in the House”, he stressed.
He argued “we are not saying that there will not be disagreements, which we know is an ingredient of democracy, but the differences must be to get a superior and better alternative rather than on selfish reasons”.
Also, a Human Right advocate, Fred Agbaje, lamented that the action of the lower chamber legislators who went into an open fight was dishonourable, adding, “some of them don’t know why they were elected into the hallowed chamber, and this is one of the reasons Nigerians have been denied the benefits of democracy in the last eleven years.”
He suggested that having committed a fray, they should be charged accordingly, tried and punished like every other persons. “They deserve to be punished for breach of public peace. They are threat to democracy, law and order”.
Another Human Right Lawyer, Festus Keyamo, condemned the suspension of the 11 members of the progressives, saying it is the height of abuse of power.
Keyamo observed that the slow pace in handling the previous case of N2.3 billion car scam gave impetus to the present display of “crass arrogance and impudent show of power by the leadership of the House of Representatives.
He therefore, urged Aso Rock to release the report on the N2.3 billion scam sent to it by the EFCC to help sanitize the House.
Similarly, Femi Falana condemned the suspension of the 11 members of the House, arguing that the members were elected under the constitution and could not be suspended by the House’s internal rules.
According to him, only death, resignation or recall from the constituency can remove a lawmaker from office, pointing out that the Speaker cannot suspend a member even for an hour. “The lawmakers have four unbroken years to represent their constituencies and the Speaker can not change that. The suspension is illegal, null and void, he insisted.
Interestingly, the EFCC chairman, Mrs. Farida Waziri, has said that the commission would soon raise a panel to investigate how the said N9 billion was spent by the Speaker and nine other principal officers of the House.
She noted, “the law is no respecter of persons. Nobody is above the laws of the land”, even as she expressed worry over the alleged sleaze in the National Assembly.
While nothing that when issues keep cropping on in the House from Salisu Buhari’s certificate, Etteh matter, the car scam and the present misappropriation allegation, actions have to be taken but she argued that “it is very tasking, it is very dangerous, very tedious but we have to do it. And what is worth doing at all is worth doing well”.
Earlier, sister agency, Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Crime Commission, (ICPC) while speaking through its spokesman, Mr. Folu Olamiti, told the press that the commission was waiting for the group’s (the progressive) petition to commence its investigation on the alleged scam. “We are yet to receive any petition on the alleged scam. Immediately we get the petition, we will swing into action and begin our investigation”, he assured.
Meanwhile, to get a redress on what he termed “abuse of my fundamental human rights”, Hon. Melaye has gone to court.
He insisted that his suspension alongside other ten members of the progressives was illegal, adding that he would pursue the case to a logical conclusion.
On the other hand, knowing the consequences of his action, speaker Bankole is allegedly presently trying to win favour from the ex president, Chief Olusegun Obansanjo, who is believed to be the God-father of the embattled Hon. Melaye.
It was reported that Chief Obasanjo and the Speaker went into a close door meeting which lasted about 30 minutes at the Abuja International Airport. The former however, denied to have had a meeting with the latter.
Also, the National Secretariat of the ruling political party – PDP – is believed to be preparing to call for a peace meeting with the two erring factions in the House whose members are of the party.
Whichever way the issue is going to be resolved the display of shame by the lower chamber still shows the level of the country’s development. The legislators have shown the world that Nigeria is still in the Dark Age where confusion reigns supreme.
                  
Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo       Speaker Bankole