8th national assembly and the oft-repeated false narrative

BY ABU QUASSIM

Last Monday, Senate President, Dr. Ahmed Lawan dug up and waved the old defensive narrative about the performance of the Buhari administration in its first four years. While speaking to a youth conference in Abuja, he said “for four years (2015 – 2019), our government could not perform optimally because of the then crisis between the parliament – the National Assembly and the executive arm of government… So APC had already lost four important years. And that was supposed to be the years we should convince Nigerians that they took the right decisions by voting out a PDP administration in 2015”.

The implication of that Lawan’s statement is that the All Progressives Congress (APC) failed in its first four years in office and could not live up to expectations of Nigerians because there was “crisis” between the National Assembly in which he himself was majority leader for two years, four months, 29 days and the Buhari-led Presidency. The statement summed up the oft-repeated narratives of the APC establishment and key supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari when they need to justify why Nigeria has gone upside down under the control of the party which promised the people heaven on earth in 2015 when it was campaigning to upstage the then ruling party, the PDP.

Since the APC hierarchy has been mouthing this obviously dodgy and false narratives, a proper interrogation of the claim has not been made. Lawan’s resort to it last Monday has again brought it to the forefront and opened it for critical examination of the logic, factual basis and rationale.

First, the narrative represents an internal contradiction within the APC leadership. While the narrative presupposes an admission of failure, below par performance and betrayal of the trust reposed on the administration by the people who voted for it in 2015 because they genuinely believed in its change mantra, it stands on the opposite lane against the belief of President Buhari and some of his top officials who believe the administration had done excellently well in the last six years. In fact, the latter group believe the Buhari administration had done so much that no government since the creation of Nigeria in 1914 had done as much to rebuild the nation.

Obviously, Lawan does not subscribe to this latter view. Or is he just playing politics with facts? Second, are the facts available between 2015 to date in support of the claim that the eighth National Assembly set back the Buhari presidency? There are still more questions. What exactly did the Eighth National Assembly do that held the Buhari government back from performing or delivering on his promises to Nigerians in its first four years, as the Senate President will want us to believe?

Also, Senator Lawan should tell us what policies, programmes or initiatives the Buhari government took to the Eighth National Assembly that were rejected, obstructed or frustrated. Again, which revolutionary, brilliant and problem-solving bill or bills did the executive submit for passage by the Eighth National Assembly but was rejected or that the legislators refused to pass? We also need to be reminded or convinced that the Eighth National Assembly rejected any loan request by the Presidency, thereby depriving it of the needed fund for development. I cannot remember any such loan request that was rejected.

Again, one needs a reminder by Lawan and other APC sponsors of the ‘8th NASS is the reason for Buhari’s failure theory’ if the National Assembly (2015 – 2019) held back any approval for security spending in all its four years? I remember the National Assembly at that time coming up with different suggestions and having different meetings with security chiefs to know what the problems were and how the legislature could help. Even at a time that President Buhari committed the impeachable offence of spending money to pay for the Tucarno jets without parliamentary approval as requested by the constitution, the legislators only pointed out the infraction and ignored it.

It will also be necessary for the APC establishment sponsoring the ‘blame our failure on the legislature’ narrative to tell Nigerians what appointment they made which would have helped to revive the economy, restore security, curb corruption and create employment but was rejected by the Eighth Senate. The Buhari administration got easy nod in over 97 percent of its appointments that required Senate approval. The only rejected one that the administration spin doctors continued to hammer on was that of Ibrahim Magu.

Let us explain the Magu issue more succinctly by asking the question: If President Buhari were to be a senator and the Directorate of State Security (DSS) submitted the same report they presented on Magu, will he, who they call ‘Mai Gaskiya’, confirm the appointment? If the Eighth Senate was wrong in not confirming Magu how come that over one year after the ninth Senate came into office, Magu’s name was not resubmitted to it? Well, the manner in which Magu was removed from office, the facts and events that followed his removal seem to have justified the decision of the Eighth Senate.

We can go on and on interrogating this dubious narrative canvassed by Senator Lawan and his ilk. I am sure that some of these people may want to also claim that it is because the Eighth National Assembly delayed budget passage that the Buhari administration did not perform well. This is definitely a variant of the narrative under discussion. However, it is another falsehood.

The statistics of budget passage over a 10-year period (2010 – 2019) disproved the claim. Within that decade, the fastest federal budget to be approved was that of 2013, passed two months and 11 days after it was presented to the Seventh National Assembly. Although 2018 marked the longest time a federal budget would be passed in the Fourth Republic – six months and 10 days – the Eighth National Assembly had the second-fastest record of budget delivery within the decade, which was also the sixth-best since Nigeria returned to democracy on 29th May 1999. That was the 2016 federal budget, which was passed in three months and two days. Interestingly the 2016 Appropriation Bill was the first full-scale budget of President Muhammadu Buhari and the speed of passage belied the gross incompetence displayed in the preparation of the budget. In fact, twice the budget was withdrawn from the National Assembly and if we calculated the day that the final copy was submitted, it would be the fastest budget passed since 1999.

It was also during the Eighth Senate that the executive arm delayed budget presentation the longest in the history of the Fourth Republic. The 2016 federal budget did not get to the National Assembly until 22nd December 2015, three days to Christmas. It beat the infamous record of budget presentation delay set by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 when the 2014 budget estimates got to the federal legislature on 19th December 2013. But the Eighth National Assembly bent over backwards to ensure that the 2016 budget enjoyed the shortest stay in the legislature.

Throughout the term of the Eighth National Assembly, the earliest time the executive sent the budget was in November, while the other three arrived in the last month of the year for a budget cycle of January to December. The 2018 budget proposal reached the National Assembly on 7th November 2017, while those of 2017 and 2019 were respectively received on 14th December 2016 and 19th December 2018.

In four years, the Buhari administration only sponsored 10 non-budgetary executive bills during the period of the Eighth National Assembly. One of them was also withdrawn by the executive due to squabbles between the Attorney General and the acting EFCC chairman. The legislators had to fill the gaps as the Senate eventually passed 318 bills, the highest ever in the history of the country. In fact, it is the Buhari presidency that set the nation back by refusing to assent to some of these bills because it was bent on settling scores with the legislature.

In some cases, the presidency rejected bills that could help jump-start the economy, promote ease of doing business and create employment on flimsy excuses of drafting errors or inadequacy. I should think that a serious government will simply deploy draftsmen from the Ministry of Justice or the universities to help correct the errors and ensure the laws scaled through for the benefit of the people. Many of the laws like the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, CAMA Act (Amendment) Bill, Electoral Act (Amendment) bill, Police Reforms Bill, became victims of the executive disrespect for the Eighth Senate. It is under Buhari that I saw the President signing into law many bills submitted to him by the Eight National Assembly a few days after that legislature had wound down. The joke behind that action was that he had denied the Eighth National Assembly the joy of celebrating the assent. The bills became law without their being resubmitted by the incumbent ninth National Assembly.

Let us further inform Senator Lawan that now that the ninth National Assembly has made “conscious decision to work in harmony with the executive”, we are yet to see how this has helped the country. The ‘submissive, pliant, co-operative and un-obstructive’ Ninth National Assembly that we now have working closely with the Buhari administration has not been able to halt the escalating rate of insecurity, prostrate state of the economy, high level of poverty and unemployment as well as unparalleled rate of corruption. In fact, the last two years of the Buhari administration have been worse than the first four years.

It is believed that the false narrative resorted to by Lawan is just being repeated at every opportunity the sponsors have because they believe the rest of us Nigerians do not query anything we are presented with. Well, this time, they have misjudged us. This narrative of why Buhari did not do well in his first four years will never go unchallenged. It is not believable. It cannot stand the test of logic. It is false. It is just created to make excuse for failure. It is a buck-passing measure. It is aimed at shifting blames. It is unacceptable to discerning Nigerians.

Thus, I think it is high time Senator Lawan and the other APC Chiefs as well as their spin doctors formulated a new narrative to explain away the inability of the Buhari administration to fulfill its promises to Nigerians.

Quassim is based in Abuja.