Stump troopers

By statutory timelines spelt out for the 2019 general election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the lid is formally off stumping by the political class towards the forthcoming poll. Campaigns for presidential and national assembly elections slated for February 16th got off the starting blocks on November 18th, while December 1st is the official flag-off of campaigns for governorship and state assembly elections coming up on March 2nd.

At this point of our election cycle, there is no prize for projecting that focused governance in the remaining days of the present republic will almost certainly take the back seat. Politicians will much of the time henceforth stay off their official duties and hunker down in respective constituency, soliciting votes from the electorate for their next turn in desired offices. Just take a look in your constituency, you will notice presences that were distant echoes in power centres until lately, now back to commingle with the base. And that is nothing peculiar to Nigeria really, but rather a trait of all electoral democracies.

Already, the routine operations of the National Assembly (NASS) may have fallen through under this syndrome. Both chambers of the legislature hung up their plenary sessions for a week last Tuesday: the Senate because it could not form a quorum, which is prescribed by law at one-third of its 109 members, with barely 20 senators in attendance for the day; and the House of Representatives ostensibly because of faulty public address system in the green chamber, but in reality with only a handful of its 360 members in attendance at the plenary. Not that the Senate itself did not dissemble members’ poor attendance, as Philip Aduda who moved the motion for suspension of plenary said the chamber was “empty today because the various committees are on oversight duties across the country to ensure the budget is performing.” So much cover in oversight duties! With the whistle for campaigns towards the legislative elections already blown, we’ll see if the two chambers make their projection of getting back to plenary this week.

The upside to the season is that it is as well the time when voters truly hold the ace in the election cycle, preparatory to voting. As politicians come around to remote constituencies – some of them the first time after four years – to canvass votes for another term in elective offices, it is time for voters to demand strict account for what they did with the last mandate they got and what will be done differently if the stewardship rendered is not satisfactory. Just so to be clear, it should not be time for demands (by voters) or offers (by politicians) of momentary pecuniaries, but rather a time for gruelling interrogation of the performance of the social contract. If a politician had promised his constituents a particular project, as a result of which he was given the last mandate, it is time for reality check whether he delivered as promised; and if not, whether he deserves another chance or to be replaced by someone else with a better promise of delivering. The whole point of true electoral democracy is that while politicians may have their way for good or ill over four years, or whatever may be the duration of a tenure in diverse contexts, they will always come back at the turn of another cycle for voters to have their say and ultimately determine their fate. Using this prerogative reasonably and uncompromisedly is where voter power lies.

If the electoral commission does its work right as expected and all other stakeholders, especially politicians, play by the rules, the impending elections should be events the voting public can look forward to with reasoning anticipation and magisterial reserve, not with trepidation. In other words, if we do the right things during this campaign season and stay off stoking base sentiments that typically fuels violence, the 2019 poll should show forth unimpaired expression of the will of voters; and politicians will be beneficiaries, coming off with legitimate mandates.

But there is a persisting threat to the impending poll, namely funding. It is long past the time the tangle between the Presidency and NASS over this critical issue got straightened out. The legislature has been rigidly self-interested in its approach to sourcing the funds for the election budget; and now with the exigency of time before the poll, it may have forced a Hobson’s choice on the Presidency.

The two chambers of the legislature two weeks ago approved supplementary appropriation of N242.2billion for INEC and security agencies towards the elections, as requested by President Muhammadu Buhari. Only there is a catch: they vired the money from the Service Wide Vote of the Presidency and from 2018 appropriations of 30 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) rather than from projects injected by them into the 2018 Appropriation Act.

Buhari had in a letter to NASS in July requested funds to be reallocated from N578billion worth of projects the lawmakers injected in the 2018 budget before sending it in for presidential assent, which the president only reluctantly gave because of the passage of time and with apparent expectation that some money would subsequently be redirected from those projects to fund the election budget. But the legislature rather dug in on those controversial projects and applied the knife on the signature Social Intervention Programme (SIP) of the Buhari administration, initially taking the N242.2billion in whole from that welfarist programme. And two weeks ago, both chambers of NASS rejigged their appropriation, taking half of the required funds from the SIP and the remaining half from the 2018 budgets of 30 MDAs. Among others, Power ministry is to contribute the lion’s share at N25.5billion; Water Resources, N12.9billion; Agriculture, N11.05billion; Education, N10.2billion; Budget and National Planning, N8.8billion; and Health, N8.05billion.

The Senate subsequently explained that it acted after due consultation with the executive arm of government. “The Senate (had) approved a report which stipulated that the supplementary funding for INEC and security agencies…be sourced from the Service Wide Vote of the executive through virement. However, the executive came up with a counter-proposal that the election be funded through both the Service Wide Vote and the budgets of 30 MDAs on pro rata basis,” chairman of the chamber’s Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Rafiu Ibrahim, said in a statement.

With less than 90 days left to the schedule of elections, there are few options available to the Buhari government to secure needed funding for the poll if it rejects the appropriation lately passed by the legislature. Indeed, every delay now in finalising a deal gravely hazards the elections as scheduled. That may just be the price to pay for the odd relations all along between the executive and legislative arms of government.

But we must also question the rationale behind the legislators insulating spurious projects in the 2018 Appropriation Act while taking out from programmes and ministries that impact directly on masses of Nigerians. Besides the SIP that is welfarist, even if tokenly so, existing infrastructures by the Power ministry are astoundingly fitful. So also are Education for which resource allocation has been notoriously inadequate, with university teachers currently on strike owing to funding issues; and the Health sector where hospitals are little better than consulting morgues. We need to call the legislators to account on whose interest they serve, and there is perhaps no better time than this campaign season when they come around to the constituencies to solicit votes.