The need for midterms in Nigeria

“He also noted that the President’s decision not to honour the House was due to the utterances of the lawmaker calling for his impeachment, and concerns that the President would be embarrassed If he honoured the invitation.”

I have not, in the little over two decades I have spent on earth, seen a statement from a legislator as irresponsible as this. For the record, this statement is attributed to Hon. Ado Doguwa, majority leader of the House of Representatives in response to Kingsley Chinda’s call to impeach President Buhari.

In copying the American styled presidentialism that came with a bicameral legislature, the designers of the 1979 constitution and the one that followed 20 years later forgot one very important aspect of constitutional democracy: legislative education and the importance of legislative freedom to act. Of course the three arms of government exist to serve as a balancing act to each other. Such balance has oftentimes brought about friction especially between the executive and the legislature. The creators of the 1999 constitution and the legislators it has produced sought to help legislators especially the new ones by creating the Nigerian Institute of Legislative Studies, but actions from legislators since 1999, especially from members of the 9th Assembly has proven that they are yet to learn anything from it, even from the plethora of legislative retreats and orientations they attend.

The failure of the 9th National Assembly as regards its constitutional duty to check the excesses of the executive is mind blowing and detrimental to not just the constitution but also the entire country. Between 2015 and 2019, the Buhari government violated at least 40 court orders. This is in direct breach of his oath to respect the rule of law and the constitution. This is not the place to table the numerous sins of the Buhari administration so I’ll excise that part and focus on the shortcomings of the 9th Assembly. Their predecessors in the 8th Assembly led by then senate president Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara respectively, despite their immense shortcomings, did not bend over backwards to accommodate every rubbish thrown to them by the executive.

The executive’s overreach in the exercise of their political power came in two weeks ago when news broke that Kaduna governor gave a dressing down to the speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila in the presence of Buhari, berating him for entertaining motions to summon the president to address parliament concerning the mounting internal security crises. The end result of that dressing down is what we are seeing today, with even members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party disowning Kingsley Chinda for daring to challenge lawmakers to do the needful.

In talking about the shortcomings of the legislative arm of government in Nigeria following the adoption of American styled presidentialism, one must understand the root of this shortcoming: the obscurity of the legislative election season, a function of the general election season given Nigeria’s practical unitary system of government that places so much focus and power on the executive president. The #OpenNass campaign was slightly successful in demanding an open legislative process as the demand for an open annual budget was adopted by the 8th Assembly. However, we must do one better. We must begin to demand that a midterm election season styled after the US be adopted to properly screen intending legislators. We have to start asking legislators where they stand on key political, economic and social issues. This cannot be done in the same election season where Nigerians seek to elect their president. Nigerians do not understand the functions of a functional legislative arm of government beyond making laws. The concept of checks and balances is lost, which is why any talk of impeachment of the executive is seen as a taboo topic, not necessarily because of its political implication. This lack of understanding is why a senatorial candidate from Bauchi could boldly say on national television that his sole aim of getting to the National Assembly is to make Buhari a president for life.

Much of the rot that Nigeria has descended into in recent times is a function of lawmakers not understanding their constitutional roles, and so many have thought that not offending the executive even in the face of gross irresponsibility and disregard for the constitution is part of their legislative agenda. We have to remind them that it is not. And this would only sink in as a message when we begin to scrutinize people who seek elective positions in our state and national assemblies.

Macharry is an analyst at SBM Intelligence