Legislative mechanism as a guarantee for transparency in governance (1)
BEING text of a lecture delivered by Senator (Comrade) Dahiru Awaisu Kuta at the national conference of anti-corruption committees in Nigerian legislatures and heads of anti-corruption units in government establishment North-East zone on the theme: "Sustaining the anti-corruption crusade: A collaborative effort of all Nigerians" held at Giginya Hotel, Sokoto, Sokoto State, Nigeria.
INTRODUCTION
LEGISLATURES are the essential pillars in a country's struggle to promote transparency and good governance and to combat corruption. They are the only institution that represents the entire citizenry, and have the ability to control
TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNANCE: A LEGISLATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Transparency means allowing a light to pass through an object in order to make the object more visible. A transparent object is, therefore, an object that is so clear that any shady area can be seen even from a distance. Similarly, this process can be transferred to governance. A transparent administration is one that is open in the conduct of its daily affairs subject to its policies and programmes as well as its implementation procedures.
Many promising reforms have been proposed to make congresses and other legislative bodies more transparent. One of such reforms is the Open House project of May 2007, which calls on congress to use the new information technology to create a truly transparent legislature. In another development, a citizen assembly was proposed to solve the problems of conflicts of interest in governance. A citizen assembly is a randomly selected group of citizens with a formal governmental powers and jurisdictions confined to issues where elected officers have a blatant conflict of interest. The most notable citizen assemblies to date are the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario. All citizen assemblies have focused to date on designing electoral systems and how votes are translated into seats.
However, citizen assemblies could also play a vital role in designing voter's information system in order to hold elected officials democratically accountable. States with a diverse population often rely on the legislative system or various legislative mechanisms to ensure effective representation of the population. This is attainable through the use of some legislative structures, notable among them being the unicameral legislature: this is a situation where one legislative house represents all the interest of national law making, for instance the New Zealand Assembly, where a single chamber is responsible for all legislations.
Another structure is the bicameral legislature which consists of two chambers, which generally requires a concurrent majority of each chamber to pass legislation. A common criticism of such system, however, is the multiple levels of approval required for legislation, which can slow the legislative process.
Some states create one or more committees within their legislatures to protect provincial interest, ethnic interest or both. On legislative leadership, some states establish mechanisms to ensure that leadership of the legislature contains representatives from the different ethnic or provincial communities. Guaranteed representation for women in legislature can be particularly important in post-conflict states, both to represent women concerns, and also because women in states around the world have shown willingness to cross party lines and other political divisions.
Their approaches to issues often differ from men's especially in the areas of social welfare, legal protection and transparency in governance.
The main function of the legislature is to make and amend laws. In a parliamentary system of government, the legislature is formally supreme and appoints members of the executive. In the presidential system of government, the legislature is considered a power branch, which is equal to, but independent of the executive.
A demand by people, group of people and organization for transparency in governance is, therefore, a rejection of secrecy that surrounds policy-making and implementation processes of government. It is a public demand for increased flow of timely and reliable economic, social and political information on government plans and programmes. Thus, public agencies and public officers are expected to be transparent in the performance of their duties.
More importantly, it is imperative for government officials, especially heads of departments and senior management staff to conduct government business in a manner that will not create any doubt about the honesty of intention in the policy and fairness in execution of the programmes. One way of removing public doubts about the sincerity of purpose in the formulation of government policy or change in a policy is for the government, its agencies and officers to make information on their action available to the public.
Information is not a gift of the government to be bestowed on a whim. On the contrary, the right of the people to access information is the obligation of the government to return to them what has always been rightfully theirs (CHRI Report, 2003).
The citizen will demand to know and the government has the responsibility to tell them, why certain decisions were taken, why some programmes and not the others, are being promoted or abandoned; why a particular issue of public concern is receiving government support, while another equally important matter suffers neglect or outright rejection.
Once transparency is missing, information flow that will enhance the people's understanding of what the government is doing and why certain things are happening the way they appear to be, will be hampered without transparency, rumour mongering will rise, faulty assumptions begins to thrive, while government efforts to solve societal problems will hardly be appreciated. Transparency in governance fills the gap between the faulty assumptions of the people and the substantive action of the government.
Transparency in governance has become the norm and there are now internationally acceptable standards to evaluate the quality and level of transparency. It is not sufficient for laws and regulations to exist in a country, neither is it enough to proclaim the right of the public to be informed of government policies and programmes. It is also very necessary for the citizens to have equal access to institutions and avenues that facilitate the flow of information that is relevant to public issues; that affect their individual rights and group interests. It, therefore, means that the citizens must have the opportunity to access information via the media.
This is why any government that wishes to lay claim to transparency must guarantee and respect freedom of expression and the press, by cultivating the culture of openness and passing legally enforceable access laws that removes all obstacles to maximum information disclosure.
International campaign for transparency in the conduct of government business is not without its own criticism. Notwithstanding the strong views of opponents of transparency in government, citizens have the right to know and the government has the responsibility to inform them about the government policies and programmes. One has therefore, to balance the argument against what lack of transparency can cause. Lack of transparency can be politically, economically and socially very costly. Absence of transparency will hinder public scrutiny of government policies and programmes and consequently increase the inability of such government to assess and reshape policies and programmes which may not have met the aspirations of the people.
Socially, lack of information on government activities will encourage rumour-mongering and poor understanding of government intentions by people. The end result is that there will be a high probability of withdrawal of the people's support for any social engineering that the government may be pursing.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
The issue of public accountability has been given serious thought by all and sundry. Today, accountability has become a topical issue in both political and administrative vocabulary.
Accountability is defined as a legal liability which entails the establishment of a pattern of control over receipts and expenditure that permits a determination either by the executive or by legislature or both, that public funds are used for public purposes.
Accountability has three interrelated meaning; greater responsibility to elected superiors, greater responsiveness to community groups and greater commitment of values and higher standard of morality. It also stands for responsibility to account for stewardship of a resource or authority.
Public accountability in the running of government affairs is to establish the ethos of an accountable public service. The concept is both legal and ethical to the public for ensuring that public funds, human and material resources are used in the service of public interest within the limits of existing rules and regulations with the utmost objective that public resources best serves public interest.
The Obasanjo civilian administration which came to being on May 29, 1999 had the philosophy of eradicating corruption and mismanagement of public fund in all its ramifications. This process led to the enactment of the Anti-corruption Law in June 2000.
The law prohibits and prescribes punishment for corrupt practices and other related offences. Government was of the opinion that the Anti-corruption Bill would make mark a turning point in the nation's effort to fight corruption. This menace, called corruption, is a cankerworm that has eaten deep into our society and body politics in general. This social problem has been quite often responsible for the instability of successive governments since independence. Corruption and mismanagement of public funds at any rate is anti-development.
Transparency cannot by itself alone ensure free flow of information to the public and openness in governance. It is not sufficient for instance to demand that government policies and programmes be made public for critical evaluation; or that explanation be given for how and why certain things of public interest are the way they are.
It is also important to hold government officials responsible for action taken, query them for noticeable lapses in the administration of agencies in their care, and impose necessary sanctions where such officials are found wanting in the discharge of their duty. In fact, it is the enforcement mechanisms put in place to achieve all the above that will ensure accountability of government and its officials.
Accountability is an important concept that shows the establishment of a pattern of control over the action of government officials either by the executives or legislatures or both as stated earlier. Accountability is now a cherished goal of every good government. Its existence or lack of it determines the democratic or dictatorial credentials of any government. It is a corollary of the responsibility of public servants, elected or appointed, to report to the citizens on the quality of their work, the moral basis of and use of authority, and the resources entrusted to them as well as the results obtained in terms of the best services for the people (Nguouo, 2000). There are six ways through which the government and its officials are usually expected to demonstrate responsibility for their action. These include:
- Political accountability: This is a doctrine associated with the responsibility of the rulers to defend their action before the ruled. The doctrine originates from the theory of political mandate which makes the political office holders to be accountable to those who elected them.
- Legal accountability: This shows the responsibility to obey laws, sometimes referred to as a regime of rule of law, the absence of which undermines democracy and creates a class overlord among public officers with a penchant to act arbitrarily.
- Fiscal accountability: This is the responsibility of those in the public service to ensure that public funds put in their care have been used judiciously for public purposes. Effective public accounts auditing will be needed to ensure this accountability.
- Programme accountability: This means responsibility for the execution of public programme.
- Process accountability: That is responsibility to plan, adopt and follow established procedures in administration.
- Outcome or performance accountability: This is the responsibility for the results, good or bad. Accountability cannot exist in a vacuum. To organize public bureaucracy in a manner that will ensure the accountability of its officials, some requirements are imperatives namely:
- There is a need for effective leadership in the administrative structure and, therefore, a distinct hierarchical framework put in place to provide clear line of authority as well as showing where the buck stops.
- The establishment of monitoring and control system to obtain compliance with authorized programmes and impose sanction if there is a default.
- A system of checks and balances to maintain honesty and integrity in administration.
- Provision of avenues and opportunities to seek redress for any arbitrary or irregular actions taken by the public officers.
