Lawmakers count costs of aborted joint session
From John-Abba Ogbodo, Abuja
SINCE 1999, there have always been problems associated with the presentation of the budget to the National Assembly. In the eight years of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the problem was one of implementation of the budgets passed during the period. He expected lawmakers to endorse his submission wholesale but most often, the lawmakers would use their discretion to pass the budget bill. But Obasanjo would go ahead to implement what he proposed. He often ignored amendments by the National Assembly.
Since he assumed office, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has been contending with issues involving budget implementation, which has earned him the tag of 'Baba Go Slow.'
In the 2010 budget, the issues have changed. Not only has the president sent the 2010 budget proposal early to the legislature, he sent a medium-term expenditure framework, which gave an insight into not just the 2010 budget but budget estimates up till 2012. This is the first time such step has been taken.
Despite what the president plans, he is experiencing his own peculiar challenges with budget presentation. The House of Representatives had erupted in excitement when the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole announced that the president would present the 2010 budget to the joint session of the National Assembly last week.
But that excitement fizzled when the chairman of the Senate Committee on Media, Ayogu Eze, announced that the Senate would not go the House of Representatives for the joint sitting. He said the senators would remain in their chamber where the budget would be laid on the table. Presenting the bill before both chambers in the spacious chambers of the House of Representatives had become a precedent. But the senators dismissed the convention as not backed any law and hence not sacrosanct. But there were undercurrents.
Eze left the impression that the Senate expected the members of the House to move the Red Carpet chamber for the ceremony. The chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs Eseme Eyiboh said that Eze might have ignored some facts.
Eyiboh noted that since 1999, the joint session of the National Assembly has always taken place in House of Representatives. The turn of events was unexpected. He argued that the Senate chamber could only accommodate about 160 persons while the Green Chamber could accommodate about 500. He said, "we cannot afford to take the president to a place where he and members of his entourage would not be comfortable. There are 360 members in the House of Representatives while there are 109 senators and the president will come with his entourage comprising ministers, party chieftains and members of the diplomatic corps. The House of Representatives has the capacity to accommodate all visitors,'' he said.
There was no agreement and there was little surprise when the exercise was aborted.
And there was perhaps more surprise when the president sent the bills to the Houses before going abroad for his medicals. It is the first time the budget will be presented in such unceremonious manner.
Stakeholders including civil servants had thronged the premises of the National Assembly complex to avoid the usual traffic snarl often caused by budget presentation. Security agents from the Presidential Villa had been deployed in different areas in the National Assembly just as the Nigerian Army band had set up instruments in the House of Representatives gallery.
Crowds had gathered discussing the conflict that looked like making the two chambers go their individual ways over the budget presentation. To compound the confusion, the red carpet laid for the president was spread across the entrance to the two chambers.
Soon, words filtered that the president had postponed the budget presentation because of the disagreement between the two chambers. Few people believed it until confused members of the army band started moving their equipment, which was earlier set up in the gallery of the House of Representatives.
The Special Adviser to the president on National Assembly Matters, Senator Abba Aji confirmed the hints that the president might not come to the National Assembly that day. Confirming the postponement of the presentation, he said it was caused by the feud between in the National Assembly.
Bankole later announced that the budget presentation by the president scheduled "to hold today has been postponed." He did not elaborate.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leadership, obviously disappointed by the action of the legislators, swiftly summoned the leadership of both chambers. After the plenary session, the Senate President, David Mark, and Bankole, separately led their principal officers to the PDP national secretariat in Abuja. Four one hour, they met with the National Working Committee (NWC) led by the PDP National Chairman, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor.
It was learnt that the party leadership was concern over the feud and asked Mark and Bankole to work together in the interest of those. They were told that, "the budget is very crucial to the attainment of the vision 20-2020 of President Yar'Adua."
Mark and Bankole gave their accounts of the difference, which they traced to the composition of the joint Committee on the Review of the Constitution.
The PDP national publicity secretary, Prof. Rufai Ahmed Alkali, told journalists that both chambers were told to return to status quo on the venue of the presentation of the budget.
Alkali said: "First, that there have been regular consultations with the leadership of the National Assembly. This is not the first time that the party has had reason to call them or they have reason to come to the secretariat to brief us on the progress in the National Assembly. It is a routine thing and the responsibility of the party to maintain close collaboration with them. We had useful discussions.
"The party invited them because the President was scheduled for the formal presentation of the 2010 budget, and for one reason or the other, it could not hold. We called them to know what is happening and they briefed us. We have asked them to go and put those things in order so that the President can present his budget.
In the call for the maintenance of the status quo he said, "we are students of history and politics and traditionally, what happens is that budget presentation is done in the House of Representatives because it is a larger place and then the Senate President presides. The Speaker gives a vote of thanks. The simple thing is that there is a tradition, which is backed by the constitution and which members of the National Assembly are knowledgeable about and we are going to work on that line."
The question is whether this ego trip will translate to unity and prosperity of Nigerians. The journey to this valley of infamy by the National Assembly started with the preparation for the review of the 1999 Constitution when the Constitution Review Committees (CRC) of both chambers were torn apart over the issue of nomenclature-co-chairman or deputy chairman of the joint committee. The House decided to embark on its own review of the constitution by holding a separate public hearing.
The conflict is deep and the leadership of the National Assembly cannot continue to pretend that all is well whereas it is evident that both chambers are in the trenches.
The camaraderie that existed between former Senate President, the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Umar Ghali Na'Abba doesn't exist between Mark and Bankole. The unity between the House and the Senate under Okadigbo and Na'Abba was demonstrated when the latter led members of the House of Representatives to the Senate during a session where a motion for Okadigbo's ouster was about to be moved. That singular show of solidarity halted the move. It was the same cooperation that existed between the Senate and the House during the tenures of Senator Ken Nnamani and Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari that led to the abortion of the third term project.
It is said that the chasm between the Senate and the House is as a result of the factors that threw up the leadership in both chambers. While it is believed that Mark came through the instrumentality of Obasanjo, Bankole it is said was made speaker by anti-Obasanjo forces that removed Patricia Olubunmi Etteh as Speaker.
If the intervention by PDP fails to yield positive results, the two chambers may take the budget separately. In the end they will have to work together to realise one budget. The issue must be resolved in the interest of the nation because the two chambers are interdependent. Even if they receive the budget from the president separately, they need to harmonise positions since they cannot forward two versions of the budget to the president for assent. Both chambers are quoting different sections of the 1999 Constitution to support their positions.
Eyiboh said Section 81 of the 1999 Constitution states that, ''The president shall cause to be prepared and laid before each House of the National Assembly at any time in each financial year estimates of the revenue and expenditure of the Federation for the next following financial year;
It has also been said that the joint session is not envisaged by the constitution in the case of budget but only during a state of the nation address.
If the impasse lingers, it will have dire consequences on the nation. First, it is certain that there will not be any review of the 1999 Constitution. Secondly, with no electoral reforms likely to be passed, the whole electoral process looks like hitting the rocks in 2011. The 2009 budget was passed in April and because of the delay, The Federal government admitted that the performance in the first quarter was poor. Some of the sensitive projects in the budget are still left hanging because of lack of funding. The president had to write to the National Assembly recently to ask for virement of funds.
The National Assembly may have to live with lack of confidence in each other for the remaining part of their tenure if the effort to reconcile them fails. In the event of failure to reach a compromise, the House of Representatives may smile at the end of the day because of numerical superiority because the constitution provides for voting on such matter as appropriation to decide two-thirds majority.
A consequence will be erosion of the Vision 20-2020, which the federal government holds dearly. As parts of efforts to realise the objective, Yar'Adua forwarded a Medium-Term Expenditure Framework to the legislature. The framework covers a period between 2010-2012 and if the 2010 budget fails to meet the set targets, it will be difficult for the other targets to be met.
The Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Mohammed Ali Ndume said the PDP should recall its members in the Senate to stress that the whole thing is about ego. This is not the reason Nigerians elected them. 'We should not deviate from tradition because of ego. We are elected to make laws and not to quarrel. The issues are very clear. The House of Representatives chamber has the capacity to take all the people who are coming for the presentation of the budget. The chamber has been the venue for joint session and I think we should every other thing behind us and move on,'' he said.
Warman Ogoriba from Bayelsa State faulted the Senate saying that deviating from the tradition might send wrong signals to the public that all is not well with the two chambers. "I think we should forget the issue of who is right or wrong and the earlier we all realise that we have one common constituency, the better for us. If there is no agreement, the president can lay the budget before each House as the constitution says. We cannot afford to toy with our people. There is hunger out there and our people are looking up to us to address these problems," he said.
After the president took steps to avoid the minefield, by laying the budget before the two chambers separately, they must meet at conference level to harmonise their positions. Is this a postponement of the evil day?
Alkali, assured that the party would resolve the matter in the interest of the nation and not individuals because "we have a mission to take Nigeria to higher level of economic development."
