Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, had a media parley in Lagos, during which he harps on politics, economy and the anti-corruption war of the present administration among other topical issues. Excerpts as reported by Abdulrahman Abdulrauf:
On Buhari’s anti-corruption war
You will recall that the fight against corruption is one of the cardinal promises that Mr President made before assumption of office. He had course to say that we have to kill corruption before corruption kills us and I know he is committed to fighting corruption to a standstill. The process of doing that has become a subject of concern to some people. The EFCC is actually the agency, as we all know, that is in charge of this fight and if you look at what it has done so far, there is even a discussion as to whether they are proceeding in the right direction, and whether it is not time for us to sit down and do an assessment of how the fight has been in view of the fact that in the last one year I do not think there has been any major conviction. And it has always been a case of this person has been arrested and detained and some things have been done or he has been charged to court and then the story ends there.
Whether, if we continue like this, we will succeed in fighting corruption, only God knows. If the end is just to arrest people, charge them to court and thereafter nothing happens, no one is convicted; because conviction, even if you are not jailed, has a way of deterring people. The fact that you are carrying that negative appellation as a former convict has the potential to deter people from corruption in the future.
But if I am just arrested, charged to court and maybe some money recovered from me and at the end of the day, nothing happens, a lot of people may not be deterred in the future from engaging in corrupt practices. But if you look at the massive looting of the treasury, actually, I have been in government for quite some time, I never, never, could have imagined the scale of corruption that we are witnessing right now where people took lots of money running into billions, buried them in farms. As we are speaking now, they are recovering monies from someone’s farm somewhere around Abuja. It is very unfortunate where people stole money just for the sake of stealing. If you were the one who was in charge of fighting corruption, you would have even been shocked by the scale of the problem.
And I guess part of the problem we have is that the scale of the problem far outweighs the anticipation of the agencies. So, if care is not taken in the process, we may not get things right. They will have to keep their heads level to be able to be in charge of this fight and to do it eff0ectively.
On alleged selective war against corruption
On the question of one-sided approach, if we are talking about corruption, naturally, it will relate to those that had opportunity to serve in government. You will recall that, especially, that the PDP has been in power for a number of years, more than a decade and if you were to weigh members of opposition that are in government now and had opportunity to serve, those that would have tendencies to engage in pilfering of resources, majority will come from PDP, except we are not been realistic. Even though we can’t claim that all the members of APC are saints. You pointed out that APC spent money in the course of the campaign, but where did this money come from? Because as it is, we haven’t really had any hard facts about government officials forwarding money to the cause of the campaign. Majority of the money that was stolen was channelled towards the PDP campaign.
You know that this arms purchase monies, for instance, virtually everything was given for the prosecution of PDP campaign. I do not think a dime went to any member of the APC, we were all in government then. I can’t remember a discussion like that then, but I knew when some of the funds were being given to some of our friends as well, but I believe that no one that is of APC stock was given that money. The whole thing was scripted.
I don’t think the fight has really been one-sided. If you recall, one of the closest aides to the president, I don’t want to name him, if you recall, when he was picked up, everyone was shocked that that man could be picked up. He had been one of the most dutiful, one of the people that is very, very close to the president, yet he wasn’t spared when evidence was adduced that he benefitted from it and he had to refund the money. And recently, one of the closest people to the Villa as well, was picked up, he has been detained and questioned. Some recoveries were made from him and if the intention was that the fight should be one-sided, I can guarantee you that if it were to be a case that would have sacred cows, these two amply qualify as sacred cows that should not be touched.
I sincerely believe that the problem is that of evidence. If there is anybody in the APC government that perpetuated corruption and didn’t get dealt with, it could be that there is no evidence before the government right now and I know that there will be more that will come under serious searchlight of the anti-graft agencies and it doesn’t matter where they are. One thing I will say is that in a civil society, what is important is the issue of justice.
No human institution is perfect
Let me state this about this that there is no human institution or process designed by man that can be perfect, and so there is always this question of sitting down to assess how a certain measure is going. If the fight is one-sided for instance, if the process is not too good, if an individual steals money and engages you to render professional service and you rendered it and earned your money without knowing where the resources came from, and you are asked to refund the money and nobody looks at the value of the service you had rendered to that person, I guess these are questions that we can sit down and say no, I think we cannot cross certain lines. But a lot of Nigerians are happy about the fight and have said there should be no off limits. So, maybe, that is the kind of discussion that is really pushing the agencies to do far more than they are expected to do. But I know we should not talk partisan when it comes to the fight against corruption but we have to look at the process and if there are abuses, everything must be done in line with the provisions of the law since this is due process and the rule of law.
On Senate’s forgery case
On the Senate forgery case, so much has happened. By virtue of my training, when a matter is in court, I really do not want to offer an opinion on it because as we say, it is subjudice. But I must say that there is an importance attached to all these institutions of democracy, where you have the case of government’s power been carved out and vertically or horizontally shared. There are all for some purposes. I believe that the National Assembly in any country is the bastion of democracy. Where you do not have an independent National Assembly, you definitely will have some kind of totalitarian tendencies in the government.
In the past, there has been stability in regards to the work of the judiciary and the executive because usually, during military regimes or intervention, the institution that was suspended was the National Assembly and for obvious reasons. The body that now makes the law is the executive body. Ours is a democracy that is still evolving, it is not as nascent as it used to be but we still have a lot to learn.
If the goal is that they want to strangle the parliament, then definitely, we are going to run into serious problems and that will be an affront, a serious affront, on democracy and that will be totally unacceptable. But since the matter is in court, it doesn’t mean that when allegations are made, that they are true. It doesn’t. A lot of people have been charged in courts before and at the end of the day, insufficient evidence is given. And in a case of forgery, forgery is a criminal offense and the standard of proof, the burden of proof is beyond reasonable doubt. The Senate has spoken, it is an issue that all of us including the Senate and the House of Representatives, will have to really sit down and analyse.
As it is, I haven’t really seen the papers, I haven’t seen the charges, I don’t know whether they are grounded or not but I have asked, as a lawyer too, that I needed to see the nature of the evidence against the presiding officers that are being charged to court in a case of forgery. And if there is a compelling case, we won’t say he should be exempted because we are legislators.
I know that right now, there is an ongoing discussion about the propriety or otherwise of immunity being given to presiding officers of the National Assembly. I have had attacks on the social media and the conventional media. A lot of people have expressed divergent views. So if the view is that we are not entitled to immunity, then it will mean that we are conferring some kind of legitimacy to this kind of trial because in the future, we cannot stop any government that says it wants to proffer charges against a presiding officer and at the end of the day, if the goal is really to emasculate the National Assembly, that will easily be attained. But like I said, without an independent, effective National Assembly, there is bound to be problems in any given democracy. This thing was said long ago, long, long ago by Lord Acton, when he said “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
A lot of people believe why do we have the a Senate and the House of Representatives, why can’t we even have one House? But like they say, if you think that education is expensive, why don’t you try ignorance? They are reasons behind the creation of all these institutions. Social scientists sat, they looked at the act of governance and said, look, this is the best way to guarantee liberty. Their first task was that, a free person can engage in virtually everything, in wealth generation, he can use his freedom to advance democracy and they were careful not to compromise individual liberties and they crafted this system of government to make sure that leaders are made to be true to the oath of their offices. And when there is compromise or an attempt to strangulate these departments of governments, you will find out that the government does not function effectively.
Allegation of government within government
I guess the allegation of government within government came against this charge that was preferred against President of the Senate and the Deputy Senate President. We deal with the issues based on perception and sometimes, based on the fact that is available to us. The Senate president has his own sources of information, he is a close watcher of development of government, he has been in the system far longer than myself and so, for him to have made this allegation, it means he had seen certain things or certain trends that lent credence to what he said. But that is ultimately within the purview of the fact that is available to him.
In my own case, I cannot say that I have seen a situation where a cabal that sits in government can make a decision.
On relations with the Presidency
Recently, we have been engaging ministers on diversification of the economy and that will take me to the last issue on the performance of the APC government. You can imagine if all the minsters had said no, we are not responsible to the House of Representatives or to parliament and we will not come. There can’t be that discussion. We had interface where for the first time, ministers were called upon to come to our plenary and explain how they were doing in the targets they have set for themselves to ensure that it is not just talks because talk is cheap.
We have always had discussions about diversification of the economy, why is it that it wasn’t done? So this time around, we want them to tell us, through the instrumentality of the parliament, to speak to Nigerians about the goals they are setting for themselves, the targets, so that we can clearly hold them to their own targets or milestones that they have set.
So we had that discussion, we listened to them, we have heard all they have said they will do in the next year, the third year and so on and so forth.
One year under APC-led government
Now, the achievement of APC in the last one year. Fortunately, I am not Lai Mohammed, I don’t speak for the government, I am a legislator but I can’t run away from the fact that it is our government and whether I am speaker or not, I have to apply my mind as a politician to what we are doing and whether we are getting it right. I would say that a lot has been spoken about the fight against corruption, which is very important to ensure that the meagre resources that we have are not frittered with. And there is an ongoing discussion as well, as to the effectiveness of the war against insurgency in the North-East which has helped to improve security in the land. In those days, there were even fears of Boko Haram making incursions into safe cities like Lagos. I think they even attempted, but right now, we don’t have this kind of situation, so security has been enhanced.
When you talk of the economy, it is something that we will have to look at closely.
I sincerely believe we need a very strong team that will superintend our economy because we are faced with dire challenges like this, we have to do something. When Obama came into government in the US, there was virtual collapse of the economy at that time, he had to look for serious-minded people who sat and charted a way out of that crisis.
I sincerely believe that in Nigeria as well, we are rich in diverse ways. I don’t think under Obasanjo we had the oil boom, we were earning far less than what we did subsequently, but we were able to manage the meagre resources we had. So, I sincerely believe it is just a matter of management and if we are able to get the right people in place, we will be able to swim through these dangerous waters. But as they say, we are in the waters, and everything seems to be heading south. Things seem to be defying the traditional way of resolving these kind of problems so we need new methods. We need a strong team to really be in charge of the economy.
In terms of progress, progress cannot be made without appropriation. If we recall, the budget was passed not long ago, and I had cause to talk about the Procurement Act yesterday. If you are to procure, by the standard of the laws that we have in place, it will take you, in some cases, minimum of six months.
So we are looking at the possibility of amending the Procurement Act itself because this is the only way we can guarantee that money is pumped into the economy because right now, if you have the money, you want to pay for procurement, the procurement process is just on and it will be close to November, judging by the standard that we have in place, for this procurement process to be complete and before you start drawing out the money, it is almost December.
This has been the process and I think it is unacceptable. So very soon, we are coming up with an amendment to the Procurement Act in two respects. Number one, to shorten the procurement process to a maximum of 2 months because now, there is virtually nothing that you cannot get on Google. All you need to do now is Google prices and it will give you virtually everything.
I don’t see any reason why you will spend six months doing analysis, financial bids, technical bids and all those kind of things when you can sit down with your laptop and in a few hours you are done. We want to reduce the procurement process and then the issue of payment of mobilization, which is another big problem. It is pegged at 15 percent and we believe it is unduly restricted, more so that we have this Ifex prices right now. If you have a contract with offshore element, 15 percent of your payment may not even procure a half or even a quarter of what you need. We want a situation where we will raise the bar to not more than 50 percent.
So, I guess one year may be a small period of time for us to begin to assess the progress of this government. We have not even started implementing the budget in its true sense and that will be done after procurement processes are over. That is one of the challenges that we have on ground.