Eseme Eyiboh, a former member House of Representatives, is the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Senate President Godswill Akpabio. In this interview with ONYEDI OJIABOR and SANNI ONOGU, he outlines Akpabio’s legislative priorities as the Senate President.
What are the priorities of Senator Godswill Akpabio as Senate President?
In the last one year, the Senate has done more than what one can envisage. The legislative business as you may know is very intangible. It’s not like road construction where you will say one kilometre of road has been done and that it is remaining five more kilometres to go. That is not how it is. In the legislative business, most of what it does is intangible, but the effect is positive. For example, everybody was all talking about difficulties in this country, which you and I will appreciate that there are a lot of difficulties, that the citizens are having encounters that recently culminated into a protest. Now, the legislature, by democratic prescriptions, was intended to be that arm of government that will be able to create impact through legislative mandate and by the effect of Section 4(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), it is very clear that the legislative powers of every government are under the rule of law. That is to give you the import and the importance of these institutions. The Senate, I can tell you, the summary of the bills in the 10th Senate as of this June: they had a total of bills introduced, 479. Total number of bills passed, 25; bills read the first time, 276; Executive bills, 13; bills negatived, 3; bills withdrawn, none; bills at committee stage, 43; bills awaiting First Reading 131; bills awaiting Second Reading 46; those awaiting resolution 114; the total number of petitions 50; and the total number of confirmations 215.
If you look at that record, the ordinary man in the street may not understand the import of the above on good governance. The three primary responsibilities of the legislature are lawmaking, oversight and appropriation. Traditionally, the National Assembly used to stay in the National Assembly and call on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to defend what they have done and what they have not done. However, this particular Senate expanded the jurisprudence of oversight by taking it to even the private sector, like the Dangote Refinery. Their visit to the Dangote Refinery has helped to expose what is happening within the industry to public scrutiny. This attracted the attention of the president, who gave a directive that crude oil should be sold to local refiners in naira. Giving them crude oil in local currency will affect the cost of production of petroleum products by the local refineries, like Dangote.
How is Senator Akpabio navigating challenges in the Senate, particularly collaboration among parties?
I’m sure if you ask even the biggest critics of the Senate, they will tell you that this is the most stable Senate. Why it is most stable is because, for one, a Senate leadership emerged without interference from the executive or the ruling party. From the voting between Senator Akpabio and Senator Abdulaziz Yari, the margin wasn’t much. That was to show how competitive it was. That was to show how less influenced it was. That was to show that the Senate elected their presiding officers. That has now brought to the fore the issue of collaboration. The current Senate is constituted of men and women of integrity and character. People who have gone around it, the majority of them were in the House of Reps, they understand the gamut of legislative politics. The majority of them were there, some of them were governors and others were ministers. These are all-round experienced people. So if you want to put them side by side with what you’d expect from governance, you would score them above average because they understand governance practice. By the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 25, the key thing in governance is the issue of participation by the people. So, when you talk about participation by the people, you are talking about democratic governance, and by extension, you are talking about the legislature, because that’s where the people are represented. In this way, it is easy and possible for you to feel the impact. The National Assembly is perhaps the most important component of our democracy. But people don’t appreciate their input because the legislature is very new to our people and they don’t understand how it works. They understand the executive and the judiciary because that is what constituted military governments. There was no legislature. So the legislature is quite strange and because of its strangeness, the people perceive it wrongly. However, they have not been able to sit down and look at the impact of the legislature on the people and representation.
You said the Senate elected its presiding officers and appointed principal officers without external influence. But the APC recently engineered the sacking of one of the Senate’s principal officers. Can a party recommend the sack of an official it did not appoint?
What is this position? It was the position of Chief Whip. The Chief Whip is a nominee of the political party for that position. He is more or less a commandant-general. He is the one who deploys the objectives or the strategies of the party. He is a senior official of the government responsible for maintaining party discipline in the lawmaking chamber, by ensuring that members vote in support of the party’s position. The position is usually held by an experienced and skilled politician who has a deep understanding of party dynamics and the legislative process. So, the party nominates the occupant of that position. It also has a right to withdraw its support for that nominee. When that is done, there is nothing the Senate or the legislature can do.
But, if the Senate can remove one of its officers because a party wants it so, is that not interference?
The Senate has only two principal officers; they are elected by other members. The other officials are presiding officers and they are appointed. So, I am saying that there was no party big stick in the election of the principal officers. The election was free, fair and transparent. But, when it comes to the emergence of other officials, like the Majority Leader, for instance, if the majority now says this man cannot be our leader, I mean that’s the end. But if you want to remove a Senate President or a deputy senate president you must go through a process of two-thirds of the total number of senators sitting in plenary.
How does Senator Akpabio intend to address the economic challenges facing the country through legislative principles?
I have already started laying the foundation for you here. For example, I’ve told you like Dangote thing, that oversight to Dangote…
I mean through legislative function…
That’s what I’m saying. It was through a motion that they set up the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on the oil and gas. So, that’s why I said here when I stated that legislative business is intangible. You may not be able to understand it. There are three things in the legislative business. When there is an input, which are the bills or the motions. The output is the consequences that would be the outflow of the consequences. I’m still using that in the case of the Dangote Refinery visit. At the end of the day, the outcome now is going to be the coming down of the cost of petroleum products; the coming down of the disparities; the breaking of the barriers of disparities in naira and dollars in the purchase of crude oil, which of course the man in the street will tell you that he has nothing to do with the price of crude oil. But the price of crude oil affects him. The man there at that filling station doesn’t understand the process of getting fuel. He wants to get fuel; he wants to buy fuel at an affordable price. So, what the Senate has done now is to instigate a process to jump-start activities that will culminate into bringing down the price of fuel.
The perception of many Nigerians is that the National Assembly, especially the Senate, is pandering towards the executive in some of the things it does…
Most people are not knowledgeable about the input of the legislature in a democracy. Democracy is not student activism. Democracy is not cultism where they would say for members of this cult this is the rules of engagement. That’s not democracy. Democracy is intended to bring back, democracy is trying to create a connecting rod between the arms of government so that the derivatives of democracy will be found in that collaboration. It is not a needless exercise. Could you imagine if the Senate or National Assembly were fighting with the executive? By now, nobody will be able to do anything. We will be talking left, right, and centre and those sections of Nigerians who are saying they are pandering to the executive will have been celebrating. But things will have been more difficult than now. But now there is a robust collaboration I can tell you and this robust collaboration is bringing to the table the various responsibilities, the executive responsibility, the responsibility of the legislature, the responsibility of the judiciary, coming together to put that ahead. So, government and democracy is like a tripod. When one’s one leg is deceased, if the three of us are tripods and we are holding a platform, if something is wrong with one leg, of course, the tripod is not going to be balanced.
Critics have described the National Assembly in this dispensation as a toothless bulldog. What is your reaction to that?
Well, I don’t know when there is a need for a bulldog that will bite. You don’t bite in a democracy. In open government, democracy is intended to throw up collaborations and engagement with stakeholders. It is engagement. It’s a dialogue. The days of bayonets and submarines are gone. Today is intellectual warfare. You don’t go to go and bite or you go and in your words; we don’t need bulldogs in modern democracy. We don’t need bulldogs. We need a brain box, a legislative brain box; people who are conversant with governance, and people who are connecting rods like the Akpabios, the connecting rods will be able to connect and create a robust network within the stream of democratic practices. Once that connecting rod is created, what you are going to have is going to be the empowerment of the people through various activities of government and you now begin to experience open government. The government is open, that’s why people are talking freely.
Now, maybe that’s the way he wants to handle the Senate. Certain statements come from the Senate President which people find very offensive. In most cases, you find out that the Senate President will always apologise…
Not in most cases?
In some cases…
How many cases?
At least two…
No, which one? Which one did they have?
The issue of Natasha when she was talking and the Senate President saying that this is not a night club a lot of people felt that it was demeaning…
I am surprised that as a nation and as a people, we are not paying attention to outcomes, the objective of an incident. For example, they say they want to go on a national protest. You know that 95 per cent of the economy of this country is driven by oil and gas and when you are talking about oil and gas, you are talking about the marine corridors of the southern coastal corridors. Now, Senator Akpabio went and the NDDC hosted the stakeholders. The reason he went there was to go and make sure he calmed his nerves because if that protest went on in the Niger Delta, and it’s hijacked the way it was hijacked up here, we would have been in trouble.
Was it proper for the Senate President to say that the National Assembly would be wining and dining while other Nigerians are protesting?
Who made that comment? It was the MD of the NDDC who made the comment. I even segmented it and sent the video out. The MD made that comment and it was quoted out of context. He said, ‘Don’t worry, this is our government. Make we dey chop, this is our government. Don’t go on protest.’ You are aware that the reason for the sense of ownership of this government by the South-south people, look at the coastal roads now, from Lagos to Calabar, and simultaneously they have signed the construction which starts at both ends, and we are happy. Money has been released for the East-West Road to be completed. We are happy. Is that the kind of government you would now go and hold a protest against? The answer is no and because we are enjoying, if it is semantics, the choice of the words of the MD, let’s eat. He could have said let’s enjoy this government.
He could have said anything. But instead of looking at the reason for holding that meeting, which was to make sure that for reasons of national security, for reasons of protecting the economy, for the issue of making sure that there is no disruption in the production of oil and gas. Assuming that these guys had gone to the offshores and decided to lock down the oil wells, there would have been no production. And for Nigeria to lose three days of oil production, the economy will come down. So we should look at the intention of those people, Senator Akpabio and the MD of the NDDC. Were their intentions genuine and good for the overall interest of this country? The answer is yes.
What should Nigerians expect from the Senate President and by extension the 10th Senate on resumption from their present recess?
Well, it has nothing to do with the recess or the resumption, but I want to tell you that the present Senate is like the proverbial phoenix, which goes, resurrects and renews itself. As they are resuming, I will not be surprised to see so many more innovative, reform-minded and strategic implementations of legislative activities. Their agenda is positively unpredictable because they are very flexible. Nigerians, even when they call for public hearings, they don’t come out. They would rather comment on social media. Public hearings are meant for people to give their opinions on sensitive issues. They will not do it. For instance, before the old national anthem was restored, there was a public hearing. However, some responsible Nigerians were abusing the lawmakers on social media, saying there was no public hearing before it became law. The public hearing was even televised. So people should be encouraged to participate in the legislative process of public hearings.
Why does Senator Akpabio preside over a Senate that passes certain bills with the speed of light?
Well, I want to grant you the grace of brotherhood. Otherwise, the principle of law espouses that when the facts speak for themselves that is certain. So when you say the speed of light, like the national minimum wage. If the passage had been delayed, there was a strike, there was a time there was no light. I don’t know whether there was light in your place. This person shut down everything and they were supposed to be on break. They came out, and attended to it, by engaging stakeholders and also taking the labour. They came up with that thing and passed it. It wasn’t with the speed of light. It was passed expeditiously. That’s the appropriate word for it. They were very expeditious because of the need for it to be passed, because of national security and the interest of Nigerians, and because Section 14 of the Constitution says that the purpose of government is the welfare and security of the people. That is, that is the Minimum Wage Act.
What about the police act?
Was it also…
It has not yet been passed.
It has been passed.
It’s not yet a law, it is an amendment.
But it has been passed by the National Assembly…
Yes, the amendment to it. For how long did it take for it to be passed?
One day…
No, see, this is how legislative business goes. It goes for its First Reading, the Second Reading and to the Committee of Supply, if it is a money bill, then Committee of the Whole if it is not money. Then from there, it now proceeds to the Third Reading. The question I want to ask is not rhetorical. Did it go through all these processes? The answer is yes.
But there was no public hearing. Was there one?
No, no, no, no. The answer is yes. So, if the answer is yes, that it went through, the important thing is whether it took place within five days or three days, what makes a law effective, what makes a law industrious is not the number of days it went through. A law could be passed within six months, a law could be passed within two months, and a law could be passed within one week. But what the law prescribes is that it must go through the fundamentals which are the provision of the law.
However, critics believe the law was passed during that emergency session just to elongate the tenure of the present IGP. Is it not so?
Well, this interview I can assure you is not me against the critics but it is me with the facts. Yeah, I am putting the facts on the table. Let the critics also bring out facts. It’s not enough to stay in one corner to speculate.
The Senate President as the chairman of the National Assembly presided over the approval of about N200million for the purchase of vehicles for senators and members of the House of Reps. Did he consider the economic implications, especially with what is happening in the country?
It is a good question you are asking but you have not taken time to now look at the gamut of that issue. One, that vehicle doesn’t belong to any senator. That vehicle, quote me, is owned by the National Assembly. The National Assembly advertised for the purchase of the vehicles through a procurement procedure and the contracts were awarded so they are pool vehicles. At the end of four years, the lawmakers and even you have a right of first refusal to buy those vehicles. After four years, you buy the vehicle and use it. This is the same process in which ministers are given official cars. This is the same process that directors in the ministry, about over 5,000 of them who retired recently, went with their official vehicles because they had the right to first refusal. Even in the states, the governors and the members of the state Houses of Assembly all get their vehicles through this process. So there is nothing wrong with it.
What is the meaning of running cost? Nigerians want to know.
What constitutes running costs? Running costs is a term used in bureaucracy to explain and express an expenditure, either expenditure item or items, which, of course, ordinarily is provided. For example, I am expected to be on a consolidated salary and I am entitled to housing, maybe a car and a driver and if that money is given to me instead of those things I can choose to use my car and run anywhere. I can’t give the excuse that I can’t do my job because there is no car. So that’s what running cost is. It has nothing to do with their salary.
A senator recently indicated that he receives N21 million monthly as running costs. So, what do they use the money for?
If he wanted to expand the public conversation, he would have been able to itemise that from this N21 million, I take N5 million for vehicle allowance, I take N5 million for newspapers and so on. He would have itemised it so that people would be able to understand it. It’s not just enough to speculate and mention a figure. The mentioning of that figure has opened his position to a series of arguments and confusion because if he had said that the total money I receive is N21 million every month, that N4 million is for my vehicle, N2 million is for my wardrobe and this is for hits and all of that, then arriving at N21 million. It would have done us more good than harm it’s doing now because in Eket Senatorial District where I come from, we have 12 local governments, second to Orlu, the biggest senatorial district in this country. How much money do you think if you want to do a stakeholders meeting now in each local government, how much do you think you will spend on average? It’s a lot of money. Okay, but people don’t want to query that.
