While there is a lot of focus on demanding accountability from the executive and reforming the judiciary, our legislators at the National Assembly as well as the various State Houses of Assembly get away each day with the chorus responses of “ayes” and “nays” and no one can really hold individual legislators accountable for the laws that are passed or not passed in Nigeria. It is funny how we want Nigeria to change, and want to make progress in the world without paying attention to reforming our legislative processes – which is the second and very important part of our government. When we hear about budgets for the legislature, salaries and allowances for legislators and other things concerning them, the issues always seem shrouded in mystery with some legislators vehemently refusing to discuss these issues and swiftly crushing or dismissing any voice of opposition to their processes.
The issue is quite straight forward – whenever there is a bill or a motion to be considered for passing at the legislature Nigerians want to be able to know and track the performance of their elected representatives. If our democracy is to grow, then we need to start to monitor and track the performance of our representatives. I recall a legislator complaining on TV the other day about how being a legislator has been reduced to a barrage of invitations to constituents’ weddings and family events and requests for letters of introductions for contracts, employment and admission. If Nigerians and our legislators agree with me – this is not what legislators should be occupied with. It seems like the very few people who actually go out to vote in these legislative elections are only interested in these banal acts as showing that the legislators are working – stemming from this primordial “stomach-infrastructure” mentality that has been holding sway for decades in this country.
If Nigeria is to make progress, then our legislators should be held accountable for higher and more valuable measures of performance. We should be asking our legislators not just in what direction they voted on bills or motions tabled before their various houses, but also what legislative bills they have sponsored and the level of success in passing those bills and of course the impact of such bills/legislative actions on their constituents and society at large. Like everyone who is paid to do a job, we are also concerned with their performance with respect to attendance at legislative sessions and the actual quality of contributions and arguments that each legislator makes. We have become so accustomed to the various houses being on recess that the floor is always looking so scanty and only a handful of members are ever at every sitting of the houses. We hear that they are touring their constituencies and I wander: so, what do they do when they are on recess? We expect our public servants and even Ministers and Judges to be at work each day, but we do not hold our legislators to the same standard by monitoring their actual attendance at sittings.
So, what you have are arguments from only a few legislators, while a good number are never heard from; chorus shouts of “Ayes” and “Nays” that mask the actual voting intentions and patterns of our representatives and very few legislator-inspired laws – begging the question of how the monies for legislative aides and support staff are spent. We want to know who voted in favour and against each motion, and we are well aware that even if the technology for voting is not yet available in Nigeria, it can be procured and installed easily. This masking of intentions and lack of accountability is displayed when you sometimes actually hear a clearly louder “Nay” from the legislators than “Aye” and yet the presiding officer hits the gavel and says “the ayes have it”. Is such a presiding officer using a sound meter that gives him an empirically correct reading of the “ayes” or “nays” or are we just reducing our legislative process to his personal whims? Like good corporate governance holds directors individually liable for board decisions, good legislative governance should hold legislators individually liable too.
I am therefore making a clarion call for forward-thinking legislators in Nigeria especially those who claim to have been elected on the mantra of change to begin to push for changes in this legislative process and insist on higher standards and expectations from legislators lest we reduce our legislature to an institution that the Nigerian people do not take seriously or only remember for sessions that create no meaningful change. At the next round of legislative elections, sophisticated Nigerian voters want to go beyond just skipping over the INEC boxes for legislative elections to actually voting for legislators who have achieved certain key performance metrics and have a record for voting in the direction the electorate want on key issues.
If my feeling about the performance of legislators as I have indicated in this piece is wrong, then I have only erred based on ignorance, and will request our various legislative houses and legislators to educate me and other similarly misinformed Nigerians on the steps and processes that they have in place in this regard. When public servants approve expenditure – they sign; when judges render their verdicts and sentences they write; when our legislators make laws they chorus “Ayes” or “Nays”. It just isn’t right!
Omagbitse Barrow
