International conspiracy frustrating Nigeria’s fight against insurgency, insecurity – Lawan
Ahead of the first anniversary of the inauguration of the 9th National Assembly, the President of the Senate, Dr Ahmad Lawan at the weekend in an interview with Senate Correspondents attributed the major security challenges facing the country to international political conspiracy which has slowed down efforts aimed at acquiring sophisticated machineries needed by the security agencies to do their jobs. TUNDE OPALANA was there and reports.
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**********On why Nigerian government has not been able to stem the festering insecurity crisis across the country
Efforts to buy equipment for Nigerian armed forces are usually frustrated by international politics with the requests taking longer than expected, unlike when another country makes similar requests from some foreign governments. The country’s security system is currently over stretched with more resources needed to tackle insecurity. To some extent we are suffering from international politics, I know that in our efforts to try to buy spare parts for their jets, may be write to a certain foreign government and it will take six to nine months while another country will write to the same government and maybe gotten in one or two months.
So something is not right, but that’s to say that it’s now one of our challenges that we will continue to engage with countries that we feel don’t understand what we are doing here.
Also we need more resources for security. By resources I don’t mean just money, we need more personnel for the armed forces; we need more personnel for the police, Nigerian Immigration Service and almost all the agencies and paramilitary as well and then of course the resources in terms of equipments, machinery and then training. But what we experienced today is we don’t have sufficient personnel, the resources available to security office are inadequate. Government is doing a lot to get more resources in terms of equipments and machinery.
************On how to avoid clash of power between the executive and the legislature
There must be mutual respect between the three arms of government. The National Assembly or the legislature should not succumb to the desires of the Executive but rather they should cooperate. The principle of separation of power is what establishes and sustains the government especially in democracies that believe in that. I believe in it strongly, the legislature should always be there to provide the legislative intervention, but here I also believe that separation of power should always be considered alongside checks and balances. That is what make the separation of powers more effective in terms of ensuring that there is good governance. That is to say that there is absolute application of the legislative interventions of parliament and particularly when it comes to checks and balances, you will be looking at how the parliament oversights the executive arm of government so that it prevents or stop possible recklessness. That is what we are doing and it is something we fought for since when we came to the fourth session of the National Assembly.
In order to sustain the relationship that enhances their productivity, the two arms of government have constituted a special joint committee, that works behind the scene towards ensuring effective and efficient consideration of some legislations. The Senate Leader, House of Representatives leader, the Senior Special Assistant to President in both chambers of the National Assembly are members, the office of the Attorney General has a representation and the relevant committee chairmen of the two chambers.
When there is a Bill that has to do with an area the committee oversights and there is a decision that whenever there’s going to be a Bill that’s significant and could cause misunderstanding, the Executive should bring that Bill, we sit down let them explain to that committee, let them work on it, where the legislature will feel no this is too obvious we cannot accept this, this is where we think it should be, and then we have a Bill that will eventually come to the National Assembly and when it comes, most of the areas that have the potential to cause friction would have been resolved, it doesn’t mean that once a Bill comes it will be passed, because we still have majority of the National Assembly members who have their say, at least the possible misunderstanding would have been reduced to a minimum, the main grey areas would have been settled and of course the relationship will continue to be good enough for us to operate and work to the benefit of Nigerians.
There was a situation in some of the past sessions of the National Assembly where most of the time some important bills will come and there will always be a deadlock, due to serious misunderstandings and the inability to create the environment for the legislature and the executive to resolve the issues, leading to such Bills either being stagnated or probably if they originated from the National Assembly, assent will be withheld. We believe that this is a challenge for the present National Assembly and mistakes can remain costly only if no lessons are learnt from them. But if you’re able to learn some lessons, then there would have been benefits. We believe that this is as a result of what we’ve experienced in some of the National Assembly sessions. That gap between the legislature and the executive that will not be resolved or narrowed easily has created so much loss to the country. It’s our challenge.
*************On the delay in the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB)
The Bill was not yet before the National Assembly. The Executive arm of government has been discussing with the legislative body on what they are doing about it. But I am optimistic that the Bill will probably be submitted within June. Contrary to what happened when it was submitted in previous Assemblies, the 9th Senate has decided to adopt a different approach by bringing the executive and legislature together work on the Bill, so that it comes to the National Assembly only when they are sufficiently on the same page. Covid-19 does not leave anything out and therefore the Petroleum Industry Bill probably will be submitted within June, I am not sure but I’m optimistic. It has not come to the National Assembly here because of the infraction we suffered from COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve been talking with the executive especially those that are in the petroleum industry, the Minister of Petroleum and Minister of State Petroleum Resources, the GMD of NNPC, and others who are involved in this.
************On the criticisms trailing the recent loans approved by the legislature for the Executive
We have a shortfall of almost 14.2 billion dollars funding gap for 2020 budget and with COVID-19 came so many negative things that visited adverse outcomes on our people, we didn’t make hay while the sun shine. We didn’t diversify the economy or invest in the real sectors of the economy. Now we’ve come to a point where we have to address the infrastructural gap that we have, but the resources are so low, crude oil at one point was selling for 10, 11 dollars per barrel around when this pandemic started around March. We have very significant projects that we need to put in place, like the Second Niger bridge, Mambila Hydropower, East West road, Lagos – Kano rail line etc, but we don’t have the money. If you don’t have the resources and still need these projects, would you because you want to run away from taking loan say let me abandon all these projects. For us in the National Assembly we are conscious of the fact that this economy was affected by the pandemic, if it persists you could lose over 20 million jobs in this country.
The economy will go into serious recession, so you need to have the resources to invest so that the economy doesn’t go into recession and ensure that people don’t lose their jobs. So we feel we should grant the request, but we needed to scrutinise everything, the conditions the projects which we did. We approved the loans to ensure that our infrastructural development continues.
*************On the misunderstanding over the actual vote for the renovation of the National Assembly
The budget has been reduced to N9.2 billion in the revised 2020 Appropriation Bill now before the National Assembly for approval. The renovation was misunderstood but sometimes you allow criticisms so that you give the people the feeling that this is democracy and people criticise it, we took it very calmly.
It’s not a National Assembly building, it’s an FCDA building. We need to ensure that something as important as an arm of government, the people’s complex, is not allowed to deteriorate. N37 billion was estimated by the FCDA to be expended to rehabilitate the National Assembly complex because they have the technical capacity and this is their building just like the Presidential Villa. They maintain it. So it’s not our own.
Some people did not understand it but given this situation of COVID-19, and the need to save, some of the things that are not very relevant, we’ve reduced it to N9.2 billion and that’s the budget for FCDA to implement not National Assembly.
************On the issue of electronic voting being canvassed for future elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
This is something we need to sit down with INEC, because INEC is the operator of the electoral environment, and anything it thinks is necessary for us to operate during this time of COVID-19 challenge, we should look into it but before then, we believe that the electoral environment should be as dynamic as it is, should receive our attention that will make it possible for elections to hold and outcomes to achieve the integrity that we will have the confidence of voters. I don’t want to comment too much on what INEC said because they need to explain to us what they mean by e-voting, the scope, what type of technologies they are going to deploy, how they are going to do it.
I don’t want to comment further on that so that I don’t cause unnecessary debate about it. We want to do constitutional amendment as well as amendment of the electoral act to further make the process better and we want to see a situation where all pre-election matters are determined before the elections, that is to say that if there are issues regarding the primaries by political parties and their candidates, then such legal matters should be settled before anybody is presented for election, so that you don’t go with pre-election problems or matters into the general election.
But for the electoral act, the emphasis will be to engage with major stakeholders. INEC is the one that operates most of these things, so we need to have a clear understanding of what they need so that we are able to give them that.
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The country’s security system is currently over stretched with more resources needed to tackle insecurity. To some extent we are suffering from international politics, I know that in our efforts to try to buy spare parts for their jets, may be write to a certain foreign government and it will take six to nine months while another country will write to the same government and maybe gotten in one or two months.
