Govs Vs Lawmakers: A Rivalry Made for 2011

Posted by admin Headlines, Legislature Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

The recent attempt by federal lawmakers to gatecrash themselves National Executive Committee (NEC) of political parties has exposed the long-running cold war between the National Assembly and the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. Kunle Akogun reports

A subtle but very intense struggle for the control of the soul of the nation’s polity is currently raging between two unlikely competitors – the state governors on one hand and members of the National Assembly on the other. This supremacy battle has manifested in various fronts since the inception of this democratic dispensation.
But its latest manifestation was the battle to control the National Executive Committees (NEC) of the political parties, especially that of the ruling Peoples democratic Party (PDP). Politically, the two groups have mutually exclusive functions as their respective roles in the polity, as clearly defined by the 1999 Constitution, have no reason to overlap.
In recent times, the state governors, through their association, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) have assumed what some observers have called “extra-gubernatorial powers” and extended their scope of influence beyond their respective states boundaries, dabbling from time to time, into matters that are primarily in the precincts of the Presidency and the National Assembly.
Section 176 of the 1999 Constitution provides that (1) “There shall be for each state of the federation a governor” and (2) “The governor of a state shall be the chief executive of that state”. This constitutional provision ordinarily restricts the influence of a state governor to the geographical area of the particular state in question.
On the other hand, Section 47 of the Constitution provides that “There shall be a National Assembly for the federation, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives”. By this provision, it is clear that the National Assembly, as its name expressly suggests, has jurisdictional influence over the entire federation.
However, with the instrumentality of the NGF, the governors now wield enormous powers over the national polity to the extent that even the Presidency often catches cold whenever the state governors sneeze.
During the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, the governors took on several thorny national issues such as revenue sharing from the excess crude account, implementation of the 13 per cent derivation and the derivation formula for littoral states. In some of these instances, where they found it difficult to bulldoze their ways through, they had to resort to litigation to press their cases against the Federal Government. And in most cases, they won.
Also, during the PDP convention in 2003, the governors really showed the tough stuff they were made of when they defied all entreaties by Obasanjo and threw their weight behind the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar for the party’s presidential ticket. They only backed down after a lot of horse trading and persuasion from party elders.
The governors could bare their fangs so menacingly because as political leaders of their states, they hold sway over the political structures in the states and could influence the direction of their states’ delegates during party conventions.
This wide-ranging influence of the governors has now pitched them against the National Assembly, which, latching on its statutory status as the second in the tripodal political arrangement in our federalism, feels the governors could and should be checkmated.
A feeble attempt towards this end was made recently by the National Assembly, majority of whose members are PDP stalwarts, with the move by the federal lawmakers to smuggle themselves into the NEC of their various political parties through the just concluded amendment to the 2010 Electoral Act. This move was seen by political pundits as an attempt to whittle down the influence of the governors who virtually call the shots in the political parties not only at the state level but even at the national level. In the thinking of the legislators, if they become members of their parties’ highest decision making organs, their numerical strength would invariably overwhelm that of the governors and their lackeys, a situation that is bound to substantially change the power base within the party.
But although the National Assembly is constitutionally empowered to make laws for the regulation of the conduct of the various registered political parties, its attempt to legislate on the membership of the parties’ NECs met with stiff opposition from majority of Nigerians, an opposition which many people believe, was orchestrated by the state governors.
The leadership and members of the National Assembly consistently insisted that the controversial Section 87 (11) of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill was aimed at deepening internal democracy in the political parties.

They stressed that in any case, some political parties already have their National Assembly members in their NEC and as such what the Bill intended to do was not new. But opponents of such move see it as an attempt to over-regulate an issue that is basically a party’s internal affairs.
Observers however believe that the governors’ main ground of opposing the lawmakers’ move is more selfish than altruistic, as they (the governors) are wary of losing their current status as alpha and omega of the various political parties in their states and, as recent events especially in the ruling PDP have shown, even at the national level.
According to a former Senate Chief Whip, Senator Adawari Mac-Pepple, “Since 1999, the governors, having assumed control of the entire loyalty in the parties, have determined virtually who occupied what political position at any level”.
Here then lies the paradox of the on-going struggle. It is an open secret that most of the members of the current National Assembly got to the federal legislature through the influence of their state governors. So, they should normally be expected to remain loyal to their benefactors. But this would not be, because most of the governors feel the current crop of federal legislators from their states are becoming “over-exposed”, and therefore should be replaced by neophytes whose loyalty would be guaranteed.
That, to some analysts, is the genesis and crux of the present problem. And realizing that the governors have enormous resources and patronage at their disposal with which they could easily sway convention delegates’ votes against incumbent National Assembly members seeking their parties’ re-nomination, the federal lawmakers were said to have devised some novel methods of guaranteeing their return to their seats. But as things stand now, the two openly canvassed methods have fallen flat on their faces.
One of these was the attempt by the lawmakers to grant themselves automatic return ticket through the earlier rumoured “Right of first refusal” whereby incumbent senators/House of Representatives members would be given preference over new comers in the nomination process. With this, nomination for the seat in contention would only be thrown open if the incumbent is no longer interested in running. But this move failed, as majority of party members kicked against it. It was after the failure of this plot that the move to make the federal lawmakers automatic members of their parties’ NECs, where crucial decisions are often taken, was plotted.
But the legislators denied any ulterior motive or selfish agenda in the attempt to expand the NECs of the various political parties. Senate spokesman, Senator Ayogu Eze said the essence of the clause is “to make sure that the political parties do not become tyrannical by bringing in more people and ensuring openness, widening the space of consultation and process of decision making”.
He said Section four of the Constitution is clear about the role of the National Assembly “as a stabilizing instrument in making laws for the peace and good governance and order in the country”.
Eze said: “In any case, most of the other political parties except a few in the country already have members of the National Assembly as members of their NEC, what we are doing is not new or strange”.
Interestingly, most of the governors who are completing their mandatory two-term tenure in May next year are believed to be eyeing seats at the National Assembly, especially the Senate. Among such governors are Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State, Modu Sheriff of Borno, and Mohammed Goje of Gombe State.
Analysts now wonder how these governors would feel if on getting to the Senate, their successors in their various states should attempt to exert undue influence on them. But some other commentators believe the scenario may not be exactly similar, “as these governors turned senators would not be easy to control by their successors most of whom would be installed by the outgoing governors anyway.”
According to a political analyst, the worse that could happen would be an antagonistic, cat-and-mouse sort of relationship between the new governor and his predecessor –now-turned senator. He gave the instances of what is currently happening between Senator Chimaroke Nnamani and his successor in Enugu State, Governor Sullivan Chime as well as that between Senator George Akume and his successor in Benue State, Governor Gabriel Suswam, as instructive case studies.wp_posts

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Posted by admin on Dec 29 2010. Filed under Headlines, Legislature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry