Members of the House of Representatives have blown hot over a comment made by the acting president, Yemi Osinbajo.
House of Representatives
Yakubu Dogara, the speaker of the House of Representatives, has
said the powers of the three arms of government were clearly spelt out
in the constitution.
He was speaking in response to a statement credited to Acting
President Yemi Osinbajo, who was quoted to have said on two occasions
that the National Assembly had no powers to introduce new projects to
the budget before passing it.
“From the very pedestrian interpretation of the functions of
the three arms of government, one makes laws, the other executes the
laws, the other interprets the law. So, a declaration as to which of the
arms has the power and rights, in as much as it is related to the
interpretation of the law, is the function of the judiciary and not of
the executive.
“I don’t even want to believe that the acting president made
that statement; I don’t want to believe that, sincerely speaking.
Because when it comes to the issue of the budget, I think we better say
this thing and make it very clear, so that our people will have a better
understanding. When it comes to the budget, the power of the purse in a
presidential system of government rests in the parliament.”
Accusing the Acting President of breaching his priviledge by his
comments, Hon. Abubakar Lawal said the Constitution and the House Rules
were clear on the procedure for passing the budget.
“For someone to come out and say that we have no power, it’s a breach of our privilege,” he said.
Cheered on by his colleagues, Dogara, added: “The reason why
the Constitution designers made it that way is because the executive is
just one man, it is just the president. Every other person in the
executive is acting on behalf of the president, so the relationship
between the president and every other person there is that of servant
and the master.
“It is only in the parliament where we have representatives of
the people that there is equality and you can say your mind on any
issue, you can bring matters of priority the way you like. The only
time you can be cautioned is when you go outside the rules of debate but
in the executive, it is not the case.
“Of recent, especially in this part of the world, people
exercise executive functions on behalf of the president and want to be
like experts in emotional intelligence. Even when the president has not
said anything, people are trying to understand what the body language
says so that they can tailor their arguments to suit the body language
of the President, otherwise that might give them a sack.
“So, the entire architecture of presidential democracy is that
it should run on the basis of consensus and convention between the
parliament and the executive, and when there is disagreement between the
executive and the parliament, the framers of the Constitution were
smart enough to say look, our hope is in the representatives of the
people and not in the executive, so the parliament can even go along.
“In the case of the budget, for instance, if it were the case
that parliament disagrees with the executive on the budget, the worst
the executive can do is to say they will not sign and after 30 days, if
we can muster two-thirds, and it doesn’t have to be two-thirds of the
entire membership, once the quorum is formed, two-third of the members
sitting and voting, we can override the veto of the President and pass
it into law.
“The only other option open to the executive is to say because
we didn’t assent to this, this is the budget of the parliament, so we
will not implement. But the point is that all of them, including us, are
under an oath to faithfully execute the laws of this land. Then the
question that will follow is if this is a law of the land and the answer
is yes.
"As men of honour, whether legislators or executive, we are bound by the oath of office to faithfully execute that law.
“In the case of the executive, if it is not done, all of us
know the very consequences. I don’t want to call it by its name, we know
the consequences. So in this kind of government, the winner is obvious.
So I don’t think we should bother ourselves belabouring this issue.
“We all know where these powers are and under our watch, there is no way this House will be a rubberstamp of any executive ."
Dogara said budgets are priorities of the government, but that as
representatives of the people they can discern which are the priorities
of the people as opposed to the priorities of the government.
“We can say even though these are priorities of the government,
based on our job of representation, these are not the priorities of the
people and we can refuse to fund them.”
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