Lawmakers’ search for improved governance in parliamentary system

DIRISU YAKUBU interrogates the chances of the move to amend the 1999 Constitution to transit from the presidential to the parliamentary system of government scaling through

The Nigerian federal system has been a subject of debate among intellectuals, commentators, lawyers, and media practitioners since the end of the military rule in 1999. From local to the centre, the Nigerian brand of federalism has thrown up a lot of questions than answers.

Unlike what obtains in other climes with an emphasis on strong regions and a weak centre, the nation’s variant of federalism makes for a strong centre and weak federating components. As a result, developmental needs of the people which ordinarily should have been undertaken at the local and sub-national levels are left on the table of the Federal Government. In most cases, these needs are either poorly attended to or not attended to at all.

But for eminent Nigerians privileged to witness to the take-off of the Nigerian state in the 60s, life wasn’t as hellish as it is today. The era (1960-1966) saw Nigeria experimenting with the parliamentary system of government. A byproduct of British imperialism, this was not unexpected as Great Britain had from inception adopted that model of government.

In the past few decades, eminent Nigerians including the likes of the late Governor of Kaduna State, Balarabe Musa, Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, ex-United Nations Secretary General, Emeka Anyaoku, legal luminary, Mike Ozekhome, and a host of others, at different times, called for the discontinuation of the presidential system and a return to the parliamentary model.

Last week, 60 members of the House of Representatives led by the Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda, presented some bills aimed at amending relevant provisions of the 1999 Constitution to enable the country to transit from the presidential to the parliamentary system of government. The same week, they (60 members) commenced consultation on the proposed amendment, stressing that the cost of governance occasioned by the presidential system does not augur well for a country like Nigeria that is struggling to match her resource endowment with real development.

Addressing a press conference at the National Assembly Complex, Abuja, the spokesman for the sponsors and member representing Kebbe/Tambuwal Constituency, Sokoto State, Abdulssamad Dasuki, said that when passed, the parliamentary system would significantly impact the national political landscape.

He said, “Our founders in their wisdom and a political atmosphere devoid of compulsion and having considered the interests of their native peoples and their desire to live together in a country where truth and justice reign, where no man is oppressed, and where all citizens live in peace and plenty, adopted the parliamentary system of government.

“That was the governance system of the First Republic, a period when legislative and executive powers were exercised by the representatives of the people in parliament and the executive, and by the nature of the system, these representatives were accountable to the people.”

While proponents of the continuation of the presidential system argued that the system was more representative and thus better suited for Nigeria, owing to her diversity; the conversation in favour of a parliamentary system had been that it remained cost-effective and accountable to the people.

If Nigerians vote in favour of the parliamentary model, citizens will for the first time in decades live with the reality of the fusion of powers as against the separation of powers that is the hallmark of the presidential system.

As the lawmakers take their proposal to the courts of Nigerians for their input in the constitutional amendment process, renowned politician, essayist, and political administrator, Prof Iyorwuese Hagher, has called on the lawmakers not to waste their energy in pursuit of what he sees as a mission fated to fail from the outset.

In an exclusive interview with Saturday PUNCH, Hagher said, “I sympathise with the group of lawmakers seeking an amendment to the 1999 Constitution to pave the way for a transition to the parliamentary system of government. They should be consoled because this effort will be fruitless.

“The country is in dire need of patriotic Nigerians in leadership positions who are not swayed by corruption to feed their appetites and acquire material things, or by ethnic identities that fuel ethnic-racist resentments against other ethnic nationalities.

“The 1999 Constitution was a deliberate political engineering to create a national consensus, especially for the recruitment of the president, who in the parliamentary system did not need the acceptance or recognition beyond the Federal Constituency.”

While admitting that the system is prone to corruption, Hagher insisted that what Nigeria needed was not to jettison the model but to muster the courage to make leadership more responsive to the yearnings of Nigerians.

He continued, “We have now tasted the presidential system and found it to be a corruption-infested, dollar-dependent, faceless, and ruthless engine of political oppression. The presidential system has far too much power invested in the president and governors, leaving the public a pathetic derelict on the margin of political actions.

“The political parties are now the winnowing fans of the executives, who have de-gutted the power of the party. Superfluously, the governors and even the Nigerian President proudly refer to themselves as “Chief Executives,” instead of constitutional presidents or governors, as in the Americas where the presidential systems have been tried, tested, and adjusted to fit the political culture and political clime.

“What Nigeria needs is not to swing back to the parliamentary system. That is merely going back to gobble our effluvium. Nigeria needs a committed and dynamic leadership, that puts Nigeria first and everything about Nigeria. We must severely punish economic saboteurs as a deterrent, and uproot the corrupt civil servants, who enable corruption and deal decisively to overhaul the banking sector, including the Central Bank of Nigeria. This is the overriding need and agenda that cannot wait. Systems and forms of government can wait, but the need for new leadership and new vision cannot wait.”

Continuing, the professor of Theatre for Development added that Nigeria “needs a courageous leadership that says no to both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and protects the little food the poor masses put on the floor to eat at the end of the day. Nigeria will continue to fail to grow if we retain our devilish attachment to the market forces of Western neo-liberalism dictated by the IMF and the World Bank.”

To help make political leadership more accountable to the people, Hagher called for a single term of six years for the Nigerian president and five years for state governors.

On his part, media trainer, Emman Shehu, expressed doubt about the suitability of the parliamentary system in the nation’s political setup.

“My problem with such changes is that we do not allow for stability within our polity. What is the guarantee that after going back to the parliamentary system, we will not be advocating for a return to the presidential system when faced with a new set of unforeseen problems? Those we have borrowed both systems from have endured with a preferred system and allowed each challenge to become a means of refining the system.

“The most important thing at this point is to identify the downsides in our current system and find a way of overcoming them. It is clear to everyone that there is a need to ruthlessly cut the cost of governance in every way possible. The second thing to do is to make political representation a part-time affair, and in this way, only people who have a genuine passion for representing the people will bother to run for office. At the moment, it has become a place for all manner of people with zero understanding of sincere governance principles. For most, it is just a profession and an easy way of becoming financially well-to-do,” he said.

Taking a different position is Nigeria’s former minister of Education, Prof Tunde Adeniran, who argued that what the country needed was a new constitution and not an amendment to the current one.

“We need a new constitution to be determined by the Nigerian people, following global best practices. Let the people themselves decide through a referendum. They know what they want,” he said.

Meanwhile, good governance advocate and founder, Women Arise, Joe Okei-Odumakin, said Nigeria witnessed an unprecedented level of development when she experimented with the parliamentary system on the attainment of political independence in 1960.

In her words, “Parliamentary system of government is not entirely new to Nigerian system of governance. Meaningful development occurred during the era of the parliamentary system of government in Nigeria which was truncated by the Aguiyi Ironsi-led coup on January 15, 1966.

“Countries like Britain, Germany, Japan, and others are governed through a parliamentary system of government. Aside from the peculiarities of Nigerians’ way of doing things in a way that doesn’t align with the interest of the greater good of the people, without consequence for such misdemeanours, parliamentary governance is better than the subsisting presidential system of government in Nigeria.”

A former member of the House of Representatives, Ihuoma Ngozika, in his contribution, noted that the problem with Nigeria was not essentially the system of government but in the political actors who ended up making a mess of the same.

He said, “Both systems work in sane climes. The problems here are the operators. They are our biggest problem; confused lawmakers!”

Joining the conversation is a respected voice in northern Nigeria, Anthony Sani, who argued that the problem with good governance in the land stemmed from the pervasive corruption of leaders across different layers of government.

Sani, a chieftain of the Arewa Consultative Forum, in a telephone interview with Saturday PUNCH, said, “I have stated times and again that no form of government can work successfully without changing our corrupt attitude and the way we do things. Our problems have nothing to do with the form of government or with the structure of the country because Nigeria has practised all forms of government; be it a parliamentary, military dictatorship, or now the presidential system, all of which work in other climes.

“The presidential system has worked for Americans, the parliamentary form for the British, and the combination of the two works well for French people. When you talk about the cost of the presidential system, note that the United States has about 25 ministers, Britain has 17, France has 15 but Nigeria has a crowd called government. In Nigeria, we appoint advisers even in areas that have ministries with professionals who can advise the government. Some state governors appoint over 1,000 special assistants who do nothing.”

Continuing, Sani maintained, “America which is bigger and richer than Nigeria has nine Supreme Court Justices while we have 21; the US Vice President is the same as the Senate President, just to reduce the cost and improve the relationship between the executive and legislative arms of governments. Our ways of doing things are what is expensive and not the presidential government.

“We have restructured several times, be it geo-political or economic models. We have tasted both state capitalism and privatization and like I said before, these forms and structures work well in other climes. Our challenges are the collapse of national ideals, moral values, and the sense of what is right and wrong, and these challenges can be overcome through cultural renaissance and social justice.

On his part, constitutional lawyer and rights activist, Abdul Mahmud, noted that the parliamentary model of government will better meet the needs of Nigerians In his words, “The parliamentary system is most suited for plural, cultural and ethno-heterogeneous state-nations where differences are accentuated not only by agitations for power, which in many instances are internecine but by the very nature of the state-nation which seeks to maintain the different cultural boundaries as its own.

“In our experience, we have seen how the winner-takes-all presidential system makes power-sharing, for instance, difficult. Secondly, the parliamentary system is cost-effective. It dispenses with the cost attendant to national elections in which the president and governors are elected through expensive national and local elections.

“Under the parliamentary system, all elections are local as national leaders are first elected as parliamentarians representing local constituencies. They are then elected as leaders of the majority party in parliament. More importantly, the parliamentary system allows for the growth of political parties that are the engine rooms of parliamentary democracy. A political party that seeks to capture the position of the Prime Minister must be able to organise within itself, democratise itself, and prime its internal organs to win majority seats in the national parliament. The parliamentary system makes all politics local.”

While commending the 60 lawmakers for their bold steps, Mahmud urged them to “Look at our historical constitutional experiences between 1954 and 1966, with particular attention paid to the 1960 and 1963, and adopt some of their essential provisions that made the parliamentary system effective before the 1966 military putsch,” he added.

As the lawmakers insisted that they would take the campaign to every part of the nation ahead of the commencement of the constitutional amendment process, Chinda maintained that only Nigerians would decide the fate of the bills, stressing that the 60 legislators had done their part.

“Consultation is ongoing. It is only a bill in line with our thoughts and mandate to make laws for the peace and development of our country. Nigerians have the final say and will decide on the way forward. It’s not a contest,” he said.