Angered by the seeming lack of interest in assenting
to bills and implementing critical legislative resolutions, the
National Assembly has threatened to invoke its powers to override such
executive decisions.Section 58(5) of the 1999 Constitution as amended
provides for a 30-day period during which the President is expected to
assent a bill passed by the National Assembly.
After the period, the legislative arm can invoke the power of
veto to override the President on the bill. Briefing journalists on the
first anniversary of the House of Representatives yesterday, Chairman,
Rules and Business, Hon. Albert Sam-Tsokwa, lamented the executive
laxity in the implementation of House resolutions despite the numerous
challenges which the resolutions would have tackled, if implemented.
“More than 10 bills were returned at the end of last session. This
has made us to start afresh and it is not our fault but because someone
refused to do his work.
The constitution has given us the powers to override his (president)
assent after 30 days of forwarding a bill to him.“But the beauty of any
power is how sparingly you use it.
That is why we do not want to use it because people would say we are
confronting the executive. However, if it persists we may have no option
but to do so,” he stated.He, however, promised that the House would
con-tinue to pass new resolutions.
Sam-Tsokwa said that the low implementation of resolutions was
surprising because it was through the resolutions of the National
Assembly that President Goodluck Jonathan transmuted from acting to a
substantive President.
The lawmaker, however, condemned the decision of some committees to
rely on ministries and other agen-cies of government for sponsoring
their oversight activities.
He said that it was wrong for lawmakers going on oversight
assignments to depend on the logistics provided by the ministry or
organisations they were assessing.
According to him, the House received a total of 273 bills, most of which are in the second reading stage.
He also explained that the lawmakers received 278 motions and resolutions and 178 petitions.
Sam-Tsokwa said that 32 bills were passed in the last 12 months.
Also, the Senate yesterday said that it would not hesitate to veto
President Jonathan if he withheld presidential assent to any bill sent
to him by the present National Assembly.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Ita
Enang, however, noted that to avoid executive/legislative rift, the
Senate had resolved to ensure that bills sent to the President, “after a
rigorous process leading to their passage, are assented to.”
Enang explained that the 7th National Assembly was yet to exercise
the con-stitutional power of veto on some of the unsigned bills because
they were passed by the 6th National Assembly.
The Senate said it was constrained because of “effusion of time,”
noting that the Assembly that passed those bills had been dissolved,
Enang said this yesterday while briefing Senate correspondents on the
activities of the upper chamber at the end of its first year tenure.
He, however, said because the bills were promulgated by the 6th
National Assembly, the present lawmakers were constrained by the
constitution and, therefore, could not challenge the President on them.
This explanation was against the recent buck-passing between the
execu-tive and members of the National Assembly over the backlog of
bills awaiting the President’s assent.
Enang said: “Most of the bills that assent are with-held are bills
that were passed by the 6th Senate. And you will agree with me that the
6th National Assembly was dissolved on June 5, 2011 by proclamation of
Mr. President and by effusion of time.
“Therefore, the Assembly that passed that bill stood dissolved and a
newly inaugurated 7th National Assembly under different oath came to
life on June 6, 2011 and cannot continue where the bills or action that
were commenced by the previous Assembly because the life of that
legislature had come to an end.
“It is not appropriate for us to call up those bills and bring them
to the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives and vote on them
for the purpose of voting, seeing whether we would have two-thirds
ma-jority of members present for the purpose of getting those bills
passed.
“The constitution has constrained us; the constitution does not allow
us and we cannot do it in law because it is not the bills that were
passed by the 7th Assembly.”
In his assessment of the first year of the 7th Natioal Assembly,
Enang said: “The 7th Senate has recorded tremendous achieve-ments since
inauguration.
“The Senate has for a number of times mediated between the Labour and
the Federal Government over what could have re-sulted in industrial
unrest.
“Between June 2011 and now, a total of 178 bills have been
deliberated on, out of which 16 are executive bills, while the rest are
members’ bills.
“Out of these 178, 122 bills are at the first read-ing stage while 19
read a second time and referred to the relevant committees. “Twenty-six
others are awaiting publication in the journal, while nine were
withdrawn for representa-tion by sponsors.”
According to him, the upper chamber has so far passed 21 bills and 48
reso-lutions, including those on the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE,
fuel subsidy probe and pension management probe.
The 7th Senate also confirmed Justice Dahiru Musdapher’s appointment
as Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN; Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde as Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, as Chairman; members of Federal Roads
Maintenance Agency, FERMA, and the confirmation of appointment of
Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Deputy Governor, Dr. (Mrs.) Sara Omotunde
Alade.
The Senate has since proceeded on a break to resume legislative activities on June 19.
The House has also vowed to press on with its proposal to review the
Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Act, with a view to curtailing the powers
of the apex bank; a proposal which has long sparked an intense debate
across country and disciplines.
The Lower Chamber of the National Assembly said members were ready to
pass the CBN amendment Bill in order to break the apex bank’s
unfettered autonomy to create room for adequate legislative oversight
and separation of powers.
Chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Sam-Tsokwa
said the constitution is clear on the mandate of the legislature and
execu-tive, hence the House is making efforts to ensure that all organs
of govern-ment conform to the dic-tates of the constitution.
According to him, “The CBN is a creation of the statute and the CBN
Act is undergoing review and amendment. Efforts are being made to ensure
that no agency of government budgets and implements with-out recourse
to the relevant committees of the House.”
Corroborating Sam-Tsokwa’s position, Chair-man, Committee on
Petroleum (Downstream), Hon. Muraino Ajibola confirmed that the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and the Petroleum Technology
Development Fund, PTDF, that were hitherto not subjecting their budgets
to legislative scrutiny did so this year.
The CBN amendment bill has generated a lot of controversies.
A
suicide bomber on a motorbike struck on Wednesday outside the airport
in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar killing 20 Afghan civilians,
officials said, in one of the most serious attacks in terms of civilian
casualties in recent weeks.
