The 37 Billion Naira House of Cads

Nigeria’s National Assembly Building. Source: Google Images

The political front has been quiet on the failure of Nigeria to achieve its own set target of joining the biggest twenty economies by 2020 [Vision 20:2020]. That year has just arrived, but the ruling elite and their merry band of followers are more concerned with the presidential contestants of 2023.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a step and it is appropriate to set goals (timelines to reach specific milestones). Over the course of twenty years of civil governance we have set national goals (National Poverty Eradication Program, NAPEP, 2001; National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy, NEEDS, 2004; Vision 20: 2020, 10,000MW electricity generation, 2016, etc.), and even had some set for us (SDGs, MDGs, the Abuja declaration, etc.). We have been generally unsuccessful. Perhaps the achievement of the January — December budget cycle will set us on a new course of decisiveness.

Every step counts. That is why the January — December budget cycle should be sustained. It is similar successes that can take us to the proverbial Promised Land. We will never make progress by taking one step forward and several steps backward.

As rancour-free as the 2020 budget passage was, a big snag is the brazen insertion of that humongous tab to renovate the national assembly complex. Thirty-seven billion is a lot of money in any currency. It is indecent to fritter such a sum. That is what is about to happen.

The legislators know it is obscene else why did they do two things: remove the said amount from the 128 billion national assembly budget and domicile it with the federal capital development administration (FCDA), and two — not debate it in plenary or committee or wherever it ought to have been discussed. It is absolutely sly.

But if the legislators are indeed sensitive to public opinion they would backtrack. Many outsiders have knocked the action, as well as Bamidele Salam, Akin Alabi and Legor Idagbo who are insiders — members of the House of Representatives. Interesting to note that these dissents are from the two main parties.

SERAP, BudgIT, EiE and another 583 Nigerians have sued the necessary parties. A very commendable step, for it seems our legislators are tone-deaf. 37 billion naira is too much to fix whatever is wrong with that complex. Honourable Alabi and company have acknowledged the poor audio and voting systems in the chambers. Beyond these, no one knows what ails the building. There is no public document detailing the assessment of apropos professionals and their diagnosis. Everything is obscure.

The contentious sum also seems to be a trade-off between the executive and the legislature: ‘’Sign off on our renovation budget and we’ll let you take that 30 billion dollar loan’’. We the people demand more openness in the whole affair.

So much can be achieved with 1 billion naira in today’s Nigeria not to mention a whopping 37 billion naira. Education and health are critical elements of human development indices and ours are abysmal. That money can do a great deal if channeled to just one sector, say health.

As stated earlier, we have been very indecisive with meeting targets, but we can when we want to. Hence, there is no reason for the poor state of our health such that life expectancy at birth is 55.2 (54.7 for boys and 55.7 for girls). Compared to other lower-middle-income countries like Kenya (66.4 years), Ghana (63.91 years), Tunisia (76.60 years), Morocco (76.68 years), and India (68.7 years), life is much shorter, and unhealthier in Nigeria.

Where there is a (political) will, there is a way. We can see that now. But political wherewithal has been channeled to selfish ends all along. That partly explains our backwardness.

The ninth national assembly is not going to come out of this smelling like roses, the public is not going to forget the names of the men and women who colluded and conspired to fritter national wealth. I have already dropped three names in this piece, names of men who have swung to the side of reason, men who are insiders. In the same manner, we shall not forget the names of the principal officers and the faces, at least, of other assemblymen and women who are united in extravagance.

We know that there have been funds to renovate the national assembly over the years. What happened to them: weren’t they released? If released, weren’t the repairs done? If done, were they done satisfactorily? If yes, then why is there a sudden need for another round of renovations?

The contract for the building was awarded in 1996 at about 35.18 million dollars (12.6 billion naira in 2020 terms), 40.2 billion naira was allocated for the construction of phase 3, part 3 of the building and other upgrades. Why do we still need to fund another round of bogus renovations?! As guardians of the public till the legislators are not giving a good account of their stewardship. Perhaps the time to audit the legislature is now.

In 2010, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the former CBN governor affirmed controversially that the national assembly budget represented 25% of the recurrent national expenditure. That budget has not been significantly reduced. I am with Senator Okorocha on reducing the size of the national assembly with a concomitant budget reduction to about 20 billion naira per annum. The country simply cannot continue to fund the excesses permitted by the constitution. America with fifty states, a bigger economy, and a larger population has 2 senators per state, where on God’s green earth did we get the notion of 3 senators per state?!

Somewhere along the line, something must give — constitutional amendment to adjust term limits for the executive, reduce the size of the legislature, strengthen the local governments, reorganize the police, adjust the revenue allocation formula, reposition INEC away from the executive, and a thousand other deficiencies in the 1999 constitution.

Our assemblymen and women are not forward-looking, nor-forward-thinking. They are not setting Nigeria up for progress. There is a clear disinterestedness in achieving the SDGs or even renegotiating the requirements for a top 20 economy. Nigeria’s legislators are also clearly not interested in fixing health and education. It is business as usual and when they feel like it they splurge and rub it in our faces. I hope that actions of dissents like Salam and his kindred colleagues, SERAP and co, and words of writers like me and complainants on Twitter and the airwaves don’t just blow off with the wind, even though I suspect that is exactly what will happen. The ruling elite — a minuscule subset of the population — is united against the hapless majority.