Even the most favorably disposed critic of the performance of this National Assembly in relation to legislating the framework for the 2011 April elections will concede that it has left a most inglorious record and legacy. At virtually every important stage in the preparation, passage or amendments of the Electoral Act or the Constitution, the National Assembly’s prime focus was the interest of its members, not those of a nation which elected them and is paying a huge, undeserved amount to keep them in their places.
But the debate in the National Assembly three days ago over the performance of INEC has broken all bounds of decency, and will be registered in history as a befitting farewell from a legislature which represents a huge embarrassment to our developing democratic system. The House of Representatives had attempted to debate role of INEC in the nomination of candidates for elective offices. The main objective of the debate in the PDP-controlled chamber appeared to be to castigate INEC for what the legislators saw as meddlesomeness and partial treatment of its nominees by INEC. The House of Representatives debated a resolution condemning the alleged role played by INEC in the party primaries, and mandated its Committee on Electoral Matters to invite the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega to explain its role in the just concluded party primaries and the Commission’s persistent failure to comply with court orders and judgments. In the end, after a heated debate, the House adopted the resolution and directed its Committee on Electoral Matters to make appropriate recommendations to the House within one week.
Even Nigerians who have become desensitized to the many assaults of our legislature on accepted standards of propriety and accountability will be shocked at this latest and futile flexing of muscles by the House. Many people would have thought that the misadventure of the National Assembly in summoning the Governor of the CBN over his alleged comments on its large take-home pay a few months ago, would have taught it a lesson on how to respect boundaries. Apparently, a legislature, many of whose members have failed to convince their constituencies that they deserve to be re-nominated, feels that they can blame and humiliate INEC’s Chairman, and possibly, exact their pound of flesh on the wrong institution. The House apparently has little regard for the fact that the Constitution shields INEC from having to take orders or instructions from any person or institution in the course of discharging its responsibilities. Presumably relying on its constitutional powers to inquire into any matter of public interest, the House is attempting to divert attention from the monumental failure of politicians, including members of the National Assembly to respect and abide by the basic rules of electoral competition. The unprecedented and damaging move to destroy intra-party democracy by the national assembly in the form of the novel provision that INEC must, without exception, accept every nomination forwarded to it by political parties, which is solely the dubious responsibility of the legislature, should have been enough reason why the national assembly ought to have avoided this embarrassing outing on the issue again. If INEC’s role has been deliberately crippled by this provision and the national assembly still has issues with the manner party primaries and nomination issues are handled, the obvious place to settle this matter is the courts. But to blame INEC for the failure of members of the legislature to find an easy route to re-nomination is to add insult to injury. To blame INEC for the total absence of responsible leadership and gross evidence of disregard for rules in the manner all parties subverted their own guidelines for nomination is to divert attention from the real issues at the center of the near-total collapse of our democratic system. To accuse INEC of disregarding judicial decisions is to assume a mantle of responsibility which the national assembly neither has nor deserves. Political Parties and the politicians, some of whom are sitting in the National Assembly are solely responsible for the mess in which the preparations for the 2011 elections find themselves.
If the national assembly summons the Chairman of INEC, he must respond. But he will be well advised to remind the legislators that they are the architects of their own personal problems, as well as being responsible for the serious legal and managerial issues which face the elections of April 2011. If the legislators think that bullying INEC will relieve them of some frustrations, then they should know that Nigerians see this as an abuse of office and privilege. But then, this will not be anything new. The good thing about this demeaning last hurrah of the House of Representatives is that it may remind Nigerians of the need to elect persons with good character and sound levels of commitment to the public interest into our legislatures this time around.
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