THE raging feud between the House of Representatives and the Presidency over the former’s call for the removal of the Director General of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Arunmah Oteh is taking unduly too much time to resolve. Worse still, it does not appear that the resolution of the matter is in sight as the parties involved appear to be digging deeper into the trenches. This is a huge disservice to Nigeria.
Ironically, none of the disputants is entirely blameless, even though it is very clear that the larger share of the blame is in the domain of the House of Representatives, which has needlessly insisted that Oteh be removed from office and for which reason it has denied the commission its annual budgetary allocation as a way of getting President Goodluck Jonathan to kowtow to its illegitimate and immoral demand. Who has the
statutory responsibility to hire and fire the DG? The answer obviously is that it is the unquestionable prerogative of the Executive arm nay, the president. Is it morally right, therefore, for a person to demand the sack of another who is not his employee and to punish the employer in kind for refusing to heed the demand? Is there any special benefit the legislators stand to gain from Oteh’s removal? How many times has the presidency dictated to the legislature who or who not to engage to run its business? What the world is used to, is a dictatorial and arbitrary executive; it is not common to have an overbearing legislature as this National Assembly. What Nigeria used to have at the inception of the current democratic experience was a presidency that rode roughshod over the legislature. That often pitted the two arms against each other, but Nigerians identified with the legislature in its struggle against executive domination. This was just a few years ago. The table has now turned! Today, it is the tyranny of the legislature; one that is out to overawe the executive and make it a spineless stooge. This is the purport of the Representatives’ stance in the matter of Oteh.
This is not to say that those who fault Mr. President, or better still, the Presidency for failing to find a way round the problem all along are totally wrong. The controversy should have been resolved through the many channels of interaction between the House and the Presidency without allowing it to drag to this embarrassing extent. In other words, it is not a problem to which there is no political solution. And, in another context, it would not have been out of place to say that Oteh herself, seeing that the matter was getting out of hand could equally have swallowed her pride and voluntarily withdraw her services. This would certainly fetch her accolade and leave Nigerians to fight the battle for her against the domineering and burdensome legislature, hell-bent on running the executive arm of government against the spirit and letters of the constitution. This was what Susan Rice did when the Republicans complained about her pending appointment as United States of America’s Secretary of State. Such a gesture of grace would not have been too much a sacrifice for such a brilliant and patriotic Nigerian as Oteh. To continue to hold on to the office of DG, SEC in the face of widening schism this has caused between the legislature and the executive is to want to outdo members of the House in their self-seeking and unpatriotic ego-tripping.
But the merits of such an argument appear obviated by the regular display of immaturity and arrogance by this House of Representatives.
Their insistence that Oteh must be removed appears vindictive and reduces the legislature to one that will go to any length to settle scores with perceived enemies. This is not part of the attributes of statesmen. The reason the legislators are at daggers-drawn with Oteh is a matter of common knowledge. She had openly accused the Chairman of its Committee on Capital Market of demanding a bribe from the Commission and traced her travail in the hands of the committee to her refusal to play ball. This allegation culminated in the arraignment of the committee chairman for corruption charges. Since then, it has been no love lost between the House of Representatives and the President who has been under sustained pressure to remove her. The height of this is the legislators’ refusal to allocate fund to SEC. Of course, this is blackmail carried too far, which does little credit to the image of the House and that of its members who at all times are expected to be good ambassadors of the people.
Legislative powers in all civilized democracy are meant to be used for the good of the nation and its people. They are not deployed to gratify the ego and whims of the legislature or its members. It is becoming too frequent for the House of Representatives to pick on anyone who takes it to task even when there is justification for doing so. For example, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Lamido Sanusi’s comment on the emolument of the Representatives put him at loggerheads with the legislators. In a brazen show of megalomania orchestrated to teach Sanusi a lesson, the Representatives embarked on the amendment of the CBN Act purposely to curtail the powers of its governor, disregarding the fact that his term as governor of the apex bank would soon end. This shows the extent to which the legislators could go to deal with its perceived “enemies”.
It is hereby considered necessary for the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) to challenge this overbearing attitude of the legislators in court as a way of curbing its excesses.
It must be stated that it is sheer arbitrariness to refuse to appropriate money to an existing agency of government that has several Nigerians in its employ and which has a statutory obligation to perform. Since it is a creation of statute, it is entitled as of right to allocation from the federation account. The House has no discretion in the matter since it has not deemed it fit to outlaw or scrap it.
It should therefore purge itself of this arbitrariness by doing what is right
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