PUNCH
If you have ever used a Nigerian road, you are familiar with the experience of the motor vehicle breakdown requiring the intervention of a mechanic.
If you are lucky, there is one nearby. If your luck happens to be somewhere else, it may take hours—and a succession of mechanics, or days—to get that engine fixed, or the battery running again.
Why is there no such facility for Nigerians to turn to when it comes to governance? Even the blind knows, or ought to know, that we have reached the point of no return.
Governance, for all practical purposes, is now simply a hoax.Nigeria is in the hands of people who pay, or are paid topretend that achievement is possible or is in process: people who make, model, or manipulate hope for the public.
Last week, the House of Representatives again signed into the hoax, claiming that it will institute“a comprehensive investigation into the controversial Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway project,” a project I have called “fiction” in this column, an enterprise which is simply audacious for its violations of law, ethics and practice.
The House of Representatives is a real institution. It is a powerful, legitimate body clearly described in Chapter Five of the constitution.
But the House, the business premises of which are in the Abuja Central District of the Federal Capital Territory, is a House of Mis-Representatives. As an institution, it is an irresponsible, uncommitted trading outfitthat I have often denounced,along with the Senate, on this page.
The powers and responsibilities of the National Assembly are specified in the constitution. Its history and work are sadly not recorded, as Nigeria’s legislative bodies shamelessly take great care to maintain no archives.
For instance:to both the Senate and the Houseis granted the power to receive and consider the report of the Auditor-General of the Federation, every year: at least 22such reports since 1999.
But there is no such record of receiving, by either House, let alone considering. In other words, there is no evidence that the Senators or the Representatives read the Auditor-General’s reports. The occasional outrage emerges only when they read media reports of the audit reports.
Even when the legislators loudly proclaim themselves to be busy on something, assignmentsare rarely completed or reports issued and archived.
Where, for example, is the House report of the Ad-hoc Committee ofthe House set up in 2017 to investigate the disappearance of the N11.1 billion budgeted for the State House Clinic under the administrations of Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari?
Where is the House report of the committee it said in 2020 would investigate the North-East Development Commission (NEDC) where over“N100 billion vanished in one year”?
Where is the report of the House ad hoc committeewhich investigated“the purchase, use, and control of arms, ammunition, and related hardware by Military, Paramilitary, and other Law Enforcement Agencies in Nigeria,” (alias looted arms funds)?
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