Emergency powers for PMB: A premature proposition

Even before their resumption Tuesday next week from the annual vacation, the rumour mills are abuzz with the tale that members of the National Assembly have the task of considering emergency powers for President Muhammadu Buhari, waiting to usher them back to work. A new bill whose existence was ‘leaked’ into the public domain, is expected to be presented to the two chambers for urgent passage and eventual assent. Its mission is to empower the President to exercise extraordinary powers for stabilising the economy.
If successful, the President will have powers to execute a complement of measures which include speeding up the procurement process to raise mobilisation fees to government contractors from the present 15% to 50% (a measure that may favour local contractors), abridge the process of sale/lease of governments property in order to raise revenue and expand the room for virement towards facilitating movement of budgeted funds from one sub head to another by the Executive and without the approval of the National Assembly as the Constitution demands. Other targets of the bill include the amendment of some laws such as that of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in order to reduce the counterpart funding by states from the current 50% to 10%. This may allow states that failed to meet the current criteria to access funds from UBEC.Another objective of the bill remains the speeding up of the process of obtaining the Nigerian visa and compelling designated  agencies like National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to improve on their presently poor business culture and make the country more investment friendly.
Like in many other areas of interface between the Presidency and the National Assembly- in particular the 2016 budget, many proponents of the bill seem to be seeing it as a done deal -even as a magical cure-all potion that will automatically catapult the Nigerian economy out of its present travails. Infact according to some commentators, all that the National Assembly has to do is simply endorse the bill and let the process start.
Indeed, what a relief that would have been, if the dispensation were as simple as that. Yet adopting such a simplistic approach to the issue by the National Assembly will only be at the risk of the institution degrading itself to the status of a mere rubber stamp agency, that lacks the capacity for independent assessment and co-ordinated responses in the face of sundry challenges facing the country. In fact, such a situation is tantamount to the legislature adding to its present woes, the unedifying toga of a laughing stock.
There are many reasons why the National Assembly should look at this bill – which is actually a blank cheque by another name for the President and other operatives in the executive arm, frontally with all the discretion it can muster. The circumstances surrounding the bill dictate that the Assembly can only acquit itself by acting in full conviction that the intent of the legislation will further the national interest. The federal legislature should be mindful of its experience with the recent budget padding saga, which was so mismanaged in the public domain that it ended up putting the institution in such a bad light that even its inherent powers of independent scrutiny and amendment of the budget were ridiculed. This new bill therefore offers the National Assembly another opportunity to acquit itself by harnessing the appropriate response that will meet the expectations of Nigerians and promote national interest.
Seen in context, the incidence of emergency powers in a nascent democracy like Nigeria’s, remains a dispensation that once commenced may not only be easy to reverse. Without necessary safe guards it may even attract unintended consequences. Hence it needs to be established that the executive has done the needful and exhausted all options within the ambit of extant legislations in the respective areas that are designated for emergency intervention. In fact, given the slant of the provisions of the proposed emergency bill towards money for spending, and the self -serving endorsement for it by sections of the organised private sector, the National Assembly needs to establish and be guided by empirical and other evidence that the fault lines in the Nigerian economy, lie as defined by this bill, and no other factors like the work ethics, cultural considerations as well as systemic administrative weaknesses and political patronage; to name a few. In addition to the foregoing, the legislature also needs to confirm that such powers are inevitable for the survival of the economy as at now.
It is not surprising that in the search for quick-fix solutions to the compromised state of the Nigerian economy, a recourse to emergency powers for the President may look attractive to operatives in the executive arm. However, if the incontinence of government’s policy measures to tame the economy is the target of the emergency powers, then such a dispensation remains premature for now, given the consensus that the administration may not be heading in the right direction.
A review of the track record of the administration since its inception on May 29th 2015, betrays serial administrative slips from the well beaten path of best fit practices of democratic governance. Incidentally, some of the key areas of failure of the administration are among the designated areas for emergency action. For instance, it is inconsistent for the government to advocate that only emergency powers can resolve whatever administrative bottlenecks are associated with the gate keeping utility of procurement procedures; that is if such actually impede genuine project implementation operations. Besides the foregoing, what justification is there to deploy emergency powers for lowering the counterpart funding from 50% to 10% for states in accessing UBEC funds if not to pamper the state governors for yet unstated reasons?
Has the federal government forgotten so easily the collective role of some governors in frittering away the nation’s patrimony at any opportunity available to them, especially with respect to the recent bail-out funds to debt ridden states? Or can the legion of hawks in the MDAs be trusted with the responsibility of juggling at will and without supervision by the National Assembly, budgetary subheads in the national interest; all in the name of unrestricted virement. After all, the trusted President Muhammadu Buhari cannot possibly attend to every project expenditure item in the national budget and in every MDA so who vouches for the integrity of the other officers who may capitalise on the liberties that the emergency powers will confer?
The foregoing premises are among others that dictate a discretional approach by the National Assembly in its consideration of the bill whenever such comes before them. Already the serial set-backs in the implementation of government programmes and projects have been traced to the dysfunctional state of the nation’s public service machinery at all tiers of governance. It was ostensibly in the light of the languid state of the nation’s public service delivery system, that the President recently directed the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation Mrs Oyo Ita to initiate the process of developing a road map for its upgrade.
It is therefore a misplacement of priorities for the advocacy for emergency powers to be targeted at any other area outside the reform of the public service. Due to its pivotal role as the bedrock of governance, the public service remains the proper place to execute any emergency programme. In any case without reforming it, the exercise by government of either regular or emergency powers will remain futile.
And this is where the executive needs to fall into the same page with the legislature. Hopefully the circumstance of this bill may be reorienting the nation’s political economy towards a more symbiotic relationship between the executive and the legislature.