In this exclusive interview, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, speaks on his one-year stewardship as Chairman of the National Assembly, senator’s relationship with the executive arm of government and justifies most of the decisions the Senate takes. Excerpts:
By Thursday you will be celebrating your first anniversary as the President of the Senate and Chairman of the National Assembly. How has the journey been?
I thought we will start with the question that covers everyone in the National Assembly or in the Senate, but now that you have pointed at me as an individual, I will say we thank Almighty God for sparing our lives and seeing us through to this time.
June 11, last year, was when we were inaugurated, and of course, the presiding officers of the Senate were elected. I thank Almighty God for His blessings; my colleagues massively endorsed me to preside over the affairs of the Senate, and by implication, the affairs of the National Assembly.
Life is a journey; this is part of my life. In a journey like this when you are expected to provide leadership, you will need the support of your colleagues; those that you are supposed to work for.
And right from the voting pattern, the way senators voted for the candidates for the Senate presidency, it was very clear, very obvious and unambiguous that there was so much trust in me, and of course, the expectation of the senators was that the Ninth Senate would be united, and that was clearly shown in the pattern of voting.
We got 79 votes.
They expect a very stable Senate now that almost everybody is facing the same direction.
They also expect, as a consequence of the stability, productivity, proficiency and efficiency in what we do as legislators.
I’m simply a driver, but how we are able to actualise unity, stability and productivity squarely depends on all of us in the Senate; all the 109. And I’m happy to say that it has been a very successful journey. We have been united as we expected and wanted. We have been stable both as individual senators; even with different party affiliations. We still have been able to achieve that unity and stability.
Unlike what was obtained in previous National Assemblies, especially the eighth, this one has always been on the same page with the executive on almost everything, making some to tag it a “rubber stamp”. Why is it so?
I always like to talk about this rubber stamp thing. Being on the same page, I think is supposed to be the desire of every organisation when it relates with another, and especially if the fates of the two organisations are tied.
Truly, we have been on the same page for most of the time with the executive, I mean the Ninth Senate or indeed the Ninth Assembly.
I have been in the National Assembly long enough to have witnessed being on different pages and being on the same page, and I can say I understand the benefits of being on different pages and being on the same page.
I don’t want to make reference to any particular session of the National Assembly; whether it was an assembly that the executive and the legislature were on different pages all the time, or most of the time, or they were on the same page most of the time or all the time.
But one thing is very clear – you see, those who created democracy had a purpose in also ensuring that the doctrine or the theory of separation of power is enshrined in the constitutions of many countries.
I want to go back a little bit to the history of the doctrine of separation of power.
The French political philosopher, Baron De Montesquieu, in his book, The Spirit of Laws, published in 1748, created the doctrine or the theory of separation of power.
He enunciated and explained separation of power and why it should be there. Montesquieu felt power should be domiciled in the three arms of government.
That’s an opinion, separation of power is extremely essential, but it has never been contemplated by anyone that when you say separation of power, then you compartmentalise power; that the executive should go and sit in one room and insist these are its powers, the legislature should go and do the same thing in its own room and likewise the judiciary.
That’s why the legislature could pass a law and then the president has the power to withhold assent, but of course, the legislature has been given additional power to overturn the veto of the president.
So, my understanding of separation of power is functionality; specialisation of functions of the different arms.
That’s to say the legislature has been given the functions of legislation and oversight; these are necessary.
And if you look at oversight, it is essentially the tendency to check the potential excesses of the executive.
So, when bringing in the separation of power doctrine, you need to add checks and balances, and that cuts across all the three arms.
That’s to say, the legislature will always ensure that the executive executes the laws efficiently and effectively and that there is no abuse of power by it.
As a legislature, we are expected to perform that function of oversight, checks and balances of the executive.
We will do so, we will ensure that we guard jealously that function because that is the people’s power and we cannot play with that at all. At no time can we compromise this.
Then there is the issue of interdependence.
No arm of government can do it alone.
For good governance, you need the legislature and the executive particularly to work together in a way and manner that there’s cooperation, there’s partnership, there’s consultation so that in most situations, they are on the same page.
When we say they are on the same page, it is not to be on the same page to undermine the interest of the citizens, but to be on the same page to promote and protect the interest of citizens.
Tell me, who will be opposed to service delivery to the citizens?
You cannot run away from the fact that when you simply fight and fight over what I may call territorial jurisdiction, if this is legislative and that is executive, to the neglect of the purpose of government in the first place, which is to secure the people, to provide for their welfare, then the people lose.
And I have witnessed the loss of focus, the lack of purpose, inability and even incapacity to deliver so much desired services to the people of this country when the legislature and the executive were perpetually engaged in conflicts.
I have also witnessed better service delivery to the people when there was cooperation and mutual respect between the two arms.
I think I will be unfair to myself, to the people and to the senators who elected me to choose right from the beginning to just fight in the name of independence of the legislature.
I believe in the independence of the legislature more than people think.
Now they say we are a rubber stamp assembly.
What people don’t know is that there is nothing that in the opinion of the Senate or National Assembly that will jeopardise the liberty of our people or against the interest of the majority of Nigerians that we will do.
The Senate is not the Senate president or the Senate leadership.
The Senate is 109 senators with a quorum of two-thirds.
So, if you are talking of 75 senators to accept something, how can you call that a rubber stamp?
The Senate president only presides over the sessions.
And if you go to the Ninth Senate, you will agree with me that the kind of senators we have are people who have accomplished great things, they have done so much, they have acquired sufficient experience in various fields.
We have former governors, retired generals, businessmen and what have you.
We have members of the House of Representatives who have crossed over; coming there with significant legislative experience, and then you call that place a rubber stamp?
For me, those who are in the habit of saying rubber stamp, either they don’t understand what the legislature is supposed to do or some of them are mischievous or some of them are in opposition to government and therefore, they will be happier to see disputations, conflicts, disagreements and chaos and the consequent lack of productivity in the National Assembly or the Senate particularly.
Do you know that we have disagreed with Mr. President, the executive arm of government, many times?
People don’t know, because what we have adopted is to go behind the scenes and solve our problems.
When the president was to sign the 2020 budget, go and look at the clip.
He said he had reservations on the budget passed by the National Assembly.
Yet the president signed the 2020 budget.
What happened? There was engagement.
We had some bills that the executive had some reservations about, but the president signed the bills and then later we engaged behind the scenes.
In fact, recently, we had an amendment to the Finance Act that the president signed only last year.
You think that thing they brought for amendment was not there?
It was there, they didn’t like it. But because of the new spirit of “this is one administration”, “this is one government”, “let us not be washing our dirty linens in public”, he signed.
Mr. President signed the Finance Bill into law, and I think last month, they brought a request for amendment and we amended that section.
Probably, a previous assent would have been withheld by Mr. President and the executive arm of government, and what will that lead to?
by the time the legislature picks it up, it will say let’s pass it by two-thirds and overturn the veto of the president.
But, we have achieved what could be achieved through that kind of rancorous engagement through very peaceful means.
If this relationship, in our judgement, is making us productive, is making ensure that there is efficiency in governance, that Nigerians are getting a better deal, so be it.
Call us anything, if you like, not rubber stamp, call us steel stamp or whatever it is.
I can tell you, today this Senate has done in the last count, 27 confirmations.
Tell me, if we didn’t do those confirmations; tell me how governance will be carried on?
There will be so much arbitrariness, maybe ministers will take advantage of where they are to supervise; there could be a lot of abuse.
So, we shouldn’t confirm people?
If we confirm it is rubber stamping.
Call us anything, all we want is to live up to the expectations of those who voted for us.
Those who voted for us are the silent majority, most of those who call us rubber stamp or any kind of funny name don’t even vote.
You occupied a very sensitive position (Senate Leader) in the last Senate which fought the executive throughout its session. Do you have any regret serving there and what role did you play?
I don’t have any regret. To say I have regret is to question God.
God decided that I should be the Senate Leader, and I’m grateful to God for His blessings.
My colleagues in the APC Caucus of the Eighth Senate endorsed me to be the Senate Leader, and I’m grateful to them.
Whether things went well or not, and that should be the question, not the way you put it.
Whether I’m satisfied or happy with the way the relationship between the executive and legislature went, I think that should be the issue.
But I think in many instances, we would have done certain things differently and achieved better results and outcomes.
This relationship (with the executive now) does not confer on anybody immunity, if you err, we will say so, if you persist, we will sanction you because we have that mandate of the Nigerian people to do so. But if you do your work well, we will support you.
In fact, if you fail completely and you remain a failure, we will insist that you are dismissed, you should be shown the way out of government.
The argument really is that the relationship between the executive and the legislature is getting too close for comfort to the extent that some people believe that you people are placating each other. For instance, in the revised budget proposal, allocations for critical sectors, including education and health, were reduced by 54 per cent and 42 per cent respectively, while the renovation of the National Assembly complex got N27.7bn, 25 per cent cut, when Nigerians expected that the renovation of the National Assembly should be shelved. Again, you approved humongous amounts of loans for the Federal Government. Putting all these together, people are saying you are placating each other. What is your take on this?
Why don’t you call the executive arm of government a rubber stamp if you are saying we placate each other?
I’m not admitting that we are doing that, but I want to put the argument to you or to those who are saying this; that if you call the National Assembly a rubber stamp, you should also call the executive a rubber stamp.
That is on a lighter note.
On a more serious note, I think you should have asked me what has happened to the N37bn renovation of the National Assembly which the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) is supposed to do, because the budget is in the FCDA, not in the National Assembly.
We consciously allow that to happen because that magnificent structure is owned by the FCDA and not the National Assembly.
And we all felt the business of renovating it or maintaining it should be the business of the FCDA. The FCDA having gone through all technical and engineering considerations arrived at that N37bn. It is not the National Assembly that arrived at that. We don’t have the capacity to do that, even though we have a works department.
And where the information is wrong is that from N37bn, it has been reduced to N9.2bn. What percentage is that? It is not 25 per cent. Go and do the arithmetic.
As for the revised budget, and because they left us with money, which I will now debunk, for renovation, we also approved loans.
Budget is a process, and I can tell you before this revised budget was brought to the National Assembly, there were several important engagements between the National Assembly leadership and between our committees on appropriation, finance, national planning, domestic and foreign debts and petroleum upstream with the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, GMD of NNPC, DG of DMO and others from the executive to make sure that we are able to achieve some decent understanding before they could bring the final document.
It doesn’t mean that when they bring the final document; that is the way it will end, but at least to engage in the interaction. We always feel that this is going to help in reducing conflicts.
As for loans, okay, tell me we don’t have money, our revenues have gone drastically down because of what we are able to produce and the price at which we are able to sell our crude.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we had problems generating or collecting revenues. Recall that several times the Minister of Finance would say Nigeria’s problem was not debt, but revenue.
With COVID-19, the price of crude oil came to as low as $11pb or so. Now, you will not get probably more than 40 to 45 per cent of the revenue you need to implement your budget, and yet you need to provide for Nigerians.
You don’t have the money, you don’t have the resources to match what you need to provide for the citizens, the most logical thing for you to do is to ensure that you define your projects and your programmes for national development to be absolutely focused on those areas that are needed most because you have to cut cost and then project your revenues realistically.
The sale of crude, non-oil collections, the customs, the NPA, NIMASA and maybe Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by some other agencies of government, and maybe all you could get is 40 or 50 per cent of the resources you need, do you cancel all the other development projects?
Imagine now that you suspend completely the construction of the Second Niger Bridge, you suspend completely the construction of the rail line between Lagos and Kano or Lagos and Ibadan, you suspend the work that you want to do in Mambilla to generate over 3,000 megawatts of electricity, you suspend everything about Kano-Maiduguri Highway, how will that help you in national development?
What is expected of you as a government is to look for those bilateral and multilateral facilities that are cheap, one per cent, 10 years moratorium, 20 years moratorium; one per cent interest rate, 1.2 per cent interest rate and deploy the resources in those areas.
So, if you are in the parliament and the executive asks, this is our reality, and we still need to continue, but in addition also, COVID-19 has revealed our weakness in the health sector, and even the social sector.
But COVID-19 has also revealed opportunities for us to go digital in our education sector, in our businesses, economy generally, and so many areas that we can achieve better efficiency when we go digital.
So, the parliament should say no, no, no we are not going to approve money, go and do only those things that our money, our revenues, our resources can handle, apparently that won’t be a good thing for the parliament to do.
What the parliament should do, and that is what we are going to do, is to say okay, this is your request $5.513bn for Federal Government and $1.5bn for states.
The Federal Government, come and defend how you are going to use your $5.513bn, show us the projects first of all, show us the condition of the loan, what are the conditions?
The interest rate, the moratorium (the period which we will start payment) and when we are satisfied, then we say what are the projects, we are satisfied that the projects are essential, what next?
We say okay, we are going to approve, but we are also going to do our oversight.
Our committee on local and foreign debts have done so much work, they have screened the projects.
The Minister of Finance and her team came and defended the projects, the committee was so thorough that when the Ministry of Finance could not defend the $1.5bn for states, it recommended we should not approve that, and the Senate didn’t approve.
When there is sufficient information on how the $1.5bn would be deployed by the states, then we can consider it again, but as for this, I can’t see any other way.
To generate more revenue for the country, your party, the APC, in its 2014 manifesto pledged quick passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). Now, three years to the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure, it has not been passed. Where are we on this?
PIB followed some well-defined but unsuccessful routes from 2007 when its first copy was produced by the government of late the President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
We ended up with about three different versions of the PIB eventually at that session; none of them could be passed.
In 2011, President Jonathan introduced the PIB, it was unsuccessful; it did not pass.
In 2015, the Eighth Assembly took over, eventually, there is no PIB law yet.
What we have decided in this assembly, and we said this when we were campaigning; that we are going to do things differently.
We said we want to pass the PIB before the end of this year by the Grace of God; we said this before COVID-19. And we also said we have taken note of the past hiccups and the past challenges that bills faced.
The sixth and seventh assemblies witnessed solo efforts by the executive to have the PIB in place. The Eighth Session had solo efforts by the legislature, then the executive did not bring any PIB. The legislature did pass something that was not signed.
Now, we decided, why can’t we have a new approach? The executive and the legislature will sit and work on the PIB. And when we do that, by the time the bill or bills will come to the National Assembly, the two chambers would have eliminated significant areas of conflict and the PIB that defied passage or assent will be passed and will be assented to by Mr. President.
In fact, if not because of COVID-19, PIB would have been in the assembly by now because we thought that whether it is one or two bills before we pass the next budget for 2021, we should have passed the PIB.
Passage of the PIB or the assent to it or having the law to regulate the oil industry in Nigeria is so important to us as a country and to our economy because that is what will attract and sustain investments, especially foreign investments. We thought we could pass it and it will help us shape the 2021 budget because there are a lot of expected funds in petroleum tax and so many others.
The last time I discussed the PIB with the executive, they told me that probably this month of June, we are working together, it will be ready. We are still optimistic that we will work hard to see and consider it to make the oil industry more attractive and more competitive, because now almost every country has discovered crude. So, if we don’t change the legal frame of governing our oil industry, the investment to our industry will just fly elsewhere; and we need to avoid that.
The 2023 general elections are fast approaching, do you see the parliament under you succeeding in amending the Electoral Act?
Why are you negative about it?
Because of the uproar that trailed the amendment process in the last assembly.
One of the contentious issues was elections sequence.
In the Ninth Assembly, everything that will promote good governance and is within our purview, we will do our best to attend to it.
What happened in the last assembly remains part of the history of the National Assembly. History is supposed to give you some lessons.
We are going to start doing amendments to the constitution, as well as the Electoral Act.
We are particularly concerned with the electoral process, we need to make it more transparent, more credible and maintain the integrity of our processes; that is what should continue to promote democracy and sustain the interest of Nigerians that when you vote the vote matters.
So, we are looking into areas like pre-election matters. Example, we have this feeling that; why can’t we finish all pre-election cases before the main election so that you don’t bring someone who eventually wins and then will start going to tribunal and court to talk about pre-election matters. That means we have to work on a certain section of the constitution.
Recently in Bayelsa, we had another experience, a deputy gubernatorial candidate cost the ticket of a political party.
Why can’t we do something to separate the fate of these two people, so that when something happens to the deputy governor, it shouldn’t affect the governorship candidate.
People largely vote for the governorship candidate; not the deputy governorship candidate.
The deputy governorship candidate is expected to bring some value, but the person who I think the majority of the voters vote for is the governorship candidate.
So why should the fate of the deputy cause the entire system to change?
It is something that we need to look at.
We need to also look at community policing, it is not in the constitution, why can’t we make it constitutional.
There has been a lot of talk about decentralising the police.
How can we achieve that? In the light of the security challenges that we face.
We are going to work very fast.
The Deputy Senate President is chairing the committee for the review of the constitution.
You know he is a lawyer by training, an erudite lawyer for that matter.
We have our committee working already.
The APC has been swimming in crises. The Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), Kayode Fayemi, in a recent interview, said except certain steps are taken to fix the challenges facing the APC, it may collapse after President Buhari. How do you see the party after President Buhari’s tenure?
Show me any political party that has no crisis?
This is a party that has the president; that has the majority in the National Assembly; that has majority of the states, maybe 21, 22 governors across the country.
Why won’t we have some challenges?
People will disagree now.
But the fact remains that President Muhammadu Buhari is the linchpin of APC.
Everybody respects the president.
He is a father figure and is able to have everybody revolving around his integrity and respect.
So, no matter how difficult a situation is, when the president intervenes, you could find solace and resolution.
But I want to say that his presence in APC or his presence in government is very, very important and significant to APC.
When the president will leave, even before he leaves, my expectation is that APC would have been reconciled with the different interests or challenges that we have in some chapters resolved.
And when he leaves the Villa in 2023, he is going to stay in Nigeria and he will remain the father of this party.
When things become difficult, what do you do in a family?
You go to the father.
So, the president will play his father function or role while he is in office and will continue to do the same when he finishes his tenure by the Grace of God.
As for challenges and various interests, these will never end.
How we are able to manage ourselves would be how united we would continue to be.
And I believe that at a certain point anyone who feels he has an interest will also remember that the larger interest has an overriding importance.
So, there will be peace, we will restore peace in all our chapters, and APC will continue to dominate the political landscape of Nigeria by the Grace of God for a very long time.
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