EditorialTHEWILL EDITORIAL: Ninth National Assembly: An Appraisal

THEWILL EDITORIAL: Ninth National Assembly: An Appraisal

THEWILL APP ADS 2

The Ninth National Assembly is a bicameral legislature composed of the House of Representatives, (Lower Chamber) and the Senate, (Upper Chamber) which was inaugurated on June 11, 2019 and will run its course until June 11, 2023.

The members of the assembly are saddled with legislative duties and oversight functions. While it has not done badly in the area of legislation, it has abandoned its duty of oversighting on the Executive arm of government.

In term of legislations, as of November 2021, about 2,500 Bills had been introduced in the National Assembly, 769 in the Senate and 1,634 in the House of Representatives,

Glo

The passing of the Electoral Act (2010) Amendment Bill, which was signed into the New Electoral Act 2022 by President Muhammadu Buhari is one of the major achievements of the assembly.

The law has already strengthened the electoral process through the use of electronic transmission of election results and this has further reinforced public confidence in democratic institutions, especially the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The ninth assembly worked closely with the Executive to secure the passage and assent of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

For some years, the National Assembly had made efforts to reform the petroleum industry without much success. The PIB was first introduced in the 6th Assembly (2007-2011), but it failed to scale through. Similar efforts by the Seventh Assembly failed to secure concurrence by the Senate, while in the Eighth Assembly, the Bill was passed, but it failed to secure presidential assent.

This historic achievement of the National Assembly means that Nigeria now has legal, governance, regulatory and fiscal frameworks for the petroleum industry that would promote optimal utilisation of the country’s abundant oil and gas resources.

The assembly also passed the Finance Act (2020) which successfully amended 17 key aspects of the extant laws, including seven existing tax laws.

The CAMA 2020 Act is also a landmark achievement representing the first time in 30 years that this law has been updated.

The Act introduces measures to ensure efficiency in the registration and regulation of corporate vehicles, reduce the compliance burden of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), enhance transparency and stakeholders’ engagement in corporate vehicles and overall, promote a more friendly business climate.

The Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract (Amendment) Act 2019, which was passed and assented to by the President gives effect to fiscal incentives given to oil and gas companies operating in the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin areas under production sharing contracts between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or other companies holding oil prospecting licenses (OPL) or oil mining leases (OML) and various petroleum exploration and production companies.

Other Bills of great economic significance that have been passed by the National Assembly and awaiting presidential assent include the Public Procurement Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill, Recovery of Public Property Bill and the Amendment of Assets Management Corporation Act, among others.

However, whatever achievements that may have been recorded in the legislation aspect have been subsumed under the assembly’s bad performance of overseeing the executive.

To many Nigerians, the ninth National Assembly has been described as a Rubber Stamp legislature and they believe it should be blamed for the heavy foreign debts incurred by the Buhari administration.

The rubber-stamp signature given to the ninth assembly is not surprising, considering the way the assembly allowed the excesses of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in the last four years to go unchallenged.

The legislature is supposed to serve as a watchdog, but this assembly has violated the doctrine of separation of powers and checks and balances as enunciated by French philosopher, Charles Baron Montesquieu, in his book, ‘The Spirit of Law’.

Montesquieu explained the need to separate the three organs of government, namely, the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, to enable each arm to serve as a check on the other in order to ensure equilibrium, but the ninth assembly has not served as a check on the excesses of the Buhari’s administration.

Section 14, Sub-section 3 of the 1999 Constitution says that “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”

The Muhammadu Buhari Administration has however done exactly the opposite and it had done so in the last seven years without any hesitation.

We believe that the assembly still has a few months to correct the error of poor oversighting before it winds up and we pray it does so.

About the Author

Recent Posts

More like this
Related

Insurgency: NGO Trains 59 Traditional Rulers, Others On Inclusion Of Survivors, Deradicalised Women

March 29, (THEWILL)- A non-governmental organisation has trained...

Tinubu Appoints Abdullahi Bello New Chairman Of Code Of Conduct Bureau

March 28, (THEWILL)- President Bola Tinubu has approved the...