Part-Time Legislature Goes Against Democratic Norms – Osifo

A former presidential aspirant under the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Stanley Osifo, has expressed his views on various national issues, including local government autonomy. According to Osifo, local government autonomy entails several key elements critical to governance and grassroots development. In this interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI, Osifo stated that President Bola Tinubu’s administration would tackle numerous challenges affecting Nigerians through the proposed 2025 budget. He also expressed optimism that the issues plaguing Nigeria’s petroleum sector would soon be resolved. Excerpts:

People are confused about the petroleum sector and they are asking if the government cannot solve the issue once and for all. If it is about Dangote Refinery today, tomorrow, it will be NNPC, what is your view on this?
People pass information they get on the social media anyhow. We should get information from the right people. We should ask the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Plc (NNPCL) questions. They would tell you what is happening. There is no confusion in the sector, but the people are misinformed. You can see that the government is trying to repair the nation’s refineries. When the refineries come up, the government will stop the importation of fuel.

The President Bola Tinubu-led government has also been accused of appointing too many Yorubas and Lagos boys into key offices. It is believed that they have taken over the economy and that they have not achieved much, what’s your reaction to this?
President Bola Tinubu was once a governor and it’s not just Lagosians, many Nigerians saw the way he developed the state. The team that he used to achieve development in Lagos State is still there and many of the people that served with him remain within government even when others came after him. So, he has to bring them on board based on their experiences and they are doing their best. The President and his team are doing their best to ensure that the nation moves forward rather than using the people that would be clog in the wheel of progress of the country. The people you are talking about are not just from the South West. If you look at the recent his ministerial appointments, you will see that he didn’t bring in much people from the South West rather people from the northern part of the country formed a large portion of the appointees even for the newly created ministries. I don’t think that assertion is correct. The President makes appointments based on experiences so that the job would be done.

We are going to another budget year and the government has come up with over N49 Trillion budget estimate, what should be the focus of the second budget that the president is presenting after he got into office?
Some parameters are taken into consideration before a budget is presented. We have different ministries and parastatals in the country. In a budget, we have both the capital and recurrent expenditures. I don’t think we have had this magnitude of budget before and I believe strongly that the essence of having the budget is to ensure that we have development and for the economy to be rejuvenated and also to cushion the effect of the hardship the people are complaining about. So, a lot of things would be put into consideration and the budget will address many of these issues that were considered in putting up the budget. Nigerians should be hopeful as the budget has been prepared to ensure that it addresses most of the issues that Nigerians are facing right now.

Talking about local government autonomy, it is being suggested that the INEC should take over the conduct of local government elections as it was discovered that most of the times it is the government in power that wins all the seats, do you agree with them?
The word ‘autonomy’ is very strong as it suggests that it should be free from any form of interference from external bodies on decision making. It means that the local governments operate as different entities. On the assertion that local government elections are won by the party in power, let us look at it that there is no difference between what we have at the local governments and other tiers of government. As we have parties in the local governments, we have at the states and at the federal level. Would you now say that the party at the federal would also force its party at the states and local government levels. What we need to have is democratic reengineering such that we can speak to ourselves on the premise that what goes around comes around. I may not say that what they say is absolutely correct because every party as its candidates and you can canvass for voted and convince the people to vote for you. If you possibly came out with candidates and you did not win and you felt that you ought to win, you have avenues to complain that the election did not go the way it ought to go. We have seen situations where people went to court and they were able to prove their cases beyond reasonable doubts and the courts ruled in their favour. If anybody can prove that he or she was rigged out, the person has a right to go court. That is the way I think it should be. I don’t believe in the idea that a state ruled by a particular party takes all the seats in the local governments. If we believe that then it means that if the INEC takes over local governments elections, then the party at the federal level would win all the seats in the states. I think we need to discard that idea and get the right people into positions of authority. With local government autonomy, it means the local governments too are now distinct like the states. I think that is better as no one can tell the local governments what they should do to develop their areas. So, no state governor can go to the local governments chairmen and tell them what to do, the same way the president cannot tell any Governor how to rule his state. Let us add value to our orientation and let us educate the electorate and let us have different people come in to develop the local governments.

Do you support the suggestion that the lawmakers at the National Assembly should work on part time basis as they are said to be consuming a lot of money that should have been used for development purposes?
That has been a long issue in public domain talking, I mean the issues surrounding the earnings of lawmakers. But some of the lawmakers have come out to speak about what they earn and some of them have even complained that what they earn is not enough for them to do what they need to do in their constituencies as they take care of the people, pay staff salaries and travel to their constituencies. Some of the figures might be humongous, but by the time you start to expend the money, you will realise that it is not enough. It might be huge, but if you are working for your people, you will see that it is not adequate. I don’t agree that legislative work should be part time. If you say the job should be part time, then it means there would be no governance. We have three arms of government and if you say one arm should be part time, it’s not possible because you have the legislature, executive and the judiciary. So, how can you say one should be part time. It is only in Nigeria that people come up with many ideas and I don’t know where they get it from because it is different fromnthe ground norm. We went to school and we studied democracy and we know that there are fundamentals of democracy. If we say someone should go and represent us and you say his work should be part time, are you a part time citizen, is the law part time? Are you saying that the law is applicable at a time and it is not applicable at a time. Many people don’t have time to sit down and analyse things. We should do researches and see the way they do some things in other parts of the world. I don’t think there is anywhere in the world, where they have part time legislature. It is just that many people don’t understand the way things work, if the lawmakers are not sitting, they perform oversight functions, but people don’t know all that. They think there is nothing they do, they work, they prepare bills and read through before they present them. Nigerians don’t understand how things work, which is why they talk the way they do. They should understand and if they are taught that this is the way legislative things are done may be they will understand. I don’t think governance should be done that way or else there would be lacuna. Like I said, we have three arms of government; the legislature, executive and the judiciary and each arm must work appropriately. I don’t want to dwell on what I know is not proper or practicable.