Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Honourable Yakubu Dogara speaks with Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, on the state of nation, the feud between the executive and the legislature, herdsmen/farmers clashes and the necessity for local government autonomy among other issues. Excerpts:

SIR, the perception is that the executive and the legislature are not on the same page, what is your view on this?

As politicians, sometimes we don’t attack the issues frontally well, let me say from the foundation of the principle of separation of powers. It was never anticipated that the legislature and the executive would work harmoniously on a continuous basis. There would always be frictions. Where you have human and individual factors, even in a family that is the minutest of the unions, that is expressed in humanity, there is bound to be conflicts. In the relationship between the executive and the legislature, there will be conflicts; the only problem is that sometimes we cast conflicts as intricately bad. Conflicts may not be bad. As a matter of fact, sometimes conflicts are necessary for progress to be made. If you have a collection of conformists, chances are that they will never make progress. Even if they do, it will always relate to an existing order that is sustained over time. For you to have innovation and progress, people must be free to disagree, and it is only in disagreeing that progress is made.

When the legislature disagrees with the executive it is viewed as conflict, in most cases, that is the interpretation. Conflict, however, can be a source of expression or release of energy that can lead to transformation. In the 8th Assembly, we have had issues; certain issues that have pitched the executive against the legislature and we will continue to have them. But the point is that, as leaders, how do we interpret these issues? How do we overcome these issues in such a way that they lead to progress and advancement instead of retrogression? My own take, even as I’ve said that these conflicts will continue, is that the man, who propounded the doctrine of separation of powers, saw clearly through the lenses of time that these kinds of interphase would take place. He invented another mechanism of checks and balances and he knew that if these departments of government, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary are separated in a water-tight fashion, whereby they don’t relate, they don’t check each other, then the entire architecture of that system of government is bound to be static and there wouldn’t be progress. So he invented the mechanism of checks and balances. For instance, if parliament conceives a measure, the judiciary has no powers to stop it from exercising its functions. It’s only when they have exercised that the judiciary can now seize jurisdiction over whatever decision the parliament has taken and pronounce it either illegal, unconstitutional or thereabout. At the same time too, the executive cannot adopt a measure that entails that the parliament shouldn’t do its work. In the same vein, if the

judiciary is about to deliver on its job, the parliament cannot sit and say they are passing a legislation that alters the status quo or seeks to arrest the judgement. Our only interpretation of this separation of powers is that we should cooperate more as arms of government in the national interest, so that specifically we can deliver on the promises we made during the elections. Nigerians sacrificed a lot. It’s not been part of our history that the opposition defeats the party with the benefit of incumbency, the party that is in government, but it happened. So imagine the kind of sacrifices people made. So, that, therefore, means you don’t have liberty as a government. It doesn’t matter if it’s the executive, judiciary or legislature, but to close ranks and deliver on the promises that led people to sacrifice so much. So, that has been our own interpretation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Conflicts yes, we may have conflicts, but it shouldn’t endure to the level that it offsets the friendly relationship with the executive, which is necessary to deliver on the goals of governance. That is key.

Taking your position as number four in the hierarchy of national leadership, you are one of the leaders in the APC government. By May, your party will be two years in power, can you say that your party has not disappointed Nigerians?

In the Niger-Delta, thank God, through some mechanism of intervention, we can begin to see peace, I think as at today, we are doing 2.1 million barrels a day(of crude oil), which is in line with our economic goals. So at least we are making progress. One thing our people must know which I believe can be channeled by the media is that it is difficult for you to build. It is only when destroying that you find it very easy. The whole of this Abuja city, one device you can use to destroy this city within minutes or hours, but look at how many years it has taken us to be where we are today in this Federal Capital. So, progress is being made. A lot of people may not appreciate them, but the intangibles are really there. The fundamentals are very strong. Very strong and robust foundation has been laid and I believe all is left is to raise the structure and complete them. And I believe by the Grace of God, by the time we are done with the execution of this year’s budget, every Nigerian will now see the clear direction that we are heading to.



N12 Billion for Legislative Aides a year. Then we have the National Assembly Service Commission; it’s an agency not even here. They have their offices outside. Unfortunately, they don’t even have permanent structures. They are paying rent where they are. I don’t know the number of staff they have, but they also take rent and all from the N115 billion. They have like 500 staff. We have commissioners representing the geopolitical zones, plus the chairman. All of them draw funds from here. Then we have NILS (National Institute for Legislative Studies). I’ll implore you to go to where NILS is building their headquarters, with a facility that will also serve as a university. Go and see what they have been able to achieve. You’ll be shocked. The headquarters is being built by Julius Berger. NILS draws funds from this N115 billion and they will account for it as well. We are going to put it there in the press. What do they do with the money given to them? Then we have the Public Complaints Commission. They don’t have any provision in the budget except from the funds they draw from us. So they will account for themselves. Then we have the National Assembly Budget and Research Office, just like you have the Congressional Budget Office in the U.S. Our goal is that they will be non-partisan in the analysis of annual budgets and they provide members with timely tools for debate and engagement across board with the executive when it comes to budgetary matters. Then we didn’t have them, but now we have them and they also draw funds from this N115 billion, . They will bring their budget and tell the world what they do with their money. At the end of the day, when we publish these details, a lot of people will be shocked, but it will be published. And I hope that will put paid to the perceived corruption in the National Assembly.



Sometimes, it’s even members of the House that raise the red flag about corruption in the system; for instance, look at the allegation of padding by Abdulmumini Jibrin. When you have these people saying all these, what else can come from the public?

Well, that is why it is good to engage in investigative journalism. We have so many journalist friends they can ask. For instance, they say members are paid N10 million a month, is it true? He was unable to bring forth evidence; he should have brought documents. He is a member; he should have brought his bank documents to prove that was he was being paid, very simple. But there was no shred of evidence to back any claim, other than I have said it. I can say anything and you know you can’t convict on the basis of one witness if you read Law, except in the exceptional case of the confession of a dying man, like if you are stabbing me and I am about to die and I said ‘Mr. Ahmed has killed me,’ that is taken to be the gospel truth. On that basis, someone could be convicted, because what is the motive for somebody dying to tell lies?



On herdsmen…

For the herdsmen, we have made it very clear and I think the president made it very clear that whether kidnappers, herdsmen or whoever commits an act of terrorism, they should be grouped as one. Anyone making war against innocent citizens of the country must be dealt with squarely as if he is a terrorist, even if he is not one. I don’t see the distinction between whomever that is making war against Nigerians or unleashing terror on innocent Nigerians. It doesn’t matter their description. And unfortunately what has not helped this issue is the fact that we have an extensive border. If you look at it, how many Customs and Immigration officers do we have? If they were able to join hands and line up across our borders, they wouldn’t even cover a quarter of our borders. And most of these people coming to unleash terror on Nigerians aren’t Nigerians themselves. So, these are serious security challenges that would be met with the same kind of force shown against Boko Haram and other terrorists. There is no distinction; Boko Haram makes war against innocent Nigerians, and anyone that makes war against innocent Nigerians or takes up arms against the Nation State, whether kidnapper, Avengers, herdsmen should be squarely dealt with. That is our position as a parliament, we have said it frequently and we will keep re-echoing that.

There have been reports of defection of lawmakers from one party to the other, with the former political parties always threatening to recall those affected. What is your view on defection?

On the issue of defection, you’ll agree with me that the role of democracy is freedom; freedom of choice and you can’t just imbibe something not working for you and hold it unto death. Democracy deals with freedom, even though in some cases the freedom may be circumscribed, and most freedoms are, just as the fact that you are free to waive your hands to the high heavens, as long as it doesn’t touch my nose, because then it becomes trespass to my person. So, freedom to defect is circumscribed to the provision in the Constitution that states that there must be conditions in your political party that gives you the latitude to decide to cross-carpet. If those conditions are not there and you defect, you lose your seat; it’s clearly provided for in the Constitution. But where you have a political party that is factionalised, this faction fighting this faction, they are in court and pronouncements are being made, if you are a lover of peace and you don’t want to belong to faction A or B, where are you? Do you have a party? You must embrace A or B, whichever way you go; you haven’t escaped. But defecting is really is not good, especially when people gravitate towards the ruling party, because at the end of the day if care is not taken, you end up with a one-party state and in most one-party states you know what happens. The conditions for the actual practice of democracy won’t be there, in the sense that there is no opposition, so a group of people can adopt whatever model they want to adopt and implement. So, politics of opposition gives life democracy and brings quality to debate and government programmes. But the point is that we cannot legislate for individuals to die in certain political parties; if they feel that whatever they belong to will kill them, they have the right to escape for their political lives.

The Senate resolved that the Comptroller-General is not fit to be in office and came out with an interesting phrase to write the House of Representatives to make it binding; what is your take on this? How comfortable is the National Assembly with the level of compliance to their resolutions by the Executive? It is obvious that the House of Reps is more on the same page with the Executive than the Senate; are the Reps trying to maintain a mediatory role between the Executive and the Legislature?

On the resolution concerning the CG of Customs, whether the House is on the same page with the Senate or the Executive, I can’t speak for the House. The House will have to speak for itself through a resolution of the House. But one thing I have to say is that we work closely with the Senate and if we don’t do that, we won’t achieve any progress as an arm of government. The reason being that in a bicameral legislature, an issue that dies in one chamber is almost automatically dead in the other chamber. And if we do not find a common ground to work with the Senate, it means so many measures will either stagnate or die at the level of the National Assembly. I believe that the matter relating to the circumstances that led to the Senate’s decision may come up on the floor of the House and I cannot pre-judge what the outcome of the debate will be; if I do that, it wouldn’t even be fair and it won’t be right for me to preside over it. I would have to allow someone else, because I’ve formed an opinion. But we are lawmakers and we look at the books and sometimes I’ve even encouraged that in most cases, look at the laws yourselves and try to educate citizens on what the laws are. In Britain and the U.S, by the time you have a bill passed, you’ll see that so many newspapers will analyse the Bill, in fact to the extent that the unenlightened or uneducated of the society will understand what the bill is. This one concerning the Customs, you don’t bother too much about what the Senate is saying or not, what should bother you is the law. Do your own research as journalists, what is the law saying? Could it be that the Senate is misinterpreting the law? You can speak to some lawyers or some judges on the matter and then render your own opinion.



Are you satisfied with the level of compliance with National Assembly resolutions?

As to whether we are satisfied with the level of compliance with our resolutions, the answer is no, and that is why in the last House, we established a committee known as the Committee on Legislative Compliance and the essence of that Committee is to seek to compel compliance with resolutions of the legislature. The committee is working, they have a record of the resolutions that have been complied with and resolutions that have not been complied with and for those that have not been complied with, what we are trying to do is to give the committee more bite. They will move a motion on the floor of the House specifically that will indicate that these are the numbers of the resolutions we have passed; these are the ones that have been complied with, these are the defaulting dgencies and through the mechanism that is in Section 88 of the Constitution, the parliament as a whole can then empower the Committee on Legislative Compliance to then summon all those agencies that have not complied with the resolutions and ask them why. And as to whether sanctions cannot be applied, provided for under the Legislative Powers and Privileges Act, it’s something we are aware of and doing everything possible to ensure that there is more compliance with the resolutions of the National Assembly through the instrumentality of that committee

With the situation that we have now that the Senate has jettisoned screening some nominees, will the House mediate between the Senate and the Executive?

I won’t call the role of the House of Representatives mediation as such, but I said that our principle is cooperation with the Senate so that together we can achieve more and cooperation with the executive, where we will disagree and then agree. But in most areas, we should look for ways of cooperating more than fight. And it mustn’t be the House that mediates. It can be all the key players in the system: whether it’s the Senate mediating in an issue that concerns the House and the executive or some other persons in the executive mediating in the relationship between the executive and the legislature. This is not even called mediation, but consultation and compromise, which are key when you expound further the doctrine of checks and balance. We must always meet, talk to each other, reduce areas of conflict and where there are conflicts, we will overcome them. As I said earlier, there will always be conflicts, but what distinguishes us as leaders is whether we overcome those conflicts or we are overcome by those conflicts, and that is what we cannot allow. So we try to do that, the House will go to any length, talk to anybody in the Senate, in the executive, so we can forge an atmosphere that is convenient to work with. So it’s part of the work we do as leaders and as institutions of government, we should encourage more consultations, more dialogues, especially on issues.



The House and the Senate have proceeded to pass the Peace Corps Bill when virtually all relevant executive agencies seemed to be against it. What really informed this?

On the Peace Corps Bill, like I said, we mustn’t agree always with the executive. When they are talking about funding, National Assembly was convinced that within the structure for the funding of the police, civil defence, that was the same argument when the Civil Defence Bill was before the House, that it could not be funded, that they were divolving some of the powers of the police to the civil defence, that it would never work and at the end of the day all these were surmounted and now we have the civil defence that in some cases some citizens have said are more dependable than the conventional police. I don’t know. It’s a value judgement that I’ve not gone into so I can’t tell, but I know they are doing a good job. I see them everywhere I travel to and they have become a pride of the society.

Now the main consideration as regards the Peace Corps, all these considerations in terms of crises across communities, it was found that if they had these, they’d be able to supplement the work of the civil defence and police in providing security. And as I said the security of and life and property is the first responsibility of government in guaranteeing the welfare of the citizens. So we cannot overspend on the issue of protecting the lives and the properties of our citizens. We cannot. It was after the passage of the Bill that we began to hear that a chunk of the work of the police would be taken by the Peace Corps as well as oppositions from different levels of government. So, the Bill is still there. It’s before the president for his assent. If he doesn’t assent it for whatever reason, we are at liberty to recall it back to parliament and muster the 2/3 in the House and Senate and pass in spite of Mr. President’s veto. But right now that is not the discussion. So I’m not sure where it will be from here. For now, that is where we are, but we believe that if we escalate the issue of safety of lives and properties in our communities, we will have to get more people looking after the welfare of our citizens as to whether that job can be done convincingly by the police and civil defence alone is not too clear to us



http://tribuneonlineng.com/must-treat-criminal-herdsmen-like-boko-haram-dogara/

Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

sarrki:
Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

U Neva tell us wetin ipob do u o!

tonio2wo:


U Neva tell us wetin ipob do u o!

Do you know what a terrorist organization is capable of?

How many herdsmen has ever been arrested in this dirty country? They have a licence to kill.

sarrki:



Do you know what a terrorist organization is capable of?

Yes! They terrorise other people.

Don't tell me ipob gives u such terror.

Na story, must we wait until these monster come to invade us once again.. what ever you like you called them, they are meant to taste life anymore. hunt and hew them down

And you blv Buhari will approve this?

After how many years of cataclysmic maraudings?

sarrki:
Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

You see why I don't like you? You have successfully derailed this post and it's bad for any intellectual arguments and analysis. Hope you'll grow up soon

sarrki:
Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

Did IPOB eat d yam they kept for u or did they fight u in d dream y so much hatred for IPOB...

Meanwhile

Dogara tell ur ishi aki buharist to tame his kinsmen

annnikky:

Did IPOB eat d yam they kept for u or did they fight u in d dream y so much hatred for IPOB...

Meanwhile

Dogara tell ur ishi aki buharist to tame his kinsmen

The only thing I know is Igbos and their leader in kuje prison are terrorist

sarrki:



The only thing I know is Igbos and their leader in kuje prison are terrorist

Have they terrorise u or ur household before

Ur buharist kinsmen are there destroying d con3, causing havoc here n there n u won't call on him to do something about it, u're here drinking paracetamol for another prsn headache

sarrki:



The only thing I know is Igbos and their leader in kuje prison are terrorist

We know that your afonja type will rather have a Shekau running around free

Sarrki stop diverting and spamming the thread
Let's talk about Fulani herdsmen
The boys who made Buhari grand patron
Who are on a killing spree nationwide

Without one single arrest so far

sarrki:
Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

And Afenifere

Cekpo34:



You see why I don't like you? You have successfully derailed this post and it's bad for any intellectual arguments and analysis. Hope you'll grow up soon

He knows exactly what he is doing
His double standard is quite appalling

annnikky:

Have they terrorise u or ur household before

Ur buharist kinsmen are there destroying d con3, causing havoc here n there n u won't call on him to do something about it, u're here drinking paracetamol for another prsn headache

U even get time to dey reply dt Jahdist oooo

The suggestion is dumb on its surface. The criminal leaders starting with the legislooters are the ones who are more deserving of the said treatment.

Those folks have been responsible for the deaths of more Nigerians than herdsmen will ever be responsible for.

Before nko

Vicolan:


U even get time to dey reply dt Jahdist oooo

My dear, d guy just dey behave like his boss kinsmen

sarrki:
Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

you are worse than a tribalist,I don't even know what to call you

annnikky:

Have they terrorise u or ur household before

Ur buharist kinsmen are there destroying d con3, causing havoc here n there n u won't call on him to do something about it, u're here drinking paracetamol for another prsn headache

the guy Dey vex me die,he talks like a kid ,even to classify his thoughts as childish is an insult on 'Child hood'

sarrki:
Igbos, criminal Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram are all the same they are all terrorist

I wonder who created u.
Am sure It's not God.

I am suspecting Angel Gabriel.

sdindan:



I wonder who created u.
Am sure It's not God.

I am suspecting Angel Gabriel.

Who created Angel Gabriel?

successmatters:
How many herdsmen has ever been arrested in this dirty country? They have a licence to kill.

Dint refer to our country as dirty

Same words used by Nnamdi and Igbos

sarrki:


Who created Angel Gabriel?

May be Sango or Amadioha.

sdindan:


May be Sango or Amadioha.

OK then

stephenmorris:
the guy Dey vex me die,he talks like a kid ,even to classify his thoughts as childish is an insult on 'Child hood'

D guy's head need a reset honestly

nduchucks:
The suggestion is dumb on its surface. The criminal leaders starting with the legislooters are the ones who are more deserving of the said treatment.

Those folks have been responsible for the deaths of more Nigerians than herdsmen will ever be responsible for.

Your lame attempt in blaming the Senate which has no power over the security apparatus is lame.

Nigeria has never witnessed this level of insecurity and it boils down to the boko Khalifa in Aso Rock who Shields his Fulani kinsmen and Sunni terrorists as well trying desperately to start another genocidal war in both the Niger Delta and Biafra over oil and grazing land.

The Senate will never ceases to exist neither will it be transformed to a rubber stamp of Boko jihadist in Aso Rock

sarrki:



The only thing I know is Igbos and their leader in kuje prison are terrorist

I agree. Buhari is a jihadist.
We prefer Abubakar Shekau to Buhari.
Abubakar Shekau should become the president of "one Nigeria.'
Abubakar Shekau is greater than Awolowo, Tinubu and Abiola combined.
Abubakar Shekau will rule Oduduwa Republic as well when the "one Nigeria" fulfils it's destiny of falling to pieces.

Threat herdsmen like Boko Haram?

Those who know Dogora should advise him to go and brace up for EFCC & DSS onslaught bcs Bubu will surely fight back for these statements he (Dogora) made against his kinsmen !