#IntelOpinion: When Oversight Becomes a Problem – Mark Amaza
Posted by Editor on January 10, 2014.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala


A few days before Christmas last year, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala presented the budget proposal of the Federal Government for the fiscal year 2014 to a joint session of the National Assembly. After the presentation, she appeared before the Finance Committee of the House of Representatives where quite some drama ensued, a video of which went viral and the now famous 50-question assignment the committee gave her.

While the House members and their supporters might argue that they are just carrying out their jobs, a study of the questions the minister was asked makes one question the capacity of these legislators.

For example, question number 4 calls into question the knowledge of economics those on the House Finance Committee have, when they are asking why our economy is not growing at 20% per annum; or when question 5 where they are asking why our debt-to-GDP ratio is low compared to industrialized nations conflicts with question 9, where they are lamenting Nigeria’s high level of debt and wondering if the debt has been productive.

The question that worries the most is question 7, where they questioned Nigeria’s “rush into wholesale privatization of the electricity sector, when countries like South Africa are generating 54,000MW from a power sector still in public hands.” It is worrisome for me because the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA), the law which ended government’s monopoly on the power sector was in the National Assembly for four years until it was passed in 2005, and the privatization process begun from that year until its conclusion last year. Yet, they still called it a “rush”.

Space will not allow me to dissect each question, especially as there were many repetitions, although some questions are very relevant, such as questions 14 and 16.

This is not to say that our legislators should not perform their oversight roles; indeed, more than ever, oversight is needed over our executive. For example, in the budget estimates Okonjo-Iweala presented to the National Assembly, a lot of items raise eyebrows such as budgeting N14.5million for two animals in the State House Zoo and N20million for car trackers for vehicles in the presidential fleet. These are just but a couple of weird spending requests the executive is making this year.

However, there is a clear line between what legislative oversight is and what pure mischief is. The episode of last year when the 2013 budget was delayed for months because of the refusal of President Goodluck Jonathan to sack the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ms. Arunma Oteh is all too fresh in our memories.

It is pure mischief when the same set of legislators that passed a bill to set up a government body then turn around to question its existence, as they did with question 24 and the Sovereign Wealth Fund and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) that manages it.

This year, it does seem that the 50-question assignment will be the grounds on which the House of Representatives will find reason to most likely delay the budget. This becomes highly probable considering recent events in our politics, especially the defection of 37 House of Reps members to the opposition All Progressives’ Congress (APC), giving them a slight majority in the lower house and their insistence that Okonjo-Iweala must give ‘satisfactory’ answers to the questions.

Without a doubt, 2014 will be a year of high-stakes political games with the APC making every effort to better their chances ahead of the general elections next year; and so far, they have the upper hand in the lower house with the Senate likely to follow suit. Expectedly, the opposition will likely do all they can to cast the ruling party in a negative light in order to increase support for itself or reduce support for the ruling party.

While we cannot prevent politicians from, well, playing politics, we can remind them that as elected representatives of the people, their political goals should not be at the detriment of the people.

Legislative oversight should not become the reason why there will be stagnation in our government and by extension, economy. It should not become a problem in itself.

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