When Ahmad Lawan championed a people-oriented legislature, perhaps it made meaning to only a few. But when the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, echoed it six months later, it resonated with many.
While Lawan had declared that, “in the laws we enact, in the oversight and representations we undertake, the wellbeing of the Nigerian people will always be our priority” and also that “an annual report titled, “Senate That Works for the People, will be published”; Johnson announced to the Britons that “we will work round the clock to repay your trust and to deliver on your priorities with a parliament that works for you”.
By these statesmen simply, an ideal legislature must be about the people, providing solutions, and diligently committed to creating pathways for good governance.
However, a fair assessment of the 9th senate would require an appreciation of some underlying realities.
Primarily, this senate is grappling with a heavy burden of prejudice manifesting as public cooperation and support deficit. This is because it inherited image and reputational crises arising from the actions and inaction of the past assemblies.
Again, parliaments are corporately rated based on oversight duties and legislations, but because of the state of the economy and level of infrastructural decay, which incidentally also preceded the 9th national assembly, the masses now judge legislators based on the number of projects executed and lives touched through direct economic assistance. The public expects the national assembly to usurp the duties of the executive to be seen as ‘performing’.
Then above all, Nigeria’s constitution does not offer the legislature sufficient strength to operate independently. It thus implies that enforcing the universal principles of separation of powers in democratic governance ultimately leads to anarchy, given Nigeria’s peculiar constitution.
Meanwhile, there are specific goals that the 9th senate set to accomplish.
Before becoming the senate president, Senator Ahmad Lawan had campaigned on the mantra of taking the legislature back to the people, towards a new Nigeria where active participation and inclusiveness in governance reign supreme. There was even a template to integrate the House of Representatives and the state assemblies in this regard. And quite pointedly, he proclaimed that under him, the senate would not compromise its “institutional independence” but “will however avoid unnecessary conflict”. Equally, he was emphatic that “the 9th senate will make a conscious effort to ensure a smoother relationship with the presidency, by organizing periodic senate-presidency meetings to discuss issues of national importance”. He never pretended about this course of action, especially having stayed long enough in the legislature to understand the imports. These eventually earned him popular votes from his colleagues at the Senate leadership contest, clearly devoid of external interferences.