₦airaland Forum

Aitee1:
Waiting for you to move the motion

Aitee1:
For the what have they paid me for the nuisance sms and calls I received with my line daily

coolhamid:
Double faced politician
Traitor..

That's where you belong man...
Sai buhari

berem:
Abeg make una leave Amaechi jare.

Splashme:
Jega isn't the only one that can do it.
naija has a population of over 170m people

cjrane:
Boko haram sponsors are re-strategizing.

Whatever they plot against Nigeria will not work in Jesus name!

Truckpusher:
Honestly ,I drove through Aba, the place looks like a war torn country.

This car thing isn't sustainable.

Reference:
My friend it is not pretty. A good paint job on a defective structure is useless. It will all come down one day. What you see in the House is the crucible of corruption. The melting pot of compromises. The Lower House is founded on the fraud called census (Boko Haram insurgency has proven the sheer number of aliens bolstering the north's population), the Upper House is founded on the lie called 'equal number of federating units (when the South-East has fewer states in its zone).

My friend can you see how socio-political imbalances and injustice is costing us dearly in cash and kind and how it leads to corruptive compromises to seek rebalances like an adult and kid on opposite sides of a see-saw.

Have you ever asked yourself why there is barely any debate there and arguments are always on personal grounds and benefits and why the opposition and ruling party members appear the same in attitude, approach, disposition, morality, etc. No difference. In other countries the greatest divides in ideologies and approach between political parties occur amongst law makers. Worldwide legislature is always fractured, heated. Here it is padi-padi all the time. The system is not working well. It is structurally deficient. The Nigerian state is. It is not beautiful. It is draped in black mourning apparel.

soe:
Men!!!! Your english and shorthand is one of a kind...

Well... To your issues raised...

They perform the same function. That is the meaning of bicameral..its like "double confirmation"...it did not have to be so, but i tried explaining why we cannot collapse them into one.

So they both have the same functions.. No difference..
Except in some functions such as confirmation of appointments that is done only by the senate...but ofcourse ...it's not a major difference.

beejaay:
interesting!!! So u dont know that the national assembly is an independent arm of government,they make there own budget independent of the executive... Sometimes its better to keep quite and appear intelligent than to speak out and erase all doubt

FrankC3:
The NASS has always retained the veto power to Presidential powers pertaining to Bills duly passed by the NA and this is nothing new. We should understand that the President of this country has ALL the powers guaranteed by the the same constitution to achieve some things in some ways that the constitution does not permit him to do in one other ways.

The amendment says that that the Bill becomes law 30 days after submission to the President for assent and the President has not returned it to the NA for concerns, corrections or inputs. What the amendment did is to tighten the noose to ensure that the NA gets what they want. The questions that democrats should be asking is that no matter who is the President of this country, is 30 days enough for the Office of the CJN to advice the President adequately on the legal implications of some passed Bills for the President to either decide to assent or return back to the NA? Is 30 days enough for the executive to set up legal, infrastructural and financial system to support say a Ministry of Boko Haram should the NA pass the bill? Should the NA, who took probably up to 3 years to pass a bill, force the CJN to study the implications and ramifications of the same bill and advise the President on it adequately within 30 days? How does this help the principle of separation of Powers? Can the President drag a suspect to court and tell the courts that the case must be decided in 30 days? If no, why should another arm of government have such total power over the other?

Again, if the President wants to kill a Bill, all he has to do is to wait till the 29th day and send the Bill to the NA for further clarification, advise or input and keep doing same thing till his/her tenure expires. This is also guaranteed by the same constitution and is part of the check and balances built into the constitution to avoid what some call the tyranny of the Legislature and protect the executive powers.

We need to have more discussion on this, definitely.

stan241:
Its threads like this that shows those who genuinely have the interest of the country at heart or those who are paid to comment on social media...check this thread closely and you will never see those 'popular' monikers here except its a thread bashing either the president or his opponent....like someone said on TV this morning its not the politicians that are the problem but we the people and it is only until we rise up and say enough is enough...you can imagine the salaries of this people and yet most probably never sponsor or head any committee in the house... its a shame really where we are as a nation

4Play:
The dominant posters in the politics sections are mercenaries, vultures feeding on the carcass of Nigeria's political system. They are less interested in the actual state of governance and more focused on promoting their sponsors.

When National Mirror sought to know the state of the budget from one of the committee members last two weeks, the senator was short of cursing the correspondent, retorting, “Now I know that you are one of those wishing me to fail so that I would not return back to the senate. You want me to be working on the budget when my colleagues are in the battle field struggling to see how they will win their own elections back to the senate. I wish you are near reach now so that I crack that your coconut head.”

Commit constitutional breach, sit less than 181 days

The severance package for members of the seventh National Assembly, whose tenure ends on May 29 this year, will cost the nation a whopping N2.8billion.

The amount is, however, exclusive of the sum to be paid to the lawmakers’ political aides who will also be exiting the service with their principals.

Severance package or gratuity is the amount paid to the lawmakers after their successful four-year tenure in office as elected politicians.

It is not only the lawmakers that are entitled to the package, their political aides also benefit from it.

The aides to the lawmakers vary in number, depending on whether the lawmaker is a presiding officer like the Senate President or his deputy or the Speaker of the House of Representatives or his deputy or whether the lawmaker is one of the principal officers of the parliament.

In the case of the presiding officers, they have coterie of aides, which may be up to 20 persons for each officer.

Findings by National Mirror at the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, Abuja, showed that the severance gratuity was one of the financial packages approved by the commission for the lawmakers.

The severance package is arrived at by calculating 300 per cent of the lawmakers’ annual basic salaries.

This formula formed part of the current remuneration package for political, public and judicial office holders designed by RMAFC in June 2007.

Each senator, whose annual basic salaries is put at N2,026,400.00, will, therefore, be entitled to a severance package of N6,079,200.00 (i.e. 300 per cent of the basic salary).

However, as presiding officers, the annual basic salaries of the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President differ from those of the other senators.

For the Senate President, his annual basic salary is put at N2, 484, 242.50 while that of the deputy is N2, 309,166.75.

So, while the severance package of each of the 107 senators is N6, 079, 200.00, that of the Senate President is N7, 452, 727.50 and that of the Deputy Senate President is N6, 927, 500.25.

The total severance package for the Senate, therefore, amounts to N664, 854, 627m.

In the case of the House of Representatives, the basic annual salary of the Speaker is put at N2, 477, 110 which brings his severance package to N7, 431, 330.00, while the Deputy Speaker’s annual basic salary is N2, 287, 034.55 and severance package of N6, 861,102.75.

For the rest other 358 members of the House, each of their annual basic salary is N1, 985, 212.50, translating to N5, 955, 637.00 as severance package.

While the severance packages to the lawmakers will be paid directly from the consolidated revenue of the federation, those of their aides will be charged from the purse of the National Assembly.

Efforts by National Mirror to obtain the amount due to the political aides to the lawmakers were frustrated by the bureaucracy of the National Assembly. The officials insisted that such information should be supplied by the National Assembly Service Commission.

However, at the commission, the officials maintained that such information was the prerogative of the accounts department of the National Assembly.

They explained that the statutory role of the commission started and ended with employment, training, promotion and discipline of the staff of the National Assembly.

[b]Meanwhile, the current seventh session of the National Assembly are clearly on the path of the violation of the 1999 Federal Republic of Nigeria Constitution, which requires the lawmakers to sit for a minimum period of 181 days in a year.

Investigations carried out by the National Mirror revealed that while members of the House of Representatives have sat for only 57 days, beginning from June 6, 2014 when the current session was birthed, the senate on its part has sat for about 78 days only so far.

Although the current legislative year is expected to come to an end in the first week of June this year, evidence has shown that there is no way the lawmakers will be able to make the required statutory sitting sessions before the end of the life of the current lawmakers, given the line-up of the elections in March and April.

Section 63 of the 1999 Constitution states that, “The Senate and the House of Representatives shall each sit for a period not less than one hundred and eighty one days in a year.”[/b]

In the past, the lawmakers had often justified their inability to meet this constitutional provision by arguing that the constitutional requirement includes the days they (lawmakers) sit in committees.

In fact, both the House and senate rules define sitting as, “A period during which the House/Senate is sitting continuously without adjournment and this includes any period, during which the House/Senate is in committee.”

For the current legislative year, it is clear that from June 6, 2014 when the lawmakers were sworn in, only a few of the committees has ever sat sparingly till date.

For instance, from June 6, last year, when the current legislative year came into effect, the lawmakers sat for 21 days after which they commenced their annual long vacation on July 18 and resumed September 12.

The lawmakers were to commence another round of break on October 28, 2014 after sitting for just 15 days to enable them prosecute their primary elections nationwide.

In the case of the House of Representatives, October 28 was the day the Speaker, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal announced his decampment to the opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) and shut the House until December 3.

While the senate was able to resume that December 3 and continued sitting till December 16, the day it received the 2015 budget proposal from the Coordinating Minister and Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Oknjo-Iweala and commenced its Christmas and New Year breaks, the House, which failed to resume all the while merely reconvened same December 16, received the budget proposal and returned back to its indefinite break.

Again, when the National Assembly resumed from its Christmas and New Year holidays on January 13, the lawmakers merely sat for just two days, read the 2015 budget proposal for the second time, passed it to the committee on Finance and Appropriation and vamoosed again for another one month break to enable them participate in the originally scheduled Presidential and National Assembly elections for February 14.

As the lawmakers commenced the last break, the impression was given that the Finance and Appropriation committees of both chambers of the parliament would continue committee work on the budget. But the truth of the matter is that none of the lawmakers stayed back to do any work on the budget.

When National Mirror sought to know the state of the budget from one of the committee members last two weeks, the senator was short of cursing the correspondent, retorting, “Now I know that you are one of those wishing me to fail so that I would not return back to the senate. You want me to be working on the budget when my colleagues are in the battle field struggling to see how they will win their own elections back to the senate. I wish you are near reach now so that I crack that your coconut head.”

One of the directors in the National Assembly who spoke with National Mirror on this matter blamed the none compliance with the constitutional provision on the constitution itself, which he observed, fails to provide for consequences for the breach of the law.

The director who sought anonymity explained that one way of addressing the constitutional lacuna is through constitutional amendment whereby violation of the provision should be regarded as gross misconduct, which should attract a well defined sanction or reprimand.

He noted that if suspension is prescribed, constituent members of any affected lawmaker will likely protest such suspension as amounting to none representation for the people.