Bankole’s House Of Scandals

 

 

By Oluokun Ayorinde /Abuja

Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, had cause to complain about the attitude of his colleagues in the lower chamber to their assigned constitutional duties on Thursday 20 February. This was in reaction to a point of order raised by a member of the House, Austin Nwachukwu. The Imo State lawmaker, who is not known to be a regular contributor to debates, had drawn attention to the attire worn to that day’s plenary session by representatives Leo Ogor and Halims Agoda. He, therefore, raised a point of order that the two men should be recognised for donning the traditional attires of their area to the House sitting.

 

But to the Speaker, the point of order was not only “flimsy” but a reflection of the levity with which the lawmakers have been handling their assignments. He added that the lackadaisical attitude of members had resulted in low output by the House, contrary to expectations of voters. “I will be forced to say what I am about to say now, that as at yesterday (Wednesday), we had passed only 21 bills in this House, with eight reports to be considered… This is below the set targets. We should desist from this type of requests for points of order,” the obviously angry speaker said. Bankole had also complained about the performance of the House of Representatives towards the end of the last legislative year.

But while the House may not have achieved much in terms of passage of bills, the Bankole-led lower chamber certainly ranks high in terms of controversies it had chalked up in its less than two years of existence. Indeed, the House sailed straight into controversy few months after its inauguration in 2007 as its officers, then led by Patricia Etteh, were enmeshed in a N650 million contract scandal involving the renovation of the official quarters of the Speaker located in Apo Area of Abuja. Controversy over the process of the contract award and allegations that the contract sum was inflated eventually led to the sack of Etteh as speaker.

 This paved the way for the emergence of the Bankole leadership late 2007. The new speaker himself had on assumption of office swum into controversy with a report that he dodged the one year mandatory National Youth Service. Bankole however doused that early fire with the circulation of copies of his NYSC discharge certificate for publication in the press. The hope that the House of Representatives will under Bankole help advance the development of the country by devoting its attention to lawmaking has however remained unrealised. Rather, the House has witnessed many rowdy scenes.Typical of such situation was the rowdiness that characterised the plenary on Wednesday 18 March after a member, Farouk Lawan asked the House to pass a resolution condemning the brewing crisis between Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State and local government chairmen elected under his predecessor in office, Olusegun Agagu. The new governor had dissolved the councils few days after he was sworn into office on the pretext that they were not validly elected, as a High Court had declared the elections which brought them to office as illegal. The chairmen had vowed not to vacate their seats. Both parties subsequently headed to court. But lawmakers belonging to opposition parties had opposed the motion with the argument that since the matter is now in court, it will not be right for the House to dabble into it.

Countering Lawan’s motion, Honourable Muhammed Kawu (ANPP, Kano), cited Order 9(5) of the House Rules, which stipulates that any matter already before a court of law should not be discussed in the House so as not to pre-empt the court verdict. But the Speaker ruled him out of order, saying that another section of the House Rules also states that the decision on whether such matters should be discussed is at the discretion of the Speaker. When the Speaker however put the matter to vote the first time, it was not clear whether the “nays” or the “ayes” had it. When he put it to vote the second time, it was obvious that the “nays” had it; but Bankole, apparently not believing that some members of the PDP should vote with the opposition, decided to divide the House.

Lawmakers belonging to the opposition parties in the House, led by Minority Leader, Mohammed Ndume, in anger refused to be part of the counting process. Nevertheless, the Speaker asked the Clerk, Niyi Ajiboye, to conduct the counting of those in favour of or against the motion. “When it was obvious that the leadership was interested in debating the matter, we decided to stage a walk-out so that the opposition will not be part of it. “This is the time to stand up to the high-handedness of the leadership and tell it that there are other members in the House who do not belong to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and should be respected, and not to use the gavel at will against the interest of others,” Ndume later told journalists.

To many critics, the House’s attempt to dabble into the crisis in Ondo State is another instance of flippancy that has attended business of lawmaking under Bankole. “What is their interest in the matter?” queried a critic. “For one, their decision cannot be binding on the state Governor. And why have similar motions not come up about the crisis in the Ekiti and Ogun states?” he added. In the same vein, the House of Representatives was for the whole of last week trying to see what it could salvage from the controversy-riddled report of the Ndudi Elumelu committee it set up last year to probe why huge sums of money budgeted for the power sector between June 1999 and May 2007 failed to result in improvement in electricity supply to Nigerians. The House had last year set up the committee following revelations, first by President Umar Yar’Adua that over $10 billion was spent in the power sector by his successor without commensurate result. The House had latched on this remark by the President to begin its probe of spending in the sector, with the Speaker even putting the amount spent on power generation, transmission and distribution for eight years between $13 and $16 billion.

After several weeks of public hearings and tour of sites of National Integrated Power Projects, NIPPs, the committee concluded its sitting and submitted its report to the House mid last year. Published excerpts of the report indicated that not less than 21 prominent Nigerians and 36 companies were indicted by the committee. According to the committee, about N245 billion was spent in the execution of power projects from 1999 to 2007 while about $13billion was spent in the sector during the same period. The committee recommended the prosecution of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Minister of Power and current governor of Cross River State, Liyel Imoke, former governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Agagu; former managing director of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, Joseph Makoju; a former minister of Energy, Abdulhamid Ahmed; and officials of NIPP for their shoddy handling of projects in the sector during the period. Companies indicted by the committee for collecting funds and non-performance include Rockson Engineering, Chrome Consortium Energy, Pivot Engineering, Marubeni International, Lahmeyer International;, ABB Powerlines, Energo Nigeria Limited, IOEC/Kaztec Consortium, Cartlark International, KEC/News Engineering, Hoquado Nigeria Limited, Santon Energy, Union Allied Engineering, Mogabs, Atlantic Engineering, Harlesden Engineering and Charnel Engineering.

However, most of the companies and indicted individuals had accused the Elumelu committee of acting in bad faith and not taking into consideration the circumstances that were responsible for their inability to complete the projects. The House committee, according to them, failed to take into consideration in its report, the Engineering, Procurement and Construction nature of the NIPP projects which implies that even when equipment have not been installed on site, the overall project progress could be 70 per cent if the engineering and procurement segments have been accomplished.

The contractors had also accused the committee of regarding letters of credit established for the procurement of foreign components and equipment as money fraudulently collected by the contractors. According to the contractors, however, the committee neglected the fact that such funds can only be accessed by contractors after meeting some contractual conditions and milestones. The contractors also claimed the Elumelu committee erred in its comparison of the cost of executing power projects in Nigeria with that of the other countries without taking into consideration the difference in components, torpography and other issues related to such contracts.

Worse still, Elumelu, the chairman of the committee, was accused by other members of high-handedness and of writing the report alone. Most committee members said they did not sign and were not part of writing of the report. The committee was also enmeshed in a bribery scandal as there were reports that one of the contractors bribed them with $100 million in the course of their work. The House of Reps ordered a probe of the bribe allegation in June last year. The committee saddled with the mandate however cleared Elumelu and his members of the charges. The Power Probe report was later submitted in October. But the credibility of the report, especially as it concerns the NIPPs, is now being questioned as the Federal Government is now basing its plan to improve power supply to Nigerians on the same project.

Indeed, the National Economic Council, NEC, has approved the sum of N323,158,286,574:50 for the completion of the projects under the scheme. Expectedly, the presentation of the report met with stiff opposition when it was presented for debate on 18 and 19 March. Three members of the Power Committee, Reps Ahmed Salik (ANPP, Kano State ), George Daika (PDP, Plateau State ) and Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi (PDP, Enugu State ) denied authorship of the report and called on the House to reject it.

This threw the House into confusion. An attempt by Deputy Speaker, Bayero Usman Nafada, who stepped in to preside as chairman of the committee in an attempt to read the report clause by clause, failed. He asked the House leader to move a motion for the House to go into an executive session. When the House reverted to plenary, the Deputy Speaker announced that members had unanimously agreed to constitute a seven-man panel to review the report and report back to the House within seven days. The committee, headed by Aminu Waziri Tambuwal (PDP, Sokoto State), was expected to submit its report Wednesday last week.

But many said this is a just a face-saving measure as the report is already dead given the way it was treated by members. “As far as I am concerned, the leadership of the House was looking for a face-saving way out because everybody acknowledges that what was presented to the House, the so-called report of the power probe, was a terrible job done. But at the same time, the expectations of Nigerians had been raised so high that it would be very difficult politically for the House to say, well, we have thrown the report out?” confessed a member of the House.

Not a few stakeholders in the sector have argued that the House has only succeeded in delaying the completion of the power plants and consequently worsened the electricity problem, as the controversy-riddled probe has not served any useful purpose. Speaking through House Whip, Emeka Ihedioha, Dimeji Bankole reacted to this assertion at the 6th edition of the National Roundtable for Good Governance organised by the Faculty Board of the Initiatives in Abuja on Monday 16 March. “The House instituted a probe into the power sector because it wanted the public to know what happened to the huge sums of money appropriated to that sector during the last fiscal year of the last administration, but the House did not ask the executive to stop further action on the power projects. We can’t take responsibility for the power situation as it is today. The onus of providing power to the Nigerian people lies with the executive. Our responsibility is to ensure that we make adequate provisions in the budget for what the government wants to do and in 2008; we appropriated N67billion to boost power supply. If the executive failed to deliver on its promise, you hold the executive responsible,” Bankole said.

Another controversy that has refused to go away is the N2.3bn car scandal. Members of the House had in December last year passed a resolution approving the purchase of 380 Peugeot 407 cars for oversight functions of its 82 committees. But the car purchase has since been mired in all kinds of controversy and drama. Some lawmakers had in a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission alleged that the price of the cars was inflated by as much as of N1.1m per unit and asked anti-corruption agencies to investigate the entire purchase. Also in the spotlight was the curious purchase, six months after, of bullet-proof cars and other exotic vehicles for N333.5 million as well as the procurement of office equipment at an alleged inflated cost of N1billion.

Festus Keyamo, a Lagos-based lawyer, also petitioned the Speaker on the alleged shady dealings in the purchase of the cars. His petition which alleged shady dealings in the payment of value added tax on the cars was backed up with appropriate documents. A group which tagged itself The Transparency Group led by Tamarautare Brisbe later emerged to champion the call for probe of the allegations. At a press conference on 16 November 2008 the group called for a full probe of the controversial purchase of 338 Peugeot cars for Reps members at a cost of N2.3 billion. Sources close to the Speaker however dismissed the group with allegations that it was made up of House members not happy with the committees they were given in the reconstitution of the House Committees carried out by Bankole.

A comical angle was introduced to the car scandal when one Comrade Umar Farouk appeared before the Ethics Committee investigating the allegations and claimed to be part of alleged plot to destabilise the leadership of the House. He said he was promised N1 million for his role in the plot and was paid an initial N200,000 to arrange a press conference to taint the image of the Speaker. He named key members of the Integrity Group such as Independence Ogunewe, Festus Adegoke, Gbenga Oduwaiye, Kayode Amosa as the sponsors of the plot. However, all the named members dissociated themselves from Farouk, swearing under oath that they had never seen nor spoken to him under any guise before.

Presenting its report earlier this year, the committee, in its recommendations to the House said: “The Committee found no evidence of scam in the purchase of the 406 ST Sport cars for the committees’ oversight functions.” The committee also noted that the letter Festus Keyamo wrote to the Speaker was made malafide, as he did not seek to authenticate the document he relied on and his interpretation of the content were taken out context and, therefore, totally faulty. Therefore, the committee urged the “House to prevail on the Inspector-General of Police and/or other relevant security agencies to investigate how the annexture/documents attached to Keyamo’s letter were obtained.”

The Clerk to the National Assembly, the committee recommended further, should carry out internal investigation to unravel thow classified documents were secured without express leave of the National Assembly management and take disciplinary action against any staff found wanting with regard to the confidentiality of all manner of documents reposed in his or her custody. But Keyamo in his reaction accused the House leadership of manipulating the Ethics and Privileges Committee recommendations to cast aspersion on whatever recommendation EFCC would make after its investigation. “My immediate reaction is that no matter how hard they try to hide the truth, it will eventually bubble forth. I am also confident that majority of the House members are mature enough to see through these machinations. It is now left to them to either sully their collective image with that of some greedy few, or to insulate the matter from politics and deal with it as objectively as possible. Finally, I urge all House members to reject any report from the Committee on Ethics and Privileges but to call for the independent reports of the law-enforcement agencies. That is the only way to go in this matter,” he stated.

Farida Waziri, the Chairman of EFCC told journalists last week that the anti-corruption agency had completed its own investigation of the car scandal. But she refused to disclose the findings of the agency. Meanwhile, Bankole and his supporters are growing increasingly touchy over the scandal. Early in the year, 44 members of the House had walked out on their colleagues from the upper chamber at a retreat organised for 88 members of the National Assembly saddled with reviewing the constitution in far way Minna over disagreements on whether Usman Nafada, Deputy Speaker should be addressed as co-chairman of the Joint Constitution Review Committee or deputy to his counterpart from the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy Senate President. The infantile dispute over seniority between the two chambers has been resolved and just like the other unnecessary controversies, it has stalled the constitution review effort. The question, is when will the Bankole-led House get serious?

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