Lest the point be lost
on us all and we allow this to slip by, Nigerians need to question the
rationale behind and the implication thereof of Senate’s vote to alter the
Constitution to provide salary in perpetuity for former heads of the
parliament.
At its sitting on
Tuesday July 16, the Senate decided, inter alia to alter Section 84 of the
Constitution (by inserting a new subsection 5a and subsection 8) to read that:
“Any person who has held office as President or Deputy President of the Senate,
Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, shall be entitled to
pension for life at a rate equivalent to the annual salary of the incumbent
President or Deputy President of the Senate, Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the
House of Representatives.”
Let us quickly note
that what the Senate did remains a mere proposal. For it to have effect, it
must first be concurred to by two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives
and afterwards by at least two-thirds of the state houses of assembly (24 out
of 36).
This proposed
alteration follows the existing subsection 5 of Section 84 of the Constitution
which provides for payment of pension for life to the President and Vice
President of the country at a rate which is the equivalent of what the sitting
president and vice president are paid.
The present subsection
5 however has a proviso which states: “provided that such a person was not
removed from office by the process of impeachment or for breach of any
provision of this Constitution”.
The Senate’s proposed
amendment coming after the present subsection 5 (and its proviso) and without
any proviso thereto, suggests that if passed, the provision for life pension to
former heads of the federal legislature would apply to every single one of
them, whether or not the person served out a term or was removed from office.
Even if the proviso to
the present subsection 5 is to apply to the proposed new subsection 5a, there is
still likely to be controversy of legal interpretation. The present proviso
excludes persons who were removed from office “by the process of impeachment”.
An impeachment process
admits that there is a formal charge of wrongdoing against (usually the head of
the executive or other holder of an executive position), a trial or hearing (leading
to an establishment of guilt) and consequent decision taken to remove the
person from office. That is the usual manner by which a president, vice
president, governor or deputy governor can be removed from office. And this is
a rare occurrence. Hence there are very few former presidents, vice presidents,
governors or deputy governors who fit into this category.
Heads of the
legislature are usually removed from office by two-thirds of votes of the
members, whether or not there has been any allegation of wrongdoing. To be
sure, no leader of the Senate or House of Representatives of the present
republic in Nigeria was ever removed from office by way of impeachment. In all
the instances where the leaders of the two chambers of the National Assembly
were removed, they were merely pressured to resign, and that includes the notorious
liar and perjury offender, Salisu Buhari, who cheated his way to the
speakership of the House of Representatives.
In fact, the closest
thing to an indictment held against former senate presidents Evan(s) Enwerem
and Chuba Okadigbo were later, by parliamentary resolutions, expunged and the
officers exculpated from any wrongdoing on the occasion of the valedictory
session of the legislative session and during the special session to mark
Enwerem’s funeral.
It therefore means that
all the former Presidents of the Senate and Speakers of the House of
Representatives alive would be entitled to be paid pension for life, calculated
at the salary of the incumbents. And if the legislature decides to change its
leaders every year, we would suddenly find ourselves beholden to each of them
in life pensions. And by the way, the list of former presiding officers of the
Senate and House of Representatives prior to the emergence of the incumbent
officers shows five in eight years for the Senate and five in 12 years for the
House of Representatives!
What is more, by the
current subsection 6 of Section 84 of the Constitution, the pension for former
officers is charged upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation,
meaning it is a direct charge, not subject to appropriation (that is budgeting).
Is this really what the Senate is proposing and is this what the Nigerian
people envisaged as an urgency requiring an alteration of its Constitution for?
That this proposal by
the Senate was passed on the same occasion senators negatived a proposal to
guarantee the financial autonomy of local governments through direct payment of
their allocation from the Federation Account is shocking. It raises a weighty
moral question on the overriding interest of the senators in this Constitution
amendment effort. The proposal is not in any way weighty, urgent or imperative,
yet the senators managed to bring it in.
Already, all our
legislators get paid what is called “severance allowance” calculated at four
times their annual basic salary at the end of each legislative term of four
years. And although this severance allowance was envisaged to be paid once in a
lifetime, our legislators receive this over and again for as many terms as they
complete.
Another concern is that
in the practice of “rub my back and I rub yours” peculiar to politics, the
state houses of assembly may equally demand that this provision be extended to
the state legislatures.
At this rate, one is
pained to suggest that the Senate is out of touch with the issues that
Nigerians are passionate about and urge the House of Representatives not to give
its concurrence to this.
