Two of the three power establishments in Lagos state – the Executive and Legislative Branches – are being goaded into ruinous power contestation over the State House of Assembly’s rejection of some commissioner-nominees of the state governor.
The State House of Assembly, in exercise of its constitutional function of screening commissioner-nominees of the state governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, had screened and approved the appointment of 22 of the 39 nominees.
The 17 rejected commissioner-nominees are mostly returning commissioners and technocrats. That exercise of its constitutional power had, according to the Speaker of the House, Mudashiru Obasa, opened a floodgate of criticisms and threats.
In response, the Speaker had declared : “We must get this right, that we have our constitutional responsibility and have exercised the responsibility by clearing some and denying some and we have our reasons for saying no, which I believe people making inputs left and right do not know”.
Apparently miffed by the notion of how dare the House reject the technocrat commissioner-nominees who were touted as indispensable high performers, Speaker Obasa had countered: “We are politicians , if not for us the technocrats wouldn’t be appointed. It was due to our success that they got appointed and to our estimation if they had not done well, I think we have the right to say no and we have said no”.
“We are not going to sacrifice service to our people in the name of technocrats, no”, he asserted.
In a rebuff of the pressure being piled on the House over the technocrat commissioners, the Speaker declared: “We are not going to be threatened”, stressing that “it is good to advise a man living in a glass house not to throw stones , if not the glass may soon be shattered”.
The message from Speaker Obasa to Governor Sanwo-Olu is that the Legislature and the Executive share coterminous authority in the balance of power in a democracy and that the executive cannot, and will not, be allowed to emasculate the legislative arm of government.
In fact, the advantage belongs to the Legislature through its power of impeachment of a governor.
So, whatever resolution reached on the impasse, the Speaker has made his point.
What can be discerned as the three contentious issues in the face-off are respect, or disrespect, of constitutional authority of the different arms of government, management of political patronage and power hierarchy in Lagos state.
It is executive arrogance for loyalists of the governor to consider the rejection of some commissioner-nominees by the State House of Assembly as an affront of Governor Sanwo-Olu.
It indicates an attitude of taking the House for granted as a rubber stamp institution that must always play lapdog and endorse/approve whatever is sent to it by the governor.
In a dispensation where the public expect the House of Assembly to exercise oversight monitoring on the activities of the executive, it will amount to abdication of responsibility if the legislature becomes prostrate before the executive.
We are all witnesses to the charade of ministerial screening at the Senate of the National Assembly where the exercise, on many occasions, degenerated into a circus of taking bows.
Senate President, Godswill Obot Akpabio, exhibited such nauseating, juvenal joviality during the serious screening exercise that THE NATION newspaper in its editorial of Thursday, August 24, 2023 titled; “Akpabio’s apology” had to advise Akpabio to act with presence of mind on such exercise and that it is “no time for expensive jokes”.
So, if the Obasa-led Lagos State House of Assembly decided to reject some commissioner-nominees, it exercised seriousness in its screening responsibility and cannot be legitimately pilloried by the executive branch on this.
Perhaps, the poser to the executive loyalists is: Did Governor Sanwo-Olu take the Speaker and leadership of the House into confidence before formally presenting the list of commissioner-nominees?
The insinuation of Obasa in a supremacy battle with the governor is a red herring in this case, an emotional intimidation of the Speaker.
Management of political patronage may actually be at heart of the problem.
The Speaker is insisting that the reward system must be such that those who laboured for the party’s victory deserve to reap bountifully from their efforts and that technocrat-commissioners in Sanwo-Olu’s first tenure have been over rewarded more than the party foot soldiers who mobilized votes.
Technocrat commissioners are generally often not card-members of political parties but largely get appointed by virtue of their personal access to the governor.
Of course, many of them make policy, intellectual and fund-raising contributions to party political campaign but these contributions, important as they are, are not generally known to the grassroots party faithful who feel shortchanged when this category of people get appointed to high office, including the position of commissioner, while many party loyalists who slugged it out on the campaign stumps are left out in the cold.
Critics of the Speaker argue that many of the returning technocrat-commissioners did very well in their portfolios. Maybe. But does that entitle them to a tenured office? They were given the opportunity to serve, is it that new talents could not be identified who will even improve of the latter’s performance?
Perhaps, what rankles the Obasa group most must be the aloofness of the technocrat commissioners from the party grassroots in the communities where they live, with many of them not mobilizing votes or even voting during the elections.
It is immoral for technocrat commissioners to distance themselves from the rough and tumble of electioneering only to occupy the high table at the harvest!
One can, therefore, sympathise with the Speaker and the House standing in the gap for the disadvantaged political partisans.
The most neglected group are the women who get bussed to all campaign venues singing , dancing and given as paltry as N200 plus pure water sachet for their sweat but get shut out of the political buffet.
As a former political reporter and political editor, I never cease to marvel at the enthusiasm and energy put into political campaigns by the womenfolk.
Politicians have exploited poverty of the womenfolk and it is hoped this group will be factored into equitable political reward system, seemingly being sought by Obasa.
The third contentious issue is the re-alignment of power hierarchy in Lagos state. According to reports, former governor of Lagos state, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is said to have handed over leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos state to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and the perception is that this is making the governor to start assuming a lordly, superior posture in his power relations with strategic units in the state.
But Governor Sanwo-Olu is definitely not Tinubu and lacks the gravitas to assert that authority because he has not earned it the way Tinubu did. It was bestowed on him. Governor Sanwo-Olu would, therefore, need to resist the temptation to be goaded into seeing the State House of Assembly ‘s rejection of some of his commissioner-nominees as an affront to his authority and seek to undermine the position of the Speaker.
That will be counter productive arrogance of power and a battle that bodes ill for good governance in Lagos state.
- Dr. Bisi Olawunmi, a Mass Communication Scholar and former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) is a Fellow, Nigerian Guild of Editors. Email: [email protected] PHONE (SMS ONLY) 0803 364 7571
