Buhari yet to justify change Nigerians voted for -Lawmaker

Prince Mike Omogbehin is a member of the House of Representatives representing Okitipupa/Irele federal constituency of Ondo State. He spoke to Ripples on a number of issues affecting the House and nation.

He explained that what Nigerians think is jumbo pay being collected by members of the federal legislature is really not, as they still have to foot a lot of bills themselves. He gives an insight into how it came to be regarded as jumbo pay by Nigerians.

He also gives his take on the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Boko Haram insurgency, and ongoing probes among other issues.

How is the assignment so far?

My assignment ordinarily would have been very eventful, but at the initial stage we ran into hitches in the election of the speaker But democracy had its day, as provided for in the House rule that we shall choose our leaders from among us who shall preside over the House, and not that we shall kowtow to the directives of the party in government.

We did that successfully, we chose Speaker Yakubu Dogara to lead us in the Eighth Assembly.

Thereafter you will also recall that there were some problems as to principal officers, especially among the majority party. There were arm-twisting, but expectedly, as among human, we are not robots, we disagreed, they disagreed from among themselves, and at the end of the day, reason prevailed, and now we have a fully inaugurated House up and running. There have been motions and resolutions, and the body responsible for setting up committees has already been put in place because committees are where the actual functions of legislature are performed, and not actually what you see at plenary.

When the committees are set up we will hit the ground running. We have 48 months, of which we just used two.

But do you think the crisis is over given that committees have not been set up?

Well, crisis in any human endeavor is continuous, policy is about crisis management, it is the ability to manage them that matters. We expect crises will keep coming up, and we’ll keep managing them.

Ordinarily this is not supposed to create crises, because there are guidelines on their formation, and those qualified for certain committees. It is clear; the choice of the chairmanship as enshrined in our roles is to be done by the speaker in conjunction with the principal officers. I plead with my colleagues. Once this is done, nothing can be perfect, we should take it as it is and move ahead. It’s not only as chairman and vice chairman of committees that we can serve successfully.

I call on my colleagues to accept the decision of the House leadership in the choice of chairmen and vice chairmen of the different committees

Read also: PDP berates APC over Buhari’s excuses

The allowances and salaries of federal lawmakers have always been an issue as Nigerians feel they do too little and collect too much. What do you think?

I feel a little bit constrained, because as a parliamentarian, I am guided by some codes, unlike when I was a citizen on the street. But I will speak on this issue. One of the greatest pressure I have as a person is my perception as a lawmaker in the eyes of the people. When an average Nigerian sees you, they say ‘here comet one of the thieves’, it is wrong.

The time has actually come for Nigerians to really sit down and determine what type of democracy and parliament we truly want. And it is also time to put in place machinery for need assessment, to be presented to the Nigerian people to see the actual needs of legislators. For this I salute Speaker Dogara.

With this, Nigerians will really see whether this so called jumbo allowance is worth it or not. They should not just see the figures. They would see the expectations and responsibilities of us as parliamentarians. It is also not enough to think that one or few of us is not doing their responsibilities expected of us, they must consider that it cannot be 100% of us that are not doing their responsibilities.

While I do not have the authority to tell you in figures what a federal lawmaker earns, I also want to tell you that as a member of the National Assembly I am housing myself and transporting myself in Abuja. I provide stationeries, open my constituency office, and staff the office myself. I am also to meet some political and cultural demands of the people. So when we do comparism, with other parliamentarians in other countries, we must also do cultural comparisms.

What is expected of a congressman in America when he visits his constituency, and what is expected of me? I’m I expected to sign autographs like a congressman in America would. Who houses the congressman in America? How is he taken care of? Who handles his medical expenditures? These are questions we have to ask ourselves.

Do we enjoy pension after our stay in office, whereas other paliamentarians in America and other places enjoy such pensions. We must also do serious comparative analysis. I’ll say the mind of Nigerians have been prepared by successive executive arm of government to see the legislative arm as the problem, this is far from it.

Without prejudice, in Nigeria we have 760 chairmen of local governments and over 36 ministers. The local government chairman who also have political and cultural obligations like us are entitled to security allowances, unaudited, unchecked. I do not have such luxury as the president and governors have in terms of expenditure.

So in concluding on our income as concurrent political party members, and political office holders facing the same problem, we must be able to do a comparative analysis of what an average member of the executive arm of government earns and what an average member of the legislative arm earns.

I appreciate the concerns of the populace in looking into the income of politicians viz-a-viz the people that we represent. That is a different issue entirely.

As a member of the House, what is your impression of the executive arm led by President Muhammadu Buhari so far?

It will be wrong to say we have an executive government in place, all we have is the presidency in place. If we don’t have an executive council it will be wrong to say we have an executive government in place. I think it is taking too long for this government to form the executive arm that will be required to deliver electoral promises to the people.

I sincerely hope this government will not overstretch Nigerians. The reason for buying into the change mantra was simply because Nigerians felt there was need for us to test the government from another party.

As a member of PDP you agree there was a need for this change?

The people said so. But so far I’ve not seen the reason to change, because I’ve not seen anything virtually different if we have to compare the last three months of what we’ve had with the first three months of any PDP administration. But maybe as we progress I may be able to say there was need for the change, but so far, this government has done nothing. We are yet to see what this government would do to justify the change slogan

Read also: Nigerian economy worse off under APC, says PDP

The APC says your party spoiled a lot of things and they need time to clean up what the PDP has done before any meaningful development can take place.

If they are talking about cleaning up the mess PDP generated for 16 years, for how long will that take them. They should also not blame PDP for having to clear up the mess generated by the military for over such a long time in the country’s economic and political system. We should stop making excuses. We expected that a man of Buhari’s caliber, who has attempted to be president for so many times, by now would have a blueprint of what he wants to do.

Nothing stops him from running his pro programme and his promises to the Nigerian people concurrently. APC is lucky they are inheriting this so called mess from a democratic government. PDP inherited mess from a dictatorial government of over 20 years, and we hit the ground running, we did not talk of probing a single person. If PDP were to talk about probing, does Buhari as a person think he would have gone free?

I am not saying they should not conduct probes, but they should not make it an excuse for not performing.

What do you think can be done to stem the Boko Haram menace?

The issue of Boko Haram in the post Jonathan administration is a demonstration of what I call armchair coaching; it is very easy for someone to sit aside and criticize a coach in a football match. But when he is faced with the actual responsibility he’ll know it is not a tea party.

It was very easy for the opposition party then to assume that with a snap of the finger, Boko Haram issue will be fixed; that was because they did not have the nitty gritty or real analysis of the issue, now they have it, see what is happening.

No matter which party divide we belong to, all hands must be on deck to crush these terrorists, we need total unity to fight this scourge; it is not a party issue.

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