Hon. Gambo Musa Dan-Musa is the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Ethics & Privileges. In this interview with LEADERSHIP SUNDAY’s KEHINDE AJOBIEWE, he shares insights into the mandate of his committee, clamour for a unicameral or part-time legislature, CBN governor’s controversial donation to Kano crisis victims and more. Excerpts:
What is the mandate of your committee?
The committee’s full name is Ethics and Privileges Committee and it is one of the special committees established by our rules. It is among the eight special committees. In effect, the Ethics and Privileges Committee stands out as one of the special ones.
Our mandate actually is to ensure that the conduct of members are acceptable not only to the House of Representatives, the National Assembly, but also to the society in general. We ensure that the code of conduct that have been signed by members are followed to the letter.
Breaches are investigated and sanctions recommended. Final approval for any sanction is done by the entire House of Representatives itself, not by the committee.
Your committee has been established for more than 5 years now and yet weighty cases of legislative breaches of ethics continue to mount, what are you doing about it?
I will tell you that the question is correct even though it is wrong. And what I mean here is that we had these cases not in the way you mentioned them. They don’t continue to mount. To the best of my knowledge we had about three weighty cases if I may use your words.
Two of these cases have been resolved and that is to show that they have not been mounting and I am not in the know of any of these weighty cases you are referring to that are mounting. The only case that has not been resolved I believe at the moment is that of one former member and I believe it will also be resolved very soon.
Talking of privileges enjoyed by the Senate and House of Representatives, what do you think can be done better?
In this context, what do you mean by privileges because it looks like you are referring to the perquisites of offices of members and the senate? If you are referring to perquisites of office, my comment is that there is a misunderstanding in terms of what Reps or senators are enjoying.
Before I came to the House, I was under the mistaken belief too that there was something that is called constituency allowance. It is not constituency allowance; it’s called constituency projects and no member enjoys 10 kobo out of it.
It is something that is budgeted for a particular project in your own constituency as a member and it depends on what it is. If for example it is something to do with health, it is going to be handled by the Ministry of Health.
And the Ministry of Health after appropriation will be the one to give out contracts to whosoever they so wish and such contractors will be the ones to go and do the contract.
All you are supposed to do is follow up to ensure that it is done to your community as appropriated but people believe that it is a large sum of money that is given to members; this is not true.
So some people believe that House members and senators are enjoying these as perks of office. Secondly, every now and then you hear people saying that members are given millions of naira, it is not practicable. We are 360 in number, if you give each one of us for example N3 million, it means you must go and get more than N1 billion to be able to do that and for several number of times I used to hear that members are being given N80 million and so on and so forth.
This is all rubbish; this is not correct. I think the fault is also our own because we have not come out to tell the public that this is exactly what is happening; I think we need to do that. We have done so but I believe it’s not adequate, right from the beginning that we came and people do not even know that as far as this 7th Assembly is concerned we are enjoying not even up to half of what the previous 6th Assembly and others were enjoying.
So we came and met a cut that was more than 50 per cent of what they were benefitting from. Let me give you practical example: if they were benefitting N20 before, we are being given only N8 to survive on and we are still surviving on it. So we have made a huge sacrifice as far as we are concerned.
Meanwhile, outsiders are looking at it that we are enjoying a very huge benefit. Therefore to answer your question directly, it is already done since more than 50 percent of our perquisites of office have been cut.
Personally, some of us are of the opinion that this perquisites of office is not adequate? for members when you look at the kind of cases you will be going through, the kind of payment you will make to lawyers, the kind of payments or purchases of one thing or the other a member will make to his constituent or constituency, it is not something that is easy to manage I tell you, so people outside should not be looking at it as if members of the National Assembly are enjoying? huge sums as privileges. I think what we have is ethics; if you call it privileges I think it is not.
The presidency has secured another $7.9b foreign loan; do you think it will be economically right for the National Assembly to approve this loan?
What you are talking about is another issue that people have not waited to understand how it is or what it means, I think from what I saw and from the request that came to the House yesterday, the president is asking for permission to borrow the sum of $7.9b which based on the current rate of the market is about N1.3 trillion.?
He wants to borrow this money in order to begin the construction of pipe-lines that will take our gas after flaring through the pipes to our refineries for distribution. It is going to bring a lot of income to Nigeria. We are going to look at the pros and cons of the request before we approve it.
Anything about our oil and or gas is something we do consider very important; it touches upon the economy of this country. And anything that touches upon the economy of this country, we take it very serious. So we will look at it and if we are satisfied we will approve; if we are not satisfied, we’ll throw it away. That is the position for now.
The clamour for a unicameral or part-time legislature, to cut costs, is on. What’s your position?
I understand that is the view of the former president of Nigeria, Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. I think that was his own opinion anyway and it was well expressed. In my view, I have not seen the fundamentals yet that will make that to succeed or to cut costs.
Therefore, I do not support the idea. Something has to be brought in terms of analysis that this is a good idea, that it is going to cut costs because of so and so reasons. If I see that and study it, reason on that, ask questions; even do some kind of research, and then perhaps I may be convinced that it will work, but in the mean time, I’m not convinced.
There was a report that the CBN governor donated N100 million for displaced people in Kano. This is generating some controversy. Is the House considering questioning that donation because it was from the public purse?
You mean what the House is doing? Well as far as I understand this matter is as you said it is public money, but I will say it s also going to the public. So when that money was given, I was not comfortable because to me the amount was too small.
The amount should have been much more than that because Central Bank of Nigeria has a corporate social responsibility (CSR) to the community and to entire Nigeria and I would say that perhaps it is when this man came that they have started to practice the corporate social responsibility they have.
They should have been dolling out money to various communities when some of these disasters happen. And if you look at it critically, it wasn’t involving only Kano people, for anybody to insinuate that because he is from Kano and therefore giving Kano people, he was been selfish.
No, even many tribes were involved because the action that brought so many lives to be lost was an indiscriminate action. And so it was Nigerians that suffered and Nigerians are the public and the money belongs to the public, and he is collecting public money and giving it to the public.
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