The House of Representatives stirred a hornets’ nest last week when it rejected the national honour of the Commander of Order of the Federal Republic (CFR) awarded to its Speaker, Rt. Hon. Abbas Tajudeen, by President Bola Tinubu in his Independence Day broadcast.
The House demanded that the Speaker be given the same Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) award, the second most prestigious national honour, offered the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
The basis of its protest is the claim that the House is not subservient to the Senate; neither is the Senate President, according to them, superior to the Reps Speaker.
The deputy spokesman of the House, Phillip Agbese(APC, Benue), prepared the ground for the arcebic battle when he raised a motion of urgent public importance. In the motion, he rejected the concept of the House being subservient to the Senate, describing the differences in the national honours as “discriminatory.”
“There is an ongoing and inappropriate culture of discrimination against the House of Representatives, often portrayed as inferior to the Senate through the language that consistently refers to the Senate as the ‘upper chamber.’ This terminology misrepresents the legal status of both chambers and dismisses the House’s standing,” Agbese said.
He also rejected the description of the Senate President as “the Chairman of the National Assembly,” arguing that the term is unknown to the Constitution. The Speaker, the House canvassed, should be made to answer “co-Chairman of the National Assembly” with the Senate President.
Members who contributed to the motion toed the same line. They posited that both chambers are equal and honours given to any of the presiding officers should be equal.
They averred that the Speaker ranks fourth in the line of national protocol higher than the Chief Justice of the Federation(CJN), who ranks fifth, next to the Speaker. So, since the CJN got the GCON award, it is a misnomer to have awarded CFR, a lower honour, to the Speaker, they argued. The House after adopting the motion raised an ad hoc committee, chaired by the House Leader, Julius Ihonvbere, to look into the issue and report to the House in three days.
Reading the minds of those in charge of the award of annual national honours, the CJN, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, might have been awarded GCON at par with the Senate President because she is head of a distinct arm of government, the Judiciary, the third estate of the realm.
However, since the Reps Speaker ranks higher than her in terms of protocol, we believe he (Speaker) also deserves the GCON award. So, we believe the House is right on that score. It is, therefore, reassuring that President Tinubu has promptly ameliorated the misnomer by replacing the CFR award with the GCON for the Speaker. It again shows Mr President as a listening leader.
That is, however, where it ends. The House should not have extended the argument beyond correcting the misnomer of the honours award. The whole fuss the honourable members of the House are raising about being at par in status with the Senate is needless.
It is instructive that the President, in correcting the anomaly of the award, did not dabble into the claim of parity with the Senate being canvassed by the House.
That campaign is an exercise that may not take the Green Chamber anywhere. Of course, we believe it is a matter that constitutional experts may have to look into comprehensively and expeditiously. This is more so because subsisting statutory provisions appear to be amorphous about the issue.
Perhaps, the drafters of the Constitution did not envisage any possible supremacy tussle between the two chambers of our bi-cameras legislature. Sections 4, 8 & 9 of the 1999 Constitution relating to the National Assembly, deal extensively with the functions of and qualifications for elections into both chambers as well as the roles distinct to either of them. There is no clear-cut constitutional provision denoting which chamber is superior or inferior.
However, until constitutional experts clarify the issue, it is our humble view that, even though there is a lacuna in the subsisting statutory provisions over the matter, there is a long standing, seamless procedural ‘hegemony’ that tends to place the Senate above the House.
First, the constituency of the senators is by far larger than that of the Reps. Each state is represented by three senators at the National Assembly. So, there are 109 senators altogether. The minimum number of local government areas that constitute a senatorial district, which is the senator’s constituency,is three.
But in the case of a Rep, even though membership is allocated based on population, the constituency of each Rep is in most cases a local government, while in some others, it is at most two, depending on the population. So, there are at present 360 Reps in the federal legislature.
Second, Reps, in most cases, seek election to “graduate” into the Red Chamber(Senate) after finishing their terms in the House. But no senator has been known to have moved to the House after his term in the upper chamber.
Third, it is a similar practice among governors and ministers to seek election into the Senate after their respective tenures. In other words, the Senate is becoming a “retirement nest” for governors and ministers after finishing their terms. But there has been no record of any governor or minister opting for the House of Representatives after their tenures.
Four, the senators earn more than their Reps counterparts. Although, the salaries and allowances of the federal lawmakers are shrouded in utmost secrecy such that many of the figures being peddled in the internet are no more than porkies and half truths, the official figures released by the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission(RMAFC) indicate that each senator earns N12.72 million annually(N1.06million per month ).
The commission, which made the clarification in response to the controversy that has been generated by the lawmakers’ pay, gave the breakdown as: Basic monthly salary, N168,866.70; vehicle fueling and maintenance allowance, N126,650:00; personal assistant, N42,216:66 and domestic staff,N126,650:00.
Others are: entertainment, N50,660:00; utilities, N50,660:00; newspapers/periodicals, N25,330:00; wardrobe,N42,216:00;
house maintenance, N8,443:33 and constituency allowance, N442,166:66.
The commission, however, did not reveal those of the House. But the spokesman of the Green Chamber, Akin Rotimi, gave the monthly salary of the members of the lower chamber as N600,000, after all the statutory deductions.
He gave the clarification in response to the claim of a Rep that his pay was N936,979. But Rotimi did not disclose the Reps’ allowances.
Five, there are certain statutory functions assigned to the Senate that are not allotted to the House. These include the confirmation of presidential appointments, including those of the CJN, ambassadors,ministers and heads of statutory governmental agencies, parastatals and commissions, among others.
Then, significantly, Nigeria’s situation is similar to that of the United States of America, where the bi-cameral legislative system was copied from, even though the lawmakers over there operate on a part-time basis.
Though the House back home, after debating their motion, voted to reject the delineation of the Senate and the House as “upper chamber” and “lower chamber”respectively to press home their assertions that they are not subservient to the Senate, both chambers in the US legislature are also labelled as “upper chamber” for the Senate and “lower chamber” for the House of Representatives.
Besides, in the US legislative model, the senator is regarded as having more prestige than a member of the lower rung, the House of Representatives, because while the senator takes a seat for six years, the latter does for only two years.
There are only 100 seats in the US Senate, while the House has 435 seats. And just like in Nigeria, the US Senate has some special functions, which are not granted to the House there. These include deciding appointees to high offices such as the Supreme Court and whether or not the US will be ratifying any foreign treaty. These top notch functions are exclusive to the Senate in US.
This is the intermeshing legislative system that has been working seamlessly in the country from where we copied the presidential system of government, including the bi-cameral legislative model. So, why the fuss here?
We admonish that the House jettison this deleterious parity campaign and face the more serious business of lawmaking. It is no more than a needless ego trip, an impolitic adventure that is bound to lead the Green Chamber to a cul-de-sac because the procedural ‘hegemony’ that puts the Senate above the House is so inexorably ingrained that it may be difficult to upstage.
