Dino Melaye, former chairman, information and communications committeein the House of Representatives, spoke with The Guardian on corruption in the legislature and, indeed, in the nation. Once caught in the web of fighting the leadership of the lower house, a development that lingered till the end of the last session of the National Assembly, he noted that assembly committees that are supposed to help fight corruption are involved in perpetrating the sleaze. During the last NPAN town-hall meeting in Lagos on fuel subsidy and deregulation of the oil sector, Melaye laughed heartily when a contributor, called 'Gbanite' observed that the ex-lawmaker, who had just spoken, had a fleet of cars and the one he drove to the event could be valued at $150,000. MARTINS OLOJA, Abuja Bureau Chief, reports.IT appears the nation is losing the battle against corruption that has brought down a lot of presiding officers at the National Assembly.Corruption is the bane of our development as a nation. It is quite unfortunate that it has eaten so deep into the fabric of our nation. On a daily basis, there are discoveries of monumental corruption but we are yet to see punishment for corruption in this country. The fight against corruption is superficial; it is being reduced to riddles and jokes.I want to say that the government of President Jonathan is not only embarrassing when it comes to the fight against corruption, but has also refused to demonstrate strength and capacity to fight corruption.If you go through the Pensions scam probe in the Senate, you will find out that it is pathetic.The president admitted that there is a cabal in the oil sector, but unfortunately nobody, as I speak, has been arrested. No major marketer has been arrested, detained, investigated or prosecuted by any of the anti-corruption agencies.I was thinking since the cabal is responsible for the degree of corruption, according to the government, we expect that those are few cabal members being paid by government ' they did not dip hands into the coffers of government; there is a process of paying them, and the NNPC and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and PPPRA do that process.It is only the Minister of Petroleum that has powers toissue licenses to even operate as marketers. So, how did these people, in the first instance, get their licenses' After getting their licenses, it is the PPPRA that evaluates their payment. And now you are saying there is corruption but no head is rolling. No sack of ministers, no sack of Group MD, no sack of the chairman or deputy chairman of the PPMC. So, automatically, I see that instead of fighting corruption, we are nursing corruption.'With Proper Oversight, Legislators Can Nip Corruption In The Bud'IT'S bad enough that the executive arm of government has not been able to fight corruption as expected. But the Constitution has empowered the National Assembly to expose corruption where there is. Unfortunately, we still find traces of monumental corruption everywhere. As former chairman of a committee in the House, can chairmen and members of committees be dissuaded from seeking bribe from the executive'The problem with the National Assembly is one: the quality of members that are returned. What I mean by quality of members is that if you have members with capacity, definitely, there will be more productivity. It is like a computer system; it's what you give to it that you get. So, I am saying that the quality of members sitting in the National Assembly today is low. Or I can say I score them low.Two, there are three very, very important functions of every legislator. 1: representing your people. 2: the act of lawmaking i.e., motions and bills and 3: oversight functions. How many of our legislators have deep knowledge of these three primary responsibilities and assignments' And what is the degree of participation'Then coming down to the issue of corruption in the National Assembly, it will end the day we have a vibrant National Assembly that is determined to fight corruption. You may ask how:Today, if every committee of the National Assembly carries out oversight function with sincerity and outright commitment, we will succeed by knocking out corruption by 50 per cent in this country. Every Nigerian knows that there is no value for money allocated in the budget, as every capital project is inflated by 70 per cent or 80 per cent. Recurrent part of our budget is just a plantation for embezzlement.If we have a National Assembly that carries out a very lucid oversight function, and there will be proper justification for money spent, then we would have gone a long way to reduce corruption in this country.When I was Chairman of the House Committee on Information, there were machines that were supposed to be imported 12 years ago during the era of Chief Dapo Sarumi as Minister of Information. Did you know that as chairman of the committee, I brought back four former ministers of information' Sarumi was not ready to come, and I was going to get a warrant for his arrest when he came.I brought Frank Nweke, I brought Dora Akunyili, I brought Cornelius Adebayo and I asked them about the hundreds of millions of Naira reportedly allocated for the purchase of machines for the government printing press 12 years ago. I probed the two contractors; one of them is an expatriate. Where are the machines and equipment' One said it was on the sea, 12 years ago' The other one said there was a problem with the importation and bla bla bla.Did you know that we gave them 30 days to supply' The one that said the equipment was on the sea; I don't know the magic they did: how they imported those things and they arrived on the date that those things were supposed to expire: It landed in Tin Can in Lagos.Eventually, money was recovered when I referred the others to the EFCC. So, if every committee of the House carries out its oversight functions the way we are supposed to do over the MDAs, I can give you the assurance that the level of corruption in this country will go down. This is so because the legislature has the capacity to oversight even the office of the president. You have the capacity to oversight the minister of finance; you have capacity to scrutinise every approval of defence because there is no parastatal or agency or ministry that is not being covered by a particular committee of either the House or the Senate. This is the reality!So, corruption is also prevalent in our nation because of the lackadaisical approach to oversight functions and because of the prevalent internal corruption even in the National Assembly.So, members allegedly go out under the guise of over-sighting but succeed in intimidating the MDAs and collecting money; isn't it'That is why I said if oversight functions were carried out with sincerity of purpose and commitment, corruption would be minimised. Anybody that is voted to be in the House of Representatives or Senate is supposed to be a patriotic Nigerian, who will work for this country in making sure that we build a just and egalitarian society. And if that person is a patriotic Nigerian, he is supposed to use his oversight function to discover some corruption even before they are incubated, even before they take off.If you interface with these MDAs periodically, you will be able to monitor their spending because budget defence is not an annual ritual. In fact, there is supposed to be a quarterly report of budget performance to the National Assembly by the MDAs. And the essence of having these committees is to ensure that you periodically monitor the MDAs and their spending. But a situation whereby most committees have made it a ritual is unfortunate for a hapless country.The trouble is: it is only at the end of the year, when an appropriation bill is being presented, that you call the chief executives of the MDAs to come and defend their budgets like a ritual and they come and leave. No, no, no. Budget is supposed to be monitored, and evaluated. And if you do it like that and you do it tenaciously and sincerely, there will be no way corruption will succeed in this country because regularly, there will be exposures of those that are involved in corruption.'To Fight Corruption, The President Must Relinquish Power To Appoint Heads Of Anti-graft Agencies'CAN the anti-graft agencies help to curb corruption in the National Assembly, given the attempt by your group then to fight corruption during the era of Bankole as House Speaker' You recall that you went as far as to the EFCC, to submit a petition'I will start by saying that I do not have the celestial powers to read people's mind, but I would say that our anti-corruption agencies do not lack capacity to do the right thing. The question is; do they have the political will to do the right thing' The reason our issue was taken up is because of the heat we gave to the anti-corruption agency. We were everywhere, shouting and talking. If not, the cases were there for a long time but there was no reaction.And do you know why' The powers to appoint the Chairman of the EFCC, ICPC and the Code of Conduct Bureau reside in the hands of the President. Until the president voluntarily relinquishes the powers to appoint the INEC Chairman, EFCC Chairman, ICPC Chairman and the Code of Conduct Bureau to maybe the National Judicial Commission (NJC), to make recommendations to the president for the appointment to these bodies, there will always be a problem.The president cannot appoint you as the chairman of a place and you become extraordinarily confrontational.At a time in this country, the chairman of one of the agencies said he needed presidential directive to arrest somebody or to prosecute somebody when the powers to do that had been completely enshrined in the Act that set up the agency.The situation is outrageously calamitous. So, the foundational problem will have to be tackled because anybody that is appointed by Mr. President is at the pleasure of Mr. President. It is just like what is happening with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation. Until we separate the office of Minister of Justice from that of the Attorney General of the Federation, you cannot be a public prosecutor while you are an appointee of the Federal Government.Elsewhere in the world, in Israel, in the Middle East, and in the US, the office of the Attorney General is different from the Minister of Justice. The Minister of Justice can be a political character appointed by the president but the Attorney General is a public prosecutor. You cannot give that function to a man who is carrying the membership of a political party, or who is appointed because of his loyalty to Mr. President. How can he prosecute in the public interest, especially if that interest conflicts with the interest of the president who appoints him'Thus, to fight corruption, there are a lot of ameliorative measures that we need to take and one of them is that in building a new Nigeria, the president must make sacrifices. Leadership is by example. For example, before the president can punish a minister, let the president also go back and sit down and relinquish some of his powers, reduce the number of vehicles in his convoy from 35 to five.I came back from Britain recently. The British Prime Minister was passing through a particular street in London, and only two vehicles were in his convoy. Somebody just pointed at the convoy: 'that is Cameron going there.' I said, 'who is Cameron'' He said, 'the British Prime Minister.' Unnoticed! There was no traffic hold-up, as they didn't stop the traffic flow. If our president is going to come to Wuse, in Abuja, there will be roadblocks in Gwarimpa; there will be roadblocks in Lugbe although the president is not going to pass through these places.Therefore, for you to have the moral justification to fight corruption, there are basic corrective measures that will have to take place. For example, the president must be determined to say, 'come, I am entitled by law to all these remuneration and allowances but personally, in the interest of this country, I can make sacrifice.'We have a president who had done that before: Murtala Muhammed! He said all these privileges, etc., of my office, I release! For example, how do we fight corruption when N1 billion is allocated in the budget for the kitchen of the president when Nigerians out there cannot afford N5,000 medical fee and they are dying' When I broke it down, it shows that the president's breakfast is N1 million, lunch N1 million and dinner N1 million.To take care of flowers is N45 million when it is civil servants, being paid pittance with government money, that maintain those flowers.The newspapers for Mr. President gulps some millions of Naira when we know that all the media houses in this country give complementary copies to the Presidency. The budget of the office of the First Lady is more than the budget of two Local Government Chairmen put together monthly.Hence, before this country can fight corruption successfully, the president must roll up his sleeves and show personal example of sacrifice. What I mean is that the president must forget his costume of the Niger Delta and the cap, wear a shirt and roll its sleeves and stop being a commissioning president, who waits until projects are ready for commissioning before he will go to the place.We want to see a president that will go and supervise projects. That is when he can fight corruption. Everyday, you hear of approvals of billions of naira by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) but meanwhile, there is no resultant effect on ground for the kind of money being released weekly by the FEC.'Like A Computer, Nigeria Needs Rebooting'HOW would the president deal with issue of Separation of Powers when a financial crime involves a legislator'If you have a president that is clean, he can fight corruption. I am not saying that (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo is a saint. I have nothing to do with Obasanjo but when (Senator Adolphus) Wabara was indicted, Obasanjo addressed the nation and Wabara was removed.The president cannot fold his hands and say because of separation of powers, corruption can ruin the country. He is the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That means he is president even over the legislators. We are not saying he should conflict with the responsibilities of the legislators, no! But where a legislator is found wanting, he cannot fold his hands because of the principle of Separation of Powers.He should galvanize the anti-graft agencies to do their work.Corruption in Nigeria needs a strategic and holistic approach. I told some people a few days ago that the whole thing was a systemic failure. Nothing works. Like a computer, Nigeria needs rebooting. We need to reboot the country because, as it is right, Nigeria is frozen. We cannot move forward, we cannot move backwards.There is need to reboot Nigeria and only those in power can help to reboot Nigeria. And the way to do it is to lead by example. It is for the president to come out and say, 'yes, I have sinned but it is time for restitution.' If the president can come out and say, 'I am now a political born-again, we want to get it right, we want to fix Nigeria, and I am rolling up my sleeves,' there will be solution.You cannot have a corrupt free society with a morally corrupt society. It's not possible because morality and corruption do not associate in any way. There is need first, for attitudinal change. There is a need for a revival and it has to start from the top. If it starts from the top, Nigerians are malleable people ' they will key into it.Look at the time of Buhari and Idiagbon, when they brought the War Against Indiscipline; all Nigerians were queuing. Every bus had a refuse basket inside. Every Saturday, you did not need a prophet to urge you before you come out for the environmental sanitation!So, the problem is not with Nigerians, it is the way the leadership decides to twist them that they go!If today, Jonathan comes out and says, 'I am born-again; we must get it right,' he will get support of the public and he will make a hero. But I want to tell you that the way President Jonathan is going, he has no legacy intention.Corruption isn't a challenge we cannot face; it is one major reason our development is arrested. The National Assembly should brace up to restitute and then face the executive to fight the monster called corruption and the people will rise up and support them. Corruption is tough but it is something our leaders at all levels must fight!
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