By Obi Nwakanma
The legislature is the weakest link in Nigeria’s current democratic experiment. Its weakness derives in part from the many years of military rule which disorganized the rules of conduct as well as the values of debate necessary for a robust parliamentary culture.

The effect of this is that from the local government councils to the various state assemblies to the National Assembly, we have sent, or we have allowed to emerge, some of the most curious characters that any political culture could throw up.

There is certainly a difference between “representative democracy” and “participatory democracy” and Nigeria’s experience since the end of the military regimes has been far more of the former. The sum of it is that the real electorate is absent from the political process.

The politicians – and it is a term I use carefully, because true “politicians” are far more cautious and far more in tune with real people and the real issues affecting their societies – but those who currently parade themselves as the political actors and political leaders of the nation live far out of the realm and reality of Nigerian daily life. It would seem only appropriate to say that what is going on in the name of democracy in Nigeria currently is but farce.

Nigerians hinge their hopes on electoral reforms. Electoral reforms will enfranchise them, and give them the legitimate tool to participate – that is to vote their true choices in elections and to make certain that the vote they cast is counted.

The vote is the people’s only tool in determining the quality of representation they get in the men and women they send out to what ought to be an August assembly of the peers, the best that Nigeria can afford.

The vote would also permit the Nigerian electorate to exercise the kind of civic oversight necessary for the growth of democracy and the politics of issues rather than the kind of mercenary mindset that currently afflicts the National and state Assemblies. So far, as we take a measure of the men and women who exercise our legislative mandate, one sees only political lilliputans – bar just a handful – whose conducts lack the depth, dignity, integrity and the learning required of a law-making body.

Of course, the work of the assemblies are not only to make laws but to also ensure that there is the rule of law. They check the excesses of the executive branch and keep them honest. An alert parliament would naturally make sure that all rules of appropriation are obeyed by the executive and that there is hardly any leak that might give cause to corruption. But a weak, corrupt and subservient – or what we might call rubber-stamp or sleeping parliament is a recipe for political disaster.

The unsatisfying conduct of politics, and the terrible performance of the executive arm of the government since 1999 can be fully attributed to this weak link to power – the legislative branch. They have failed to provide solid coverage to the judiciary, and they have basically allowed the presidency and the gubernatorate to assume so much power that it often seems that what we have created is the “monarchy” and its minion, rather than democratically elected representatives .

The reason for the weakness of the Nigerian government and the failure of its legislature under this “democracy” was made quite evident in the past two weeks following the public ruckus in the Federal House of Representatives involving the speaker, Mr. Dimeji Bankole and certain members of the House, and in the rather insensitive discussion in the Senate to raise members pay.

Let us first examine the Senate proposal for a brief second: the members of the National Assembly are paid a fixed annual basic salary and allowances far in excess of the general income profile of the nation where the highest paid Nigerian professors, doctors, and other professionals earn less than N1 million in a year. Nigerian senators for instance take home in excess of N11 million as basic salary and a total of N152 million when all kinds of inscrutable allowances are added.

It all comes to about $1.11 million when these irregular allowances are calculated. This is in a country where the police Superintendent earns about N50, 000 (about $350 per month) To understand the perfidy of the Senate proposal, it is prudent to compare the take home entitlements of Nigerian politicians with, say American public servants.

The highest paid public servant in the United States, the US president, earns a total package of $400,000, while the Vice President, who also serves as President of the Senate, earns $227, 300 in total package. The Speaker of the US House of Representatives earns $223,500, while the Senate and House minority and majority leaders all earn $193, 000 as do US ministers or Cabinet Secretaries. An American senator earns $174, 000. What is wrong with this picture?

To put it simply, a Nigerian senator earns more than the president of the richest country in the world, and indeed, more than the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. These are rich industrial nations where public service is exactly what it is: a call to service not a call to loot.

Indeed this year, the US Senate and House, in deference to the economic downturn and in solidarity with Americans who are losing jobs and having paycuts, and who are also not receiving pay rises, voted against a pay rise for themselves.

You may accuse the American politician of many things, but you’d have to give it to them, that they are sensitive to the public image of their nation as well as their own public image as servants of the nation. The salary and allowances profiles of Nigerian politicians ought to give us a cause to pause. The plans to hike it in fact ought to infuriate us so much that Nigerians should picket the National Assembly and the various State Houses of Assembly in a public protest.

The problem however is that these Parliamentary buildings are gated and distant; they lack a certain sense of public accessibility. They are remote because they were not really conceived to be the parliaments of the people but the House of cads and the stomping ground of oligarchists, oligopolists, and fair weather politicians.

Nigerians must nevertheless write in to their senators, representatives and Assemblymen to basically rethink the move to increase the already bloated allowance of politicians, and in actual fact, to do a thorough rethink of the pay acruable to public officials, including plugging such holes by which officials like state governors and the president receive excess, unaccounted funds through what they call the “security vote.”

It has become obvious that this article of accounting in public expenditure, first introduced under military rule, has no place in our current reality. Governors of states should henceforth stop allocating “security votes” to themselves – which has become euphemism for unaccounted and unaccountable public funds. This must have to stop. But I guess it will stop only when we have a robust parliament.