By Emmanuel Aziken

It was pleasing that Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila intervened to douse suspicions about an official collaboration between National Assembly committees and officials of the executive branch to conduct the budget defence session.

His intervention on Thursday with his personal presence in three budget defence sessions followed the unprecedented defence of the closed-door sessions by Senate spokesman, Senator Dayo Adeyeye.

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The Senate spokesman had said that the Senate committees were right to have locked out the public and journalists from the defence sessions.

His assertion that journalists would cause a distraction to the discussion between the legislators and the MDAs was indeed the first time that journalists would be locked out of budget defence sessions since the advent of the Fourth Republic.

Adeyeye’s retort was that since journalists were not allowed during the preparations by officials of the executive branch that the legislative branch would also follow suit in not allowing the press in their own space.

Coming from a former journalist it is regrettable. A former sharp critic of President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, when he served as the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Adeyeye subsequently defected to the APC.

His defection came after he lost the PDP’s governorship ticket in Ekiti State in 2018.

Adeyeye has now become a supporter of President Buhari and the platform he once criticized.

Giving his reason why the budget defence should be done in secret, he said:

“It isn’t that they want to conduct budget defence in secrecy, but serious issues of budget defence don’t necessarily have to be open to the media. They can at the end of the day call the press. Do you want the committees to do everything in your presence? I don’t think it is proper.”

“Were you there when the executive was preparing the budget? But the President came here to present it. The budget defence can be done behind closed doors, but then, whatever has been done, the best thing is to release it to the public and I think that is fair enough.

It is remarkable that Senator Adeyeye’s defence of the violation of the press and the right to transparency was not the official policy of his new party, APC or even the Senate.

Indeed, one of those to have sharply distanced themselves from him was Senator Jibrin Barau, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation who questioned the motif of the secret sessions.

It is gratifying that Senator Adeyeye voiced out his personal opinion and not the policy of the Senate or the National Assembly as Senator Jibrin who is a more senior member of the APC did.

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Even more, the fact that committees chaired by members of the PDP were also involved in the monkey-business of shutting out the public during their defence sessions shows that when it comes to monkey business neither the PDP nor the APC could be clean.

Shutting out the public to budget defence sessions except in the case of national security is a violation of the very essence of transparency that our legislature is expected to advocate.

It could be surprising to some that even Gen. Sani Abacha, who oversaw the building of the National Assembly complex, allowed the provision of a space for demonstration and public gatherings.

The open space preceding the main entrance into the National Assembly building, called The Arena, is the space that Gen. Abacha allowed for public demonstrations and for the ventilation of the views of the public.

If the journalists had been locked out in the past, the many stories of over-inflation of budget, multiplicity of budget heads, and other issues that flow from budget defence sessions would never have been heard.

The committees as several past Senate Presidents had said are the engine room of the legislature. The attempt by some in the present Senate to disengage the public from the engine could only mean one thing; the determination of the legislators to eat alone at our expense. The budget is that of the Federal Government of Nigeria, and every Nigerian must know what is in it.

“It is generally believed that it is during such closed-session that the legislators remove their cloaks of PDP and APC and descend into the cooking pot to grab what they want for themselves.”

It is in such closed sessions that the legislators who made demands of the ministers and heads of the MDAs boldly retort and demand their pound of flesh. In fact, senators who normally do not contribute during plenary become very assertive during such closed sessions.

It is during such a closed-door session that monkey-business normally thrives. It is a pity that after the several disappointments by some in the present Senate that this nauseating anti-democratic behavour would come to light.

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Now, Nigerians have been put on the alert; they know what to expect from senators who eat alone!

Vanguard