BY BEN AGANDE
SPOKESMAN of the Senate and chairman, Senate Committee on Information and Communication, Senator Ayogu Eze in this interview speaks on the challenges and achievements of the Sixth Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as well as what Nigerians should expect from the Seventh Senate when it is proclaimed on the June 3, 2011. Excerpts:

The Sixth Senate of Nigeria is winding down in the next few weeks. Looking back in the last four years what would you say were the highlights of the out-going Senate?

The high point of our tenure revolves around stabilising our democracy. In this Sixth Senate, the country passed through very trying moments when we had to lose a president in office and it seemed as though the country was going to come apart. It took the depth and legislative maneuvering of the leadership of the Senate for us to get round the problem through the Doctrine of Necessity. That singular move by the Senate and ultimately by the National Assembly was what kept this country and preserved the corporate existence of this country as a united nation. That is something to remember.

The other one is the amendment of the constitution. Before now, the constitution had been amended through military fiat. This is the first time the constitution was amended through dialogue, negotiations and legislative brinkmanship without any crisis. We have proved now that our democracy is maturing. One of the tests of any stable democracy is the ability to organise a country in a manner that consensus can be quickly built without recourse to arms or conflict.

That is something that we need to give ourselves credit for. You are also aware that we passed a number of high impact bills during the period for the good governance of the country. I think these are some of the immediate highlights that come to mind when you want to talk about the Sixth Senate.

But on top of that is the stability that the current leadership has brought. This is the first time in the history of the National Assembly that you will have a senate president who will start from the beginning of the senate to the end without as much as a hiccup, not to talk of a change of leadership. I think that is because of the level of maturity of the leadership.

These lofty achievements that you have mentioned appear to have been overshadowed by the hue and cry over what Nigerians term the huge salary and allowances allocated to legislators to the detriment of the suffering masses. Are you not worried by the negative perception of the legislature by most Nigerians?

The truth is that the National Assembly has been singled out for vilification over this issue of pay. It is true that there are allowances that accrue to members of the National Assembly but those allowances are not outrageous and are not beyond what people in other arms of government receive.

What I think is causing the confusion is that because we don’t have the kind of administrative architecture to conceal some of the overhead expenditure of the office of the senator or members of the House of Representatives for instance, these over head are attributed as monies that accrue to legislators directly.

I don’t want to be comparative because if I give you figures, I will be creating a lot of controversy. I know that if you go to other branches of government where they are more developed than the legislature, they have the infrastructure and architecture to diffuse some of these things in their system but when you come to the office of the legislator, it is easy to see because the structure is not as robust as it is in other branches of government. Legislators do a lot as part of their  responsibilities and monies are allocated for the various functions. Unfortunately, some people lump these monies as salaries of the legislator.

Recently, I listened to the president of the Nigerian Labour Congress and I was scandalised that a man of his standing and position can just collate data from the street and put it as part of his May Day address where he was alleging that a senator of the federal republic of Nigeria earns about one billion naira plus per annum whereas in the same speech, he had alleged that every legislator collects N20 million every month.

Even if that were true, how does that amount to one billion naira a year? There is no senator that collects more than one million naira a month as his salary. The cost of running the legislature is very high and I told you sometimes last year that the cost of running the American Senate is between $4billion and $6billion every year.

And for the whole of the National Assembly, out of a budget of N4trillion, only about N121 billion is allocated to the National Assembly, including the Senate, the House of Representatives, the National Assembly Service commission, The National Assembly Management and all the work that they have to do. If you convert $4billion that the American parliament spends, that is between N400-N600 billion that is used to run the American parliament. But we are not comparing ourselves with the Americans. We are saying that the legislature is singled out for vilification without people having access to actual facts.

What is your appraisal of the recently concluded general elections in the country?

We have never had it so good. In terms of the impartiality of the umpire, the preparedness of the people to have free and fair and credible elections, not even the famous June 12 1993 can compare to the elections that just held. The participation and enthusiasm as well as the decision by Nigerians that change must come has never before been this high. This is the first time that I see our country rise with one voice to say enough is enough.

We must get it right this time. There were a few problems. Habits die very hard but we have taken the right steps in the right direction. The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission has demonstrated his total disinterest and impartiality.

We also need to commend the president and the crop of governors that we have because on April 2, there was supposed to be a National Assembly election and people had already gone to the field including the President who heard the news of the postponement like everybody. That was not always the case in the past. He would have been part of the decision to postpone the election.

That is the hallmark of INEC’s independence and the resolve of the authority to guarantee that independence. Nigerians both the leaders and the led are resolved to get it right this time. If there are a few things that went wrong, I am sure in the next elections, you won’t see them again. Even the violence that erupted after the presidential election, those who participated in it feel like a scoundrel now. Nobody wants to be associated with that kind of incidence anymore.

Talking about the violence that followed the presidential election, the death of some members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC has prompted calls from some Nigerians that the scheme should be cancelled or people are made to serve in contiguous states. What is you opinion on this?

We need the NYSC scheme now more than ever before to deepen the process of integration in the country. There could be need for review of the scheme but not to the extent of either abolishing it or making people serve in their geo_locations because if you do that, you will defeat the aim of the scheme, which is to send Nigerians to other Nigerians who are not their kith and kin to build integration, understanding and to open up our cultures, our psyche so that ultimately, any Nigerian can go to any part of the country and become accepted and become anything he wants to become.

Those who carried out this heinous crime are not typical Nigerians. They are street urchins that were acting the script of a few disgruntled individuals so we cannot use that to typify the behaviour of an average Nigerian. I think that even the death of the seven NYSC members in Bauchi is quite unfortunate because it shows the problems in our security system. These are people who had gone to the police station to take refuge and the police fled and left them to the mercy of the people pursuing them. That is very unfortunate and this calls for the review of our security system.

It appears that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will no longer enjoy the comfortable majority that it used to have in the Senate. Don’t you have fears over this as it affects the PDP?

I do not have any fear. When you look at when we came in, it was almost the same magic. We have over 30 returning senators and even though it is not what we expect, there is no cause for alarm. In the fullness of time, everything will settle and water will find its level. The legislature is like wine. It gets better with age. This Senate is better than the previous one. We expect that the next one will be better than the present one in terms of cohesion, maturity, quality of the laws that we will make and the influence that we will wield in the system.