By Abdallah el-Kurebe

The seventh Sokoto State House of Assembly is composed of 30 members, all of who were elected to the House on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Of this number, 12 are returnees while the remaining 18 are new members.

As such there no minority leader or minority whip as there is no opposition as contrary to the sixth House of Assembly.

Prominent/vocal members
Alhaji Lawal Muhammadu Zayyana is the Speaker of the Sokoto State House of Assembly. He represents Gwadabawa East Constituency. Remarkably, he is from the same Zayyana as the immediate past Speaker,  Alhaji Abdullahi Balarabe Salame who is now in the House of Representatives. The Deputy Speaker is Aliyu Abubakar Tureta, who represents Tureta Constituency.

Abubakar Buda Amanawa is the House Leader and represents Dange Shuni Constituency while Barrister Muhammadu Bello Goronyo, who was Minority Leader in the sixth Assembly, is the Deputy House Leader. As a second termer, he is one of the vocal members of the House. The Chief Whip is Abubakar Ruwa Bunkari and the Deputy Whip is Kabir Ibrahim, who was the immediate past Chairman of Kware local government.

Among the more vocal members during sittings are (Arc.) Ibrahim Aliyu Al-Mustapha, representing Rabah constituency; Hon. Barrister Muhammadu Bello Goronyo, representing Goronyo constituency; Hon. AbdulSamad Dasuki, is the son of former Sultan Dasuki and first-timer to the House of Assembly constituency.

Relationship with the Executive
During the sixth Assembly, there was hardly any visible skirmish or misunderstanding that existed between the House and the Executive. All Executive Bills scaled through without serious debate that would attract the attention of the public. The same relationship is envisaged to hold for the seventh Assembly.

The new Speaker posits that the Seventh Assembly intends to work harmoniously with the Executive even if this is misconstrued to mean “rubber-stamp” or “appendage” of the Executive.

“We will surely work together with the Executive and of course, the Judiciary. If there is harmony of purpose in leadership, harmony of good intentions and harmony of reason between the three Arms of government, that is when the Legislature is regarded as rubber-stamp or an appendage of the Executive. Members do not have to over-flog issues by way of debate on the floor of the House before they are seen by the public as doing their job.”

He opined that the era where members would have to use chairs on the heads of the other in the guise of debate for or against a motion was long gone. Solutions to problems would be arrived at in understanding but certainly, not controversial manner.

For Hon. Al-Mustapha, the most important issue has been the ability by the House and Executive to understand their responsibilities and limitations. “Understanding your responsibility is to know your constitutional role and limit as a lawmaker. When we came in as new members, we undertook rigorous training and capacity building. What we did was to imbibe the principle of objectivity so that whatever came our way was looked into objectively, carefully and critically.”

Hon. Goronyo says that he does not see the House of Assembly as rubber-stamp. “I do not subscribe to the assertion that the sixth assembly was rubber-stamp. Take for example, screening of nominees of persons to positions of governance in the state, we subject individuals to thorough scrutiny. This does not obtain in a rubber-stamp assembly. Look also at how we always scrutinize annual budgets.”

Hon. Dasuki on his part says that “those who feel that the State House of Assembly would be an appendage or rubber stamp to the Executive will be disappointed insofar as we are going to work as a House and in harmony with the other arms of government.”

Prospects
According to Hon. Al-Mustapha, who corroborated the position of the Speaker, in the Seventh Assembly, the agenda of the House is basically in tune with the yearnings and aspirations of the generality of the people of Sokoto state, which is in conformity with the constitution of the PDP. Enactment of laws and movement of Motions by Members of the House would be based on consultations and interactions with the people been represented.

“By our arrangement each member is supposed to be going back to his constituency, if not stationed there in order to be acquainted with the needs and views of the people so that laws and resolutions to be deliberated and passed in the House would be in tandem with those needs and views,” Zayyanu said.

Al-Mustapha on his part added that “The Seventh Assembly is building from the Sixth Assembly.”
Hon. Bello Muhammadu Goronyo, who was the minority leader in the sixth Assembly having come under the umbrella of the DPP, says that the “the prospects of the House in this Seventh Assembly is bright because of the caliber of members in the House. I am sure that we will improve in the quality of legislative business.”

Constituency projects
In Sokoto state, constituency projects by members of the House is not impressive, especially if physical projects are taken into consideration. However, it is the view of most of the members that constituency projects in states in the North should not be compared with the ones obtained in the South.

According to Hon. Goronyo, who corroborated the position of Hon. Al-Mustapha and Hon. Dasuki, “Each state should operate at its own pace. You cannot talk about states in the South that collect over N13bn from the Federation Account monthly.

There is no how you can compare states in the South and those in the North or their Houses of Assembly in terms of constituency projects or dividends of democracy.”

In their opinion, the meager resources that states in the North receive seriously affect the performance in terms of dividends of democracy and constituency projects. “For example, we have 30 members in the Sokoto State House of Assembly. By the time these members are allocated N50 million each for constituency projects, that will translate to about N1.5 billion, half a billion higher than our budgetary provision of N1 billion,” Al-Mustapha explained.

What covers the performance of members of Sokoto State House of Assembly in terms of constituency projects is that Governor Wamakko spreads priority projects across the three senatorial zones and by implication, across the constituencies so that each zone gets a fair share of the projects. This is also done through movement of motions on the floor of the House on provision of one project or another at a constituency or another.

“We move motions about projects to be provided in our various constituencies and these are as good as constituency projects,” Hon. Al-Mustapha asserted.