Nigeria struggles on road to democracy
By Ola Awoniyi
ABUJA (AFP): Since Nigeria returned to civilian rule 15 months ago, its parliament has passed just five bills, inflated spending on lawmakers, and lost one speaker and ousted two Senate presidents.
"The one thing you cannot accuse this legislature of doing is legislating," said a journalist who covers the daily travails of Nigeria's new National Assembly.
"Many of them would not know how and most of them are not even interested," he added.
The two-chamber Nigerian parliament was formed in elections in February 1999 and held its first sitting in June, days after the military who have ruled for most of the period since independence left power.
The first bill passed was a supplementary budget for 1999. The only others were an anti-corruption law, a bill on the Niger delta, a minimum wage law and, after a five-month delay, the 2000 budget.
The latest row erupted last week when President Olusegun Obasanjo revealed that lawmakers were paying their own salaries from public funds and keeping the amount secret, even from him.
According to Eziuche Ubani, a journalist turned media adviser to the speaker of the House of Representatives, the problem of the assembly lies in the majority of the people elected last year.
Most of those elected were already prominent people under the military -- "big men" in the Nigerian jargon -- and ensured their election in flawed polls to safeguard their position and secure control of contracts handed out by parliament.
Unlike most parliaments, Nigeria's legislature allows legislators to control the issuing of million dollar contracts -- a situation which recently brought down the second of the country's most recent Senate presidents.
"The people elected did not come here to legislate. They came here for contracts," Ubani told AFP last month.
The solution to the problem will only come with new elections when Nigeria has developed politically, he said, and that would demand stability for now.
"Whatever the problems with this senate and assembly what Nigeria needs now is stability. We need to get to another election, and then a lot of those people here now will be replaced by real politicians. We have to remember how low we were a year ago and remember that this is a transition," he said.
U.S. President Bill Clinton is due to speak to the National Assembly when he visits Nigeria at the end of next week and will stress the value of a broadbased democracy, U.S. officials here say.
That means the press, civil society groups, the judiciary, labour unions, the assembly and the presidency, he will say.
Supporters of the new Nigerian government, including the International Monetary Fund's new director general Horst Koehler, say an effective legislature will be vital.
The government should move fast to deepen the rule of law and set out legislative framework for industry, he said last month.
But political commentators see little chance of real progress in parliament without the development of genuine political parties to overtake those formed two years ago under military rule.
One of parliament's strongest critics has been Adams Oshiomhole, president of the Nigerian trades union collective the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
Speaking to fellow labour activists last week he called accused Senators "suspected criminals" and said "we must police our political class because if we do not police them they cannot police themselves."