 The socio-economic rights and accountability project CERAP has filed a lawsuit against the Senate President Goswila Kbabyo and the speaker of House of Representatives Mr. Tadidin Abbas over the failure to disclose, clarify and explain the details of the National Assembly budget of 344.85 billion Naira and the rationale for several budget items such as the six billion Naira budgeted for two car parks. CERAP is seeking, quote, an order of mandimals to direct or compel Mr. Kbabyo and Mr. Abbas to disclose, clarify and explain the details of the 8.5 billion Naira budgeted for, quote. The National Assembly liabilities in the Appropriation Act 2024 and the nature of any such liabilities and how and why they have been incurred, unquote. According to CERAP, quote, opacity in the spending of the 344.85 billion National Assembly budget would have negative impacts on the fundamental interests of the citizens, and public interest, unquote. Johnny Norse is, Johnny Norse for this discussion is the Deputy Director of socio-economic rights and accountability project CERAP. And also Johnny Norse is the Executive Director Center for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch. Center for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch CEFTIW, Umar Yakubu. Umar Yakubu, welcome to Plus Politics. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. Umar. Yes, sir. So, would you want to summarily enlighten our viewers about whatever may be the grounds that you have with some of these peculiar issues specified by CERAP? Okay. Thank you for inviting me. First of all, I think CERAP is in the right direction because if you check the meaning of what it takes to be honorable or what it takes to be distinguished, what we call our members, honorable members and distinguished members is based upon dignity or not and doing the right thing without even being pushed to do the right thing. In normal societies or in Greek societies of the old, not everybody is given that designation that an honorable person or a distinguished person. So, what CERAP is doing is asking the national assembly just to be honorable and to be distinguished persons by disclosing. Honestly, actually proactively disclosing this information without even having to invoke the Freedom of Information Act or having the need to even take the matter to court to tell them to disclose their expenses on public expenditure. So, this is my view that CERAP is in the right thing and every honorable person whether as a body, as a national assembly, as a body or individuals has the duty to proactively disclose information on public expenditure, especially now that we are in a terrible economic situation where we need to manage funds effectively and use them efficiently for national development. Thank you. Umar, as wonderful as your presentation is and I can't agree any less than with you, but I'm sitting there thinking that we have a fundamental problem and I see some of the people in our society who should help us to correct our fundamental problem engaging with the melodrama that the members of the national assembly fundamentally want to people to engage on. We have a budgeting culture that speaks to opacity to we have a budgeting culture that speaks to quote on quote loading the budget. You just have a line or two that says the car park is going to be rehabilitated or the car park is going to be two car parks to be done. No architectural drawings, no quantity, no bill of quantities submitted. We have a budgeting culture that says, you know, we have eight billion narrow indebtedness and we want to we want to clear it. Is it not the budgeting culture that we should be fundamentally tackling? Why is it we don't also remove our eyes from some of these inequities that you know you are lasering on? How would you respond to that remark? Okay, first you have to look at the political farmers that developed our constitution. I have to believe that when they were developing it, they did the three arms of government where you have the executive, you have the legislature and you have the judiciary. But maybe having that in mind, they didn't frame framework where you can check the national assembly, which is the legislature and the judiciary, which is why you see more focus is on the legislature to check the executive. That is any time you see a legislator will tell you that is their primary responsibility. Now who checks the legislature? Who checks the judiciary? That's why I give you that premise that probably the framers of the constitution were thinking that the people occupying those positions are for hundreds of years being honorable and distinguished people. That is why you don't really see any framework around the checking of the excesses at the budgetary expenditure we see in the newspaper every day. Now when you wake up one morning and decide to say yes, when a 3 billion, 5 billion, 8 billion, whatever the amount is for just a budget, apart from civil society and the media work plus TV is doing right now, it doesn't come out. It doesn't come out. Nobody knows what's happening. So we need to establish a framework somewhere that apart from the media or civil society, that somebody is checking the excesses of the legislature and the judiciary. Now within the executive, because it's public expenditure, they are bound by rules of transparency. Under the procurement act, every government expenditure is subjected to the public procurement act. Now and some of the principles of the procurement act entails transparency. There is no need for set up to even have to take them to court. Proactive disclosure of what the details of that car park or whatever, if of the total 3.34 billion. Now not only that small component of that entire budget, anything that has to do with procurement should be subjected to the principles of the public procurement act. That is one. Now we have other rules regarding fiscal transparency and transparency measures. In Nigeria, there are so many. Even under the finance act, we are supposed to disclose all this kind of information. Now we do see them. Probably because the people that are supposed to check which are the National Assembly members, the National Assembly are not even effectively checking the executives. So maybe they don't have the capacity to check themselves. That could be a gap. Maybe they don't have the capacity to know how to check themselves. But let's not forget that we have the National Assembly Service Commission that could actually even play a role there. Now how effective have they been in monitoring the activities of the National Assembly. So it's a complex problem that we need to just improve our level of transparency. Now even people that, we are sorry. I think it's about time we made our viewers realize that the National Assembly is a bi-camera legislature. And because it's a bi-camera legislature in the two chambers of the National Assembly, we are representatives of Nigerians from different political parties. And that is why the chairperson of the public accounts committee is always from the opposition and the chairperson of the appropriation committee is from the party with the majority members in the two chambers. That's a one. So I wonder, that is why sometimes I laugh when people are saying Labour Party, PDP, APC, essentially like you've already pointed out they tend to have a tendency to come out and agree on some of the things that will benefit them against Nigerians irrespective of their partisan disposition. That is number one. Number two is that, Umar, we must also let our viewers know that unfortunately, unfortunately the members of National Assembly have so made it difficult for that constitutional position to be activated but the members of the National Assembly and the states as the Assembly can be subjected to a process of recall about time that we will as a civil society organization leader and myself as a journalist about time that we sensitize and enlighten our citizens to know that what these people, because they essentially feel that when they get into the National Assembly, they can do as they like or the state as the Assembly, nobody can call them to order but maybe we should be letting their constituents know that if you so feel aggrieved by the conducts of this quote unquote unbearable and distinguished members you can actually orchestrate a mechanism to recall them. I think maybe somebody like me is failing. I can't blame somebody like you because your area of focus is actually financed but when somebody like you brings out issues like this maybe somebody like me should be applying on the fact for our fellow citizens that you can recall these people for some of these arrogance that they put into governance just my take. I don't know your response. Yeah, you're actually right but you have to look deeper into the issues. If you analyze our political process you'll find that it's actually difficult to recall and if you look at from 1999 to 2008 I doubt if more than one or two people have been recalled even when there were attempts to recall them for political reasons not for governance reasons you find out it has failed. Now most of the time you find out even though the members of the opposition and the ones appointed to head the public accounts committee there's something that is called harmonization of interests and most of the time the interest is access to public funds and once you have those access you find out there's no rank or other interests have allied. Now the principles behind having different parties is they think they will check and balance themselves but that's not happening. They somehow manage to have same interests and convert and agree on such issues like if you have how many unordered members I don't know whether one or two have decided to say okay we must proactively disclose matters related to public expenditure I'm not aware and I'm not sure whether you are aware but out of the 360 maybe one or two decided to be honorable that is one. Two you have to look at our political culture and political process unfortunately the system is designed in a way that for you to get into political office they expand a lot of political resources so which is why most of the time the first thing they think about is how to recoup those resources and that's why you find out there's a lot of you know craving for what they call the juicy positions you know and that's why they take a lot of time before they even appoint who has certain committees so there are several problems and lastly if you look at the process before you even get the party nomination how much people spend money not stock of the major election so I always advocate that the major player to solve this kind of problems is relied on INEC INEC has to de-emphasize the use of money for people to spend in politics our electoral system is too expensive the political process is too expensive even for the politicians and that is what brings this kind of problems so to nip the part you notice of this problem actually for me starts from INEC where the entry point into politics and exit into politics needs to start from curbing the use of funds which research has shown is mostly from public expenditure public sources sorry that is being used to finance elections and that is why you continue to have this problems right from 1999 to date listening to you to be honest with you at some point I was indeed I couldn't empathize with the intellectual persona and the reason I was empathizing with the intellectual persona is because in so much as some of the points you've made especially the one referring to INEC up in its games I'm sitting there thinking is it INEC we should be looking at or we should be demanding a total reform of electoral system in the direction of the ways committee's recommendations because INEC is similarly to me maybe is me similarly overboding and because these politicians know that INEC is organically and personally important there are no links around INEC INEC is expected to check people who want to perpetrate criminality electoral criminality INEC will be the one that will prosecute not the state INEC is opposed to all the political parties to account as we speak the party that we even think is the most revolutionary the most better this thing now the treasurer is alleging that the chairman has gone bonkers with their funds so don't you think we may need to engage the executive and the legislature to give us electoral forms that will be more predisposed to the recommendations of the ways committee see there is a lot of trick that usually plays around from what you have said now if you call for electoral reforms let's say of INEC the first thing they will do is set up committee you bring at the committee we sit down for 3 to 6 months after that they will bring a report to not implement the owner implemented those are diversionary if you look at all regulators in Nigeria INEC Central Bank of Nigeria the Nigerian Osipateria Regulatory Commission all sector regulators regulating the oil all the areas that will have problems the oil and gas sector our elections our finance sector our economic sector look at all the regulators if you look at their laws they have enough laws enough teeth to bite and implement things that will ensure good governance what the problem we lack is that force of implementation that is usually what is lacking so you find that we waste a lot of time on legislative reform legal framework legal framework institutional framework but for the effective implementation of those laws and to measure that impact of what is usually lacking now INEC has the power to regulate just a simple example INEC has the power to ensure the collection of the audit reports of all political parties why do you need a lot to collect the audit report no you don't now that has not happened for more than 5 or 6 years INEC by its own law is mandated to publish its own audit report every 2 years that has not happened for over 6 or 7 years you don't need a legal framework or any reform to do that so the basic things of transparency are not happening they are not doing it and because really nobody is checking them to enforce them now if INEC is not doing something right who is supposed to enforce it the national assembly the civil society the media all these things are not happening and they keep telling okay yes we will publish it mind you don't even they could even publish it and people will not properly scrutinize it but they are not even publishing it and this is what sometimes you call impunity what does it take to ensure the publication of the audit reports of political parties there are no more than 30 or 40 of them for how many years what does it take to publish the audit report of INEC that has spent billions of naira billions of naira that a lot has gone to waste waste in terms of that a lot of things you can use technology you know to reduce cost but they will not do it because probably it doesn't serve their interest or the interest of some people that work with them what can somebody who has the functional knowledge of how these things work and who also has the patriotic passion like you beyond the litigation of Syrup what can you tell somebody like us to help you make sure that we enlighten, educate inform our citizenry so they can coalesce beyond people like you and give you the needed support to at least bring these people you know let them know that people are watching them well it's a long term thing this is a continuous thing we will continue to do but the basic thing that people need to understand that without good governors our hospitals are going to continue feeding whether we like it or not without good governors prizes of commodities you can see them will continue to occur without good governors we are going to have a good educational system and these three things are the basic things somebody needs in life you need adequate healthcare you need to survive that's the economics to have disposable income to be able to spend on necessities and you need to have good education for yourself and your children these are basic things that they are not there now the only way to ensure good governors is through our political system well operating a democracy and the way we need to vote people now unfortunately there's a culture that has been built for too long where people actually admire people without asking the right questions about where they got their way from now that's a problem because that's where they admire and who you look up to becomes your teacher that is why sometimes it will be heartbreaking you are at a child of eight, nine years old what he wants to be and he may tell you he wants to be a governor he wants to be a senator not understanding what the rules of being a senator and House of Red members means of being a governor because he is seen by example of what those people are what they do without deciding the process so we need to educate citizens more trying to let me quote a former vice president on the soft issues we don't have problems with probably educated people most people are educated most people you know if you are looking for educational qualification you get so many what we have problems with are the soft issues of honesty, integrity then we bother the other one being honorable being distinguished nobody needs to tell you to disclose your income without setup having to push you to court nobody even needs to activate the freedom of information people should openly these are public funds, we pay taxes so people should proactively disclose all this kind of information and when these things happen you are going to have better education you have better access to healthcare and your economic disposable income would increase and these are the things you need to have a good life and a better society Dr. Umar Yakubu Executive Director Center for Physical Transparency and Integrity Watch CEF-TIW we surely will be having you on some other occasions on this platform we appreciate you, thank you thank you very much sir, thank you I am Bola Oba have a good evening