In fulfilment of my earlier promise to continue this topic comes the second and perhaps the concluding part of the commentary.
Those who were not chanced to go through the first part may have missed the integral aspect of the story as it dealt extensively on the Jankara Market factor that dominated mention in the piece. The new Jankara styles connote the theatre of absurdities and democratic melodrama playing out in Imo State where the legislative arm of the government seems to have lost their steam, no thanks to new roles assigned to them by the governor of the state, Owelle Rochas Okorocha.
Apart from being chairmen and members of various taskforces and special committees, the elected members of the House under the leadership of Speaker Iheanacho Ihim were also handed headship of the newly established Local Government Management Committee for the 27 councils in the state, recently inaugurated by the state governor.
If the words of the governor on the day of the inauguration at the old Ahiajoku Centre, New Owerri, are to be reckoned with, the committees, the lawmakers are piloting as well as the LGA management team they are also part of, have invariably made them turn into quasi commissioners of the state executive council and transitional committee chairmen of the LGAs respectively.
Further details have it that they Lawmakers are entitled to a stipend and their services are expected to last for 90 days.
However, while discordant tunes have been trailing the involvement of the lawmakers, it is worthy to note that the debut of this rather obnoxious process of running government with House of Assemblers members acting as pseudo commissioners and TC. Chairmen is ruffling feathers within and outside the state with political and social analysts, joining the fray to condemn the act. More pronounced is in the social media circle where reactions on the latest role of the members of the legislative arm have reached deafening crescendo.
In apparent bid to add support to my earlier discourse of the matter, a concerned group under the aegis of Forum of Former PDP Imo House Members and Council Chairmen condemned the decision of the governor to give serving lawmakers executive roles.
The forum said, “the members of the Forum are mindful of the fact that as stakeholders in the Imo project, they are duty bound to contribute in whatsoever way they can towards the enthronement of good governance in Imo state. They are also conscious of the fact that one of the ways of achieving this is by holding public officers accountable to the people through the enthronement of the rule of law and democratic norms”.
Though a few befuddled Members of the House have tried in vain to defend why they can be said to be “congregating in incongruous set ups of the Executive Arm” but the fact remains that they owe their constituents cogent explanations on reasons for jettisoning legislative roles in a democracy by showing preference for executive jobs they were neither voted into or took an oath of office to perform.
To draw the attention of the Governor to the odious aberration in appointing Honourable members of the State House of Assembly as Chairmen of their Local Government Councils, a development that is totally strange to our constitution and the norms of democracy. It remains to be explained how an Honourable member of the House of Assemble elected by his constituency to represent them in the Legis1ative arm of government can at the same time be an appointee of the governor. No doubt this will encumber his representative ability and obstruct his constitutional duty of overseeing both the Local Government Council and the Governor. It is clear that an appointee of the Governor cannot effectively oversee the activities of the Executive arm of’ the government as provided for in the 1999 constitution as amended. Consequently, we urge the Governor to rescind this unconstitutional appointment which makes a mockery of our democracy or in the alternative, we enjoin the Honourable member to resign their appointments to enable them fulfill, without any impediment, their constitutional obligation of representing their constituencies while acting as a check on the Executive arm of government.
I will enjoin the lawmakers to reconsider the teachings of a great French philosopher, Baron de Montesquieu. The late oracle of political knowledge while propounding Separation of Power as a political philosophy stated that for there to be checks and balances as well as accountability in governance; government powers should not be fused or concentrated on one arm or body, instead, he advocated that each of the three organs of government should be independent of one another.
By implication, Montesquieu is stating in that the executive should not interfere with the functions of the legislature or judiciary and vice versa. And this idea has been carefully incorporated into the presidential system which Nigeria practices today. But, sadly enough, the present lawmakers have not been fair or faithful to the concept and principles of this brand of Separation of Power.
By accepting to function as a quasi exco member, the parliamentarians have undoubtably become subservient to the will and powers of the governor, who for now acts as the sole administrator of the state in the absence of a constituted cabinet to run the affairs of the state.
Unfortunately, the House of Assembly members forgot that they have the mandate of the people like the governor as both had sought and got the votes of the electorates to earn elective offices. In the folly engrossed with this grand constitutional larceny, the lawmakers also forgot that they are expected to control the powers of the executive governor as enshrined in the Constitution, than turn to Okorocha’s lackeys.
The House of Assembly members are not expected to encourage another “elective dictatorship” in Imo State administration. “Elective dictatorship” can be said to be a system of governance contradictory in terms of operations, where government is indoctrinated or intoxicated with the false political doctrine or belief in its invincibility. In the last four years of the governor, abstract policies like the recently suspended Community Council Government, CGC; a mockery of the third-tier arm of government, irregular payments of stipends to primary and secondary school students, securing a four-year rolling plan budget and the sacked Youth Must Work beneficiaries, were introduced under the watchful eyes of the lawmakers who behaved as if they came to only watch the gigantic red carpet chamber of the Imo State House of Assembly, built by the late first civilian governor of the state, Sam Onunaka Mbakwe.
Accepting functions other than that stipulated in the Constitution, which involve lawmaking, constituency representation and oversight functions of monitoring activities of government agencies it amounts to a violation of the laws of the land that specifies Separation of Power.
