Kabiru Adjoto, a three-time member in the Edo State House of Assembly is currently the 4th speaker in the outgoing sixth assembly. Before the current position, he was the deputy and chief whip of the house. In this interview with IDRIS UMAR MOMOH, he spoke on the assembly’s achievements under his leadership, the relationship between the executive and legislature in Edo, among other issues. Excerpts:
Edo State House of Assembly is being described as a ‘Rubber Stamp Assembly’, under your leadership as speaker. What is your take on this?
It is not just under my administration that the house has been described as a ‘rubber stamp assembly’. I am fortunate to be a member of the 4th, 5th and now the presiding officer of the 6th assembly.
Throughout, these periods, they called us a rubber stamp assembly but it is more now. Sometimes, when I talked to the public, I see the relationship between the parliament particularly the Edo State House of Assembly and the executive as that of cooperation and not confrontation. When there are confrontations in a democracy there can’t be development. So, we have chosen as parliament in Edo State to always cooperate with the executive and the judiciary arms of government.
That is the only way the people can benefit. If we confront the executive, the judiciary, then there can’t be development. If we do that, we can’t roll out bills that will be of interest to the people of the state or bills that will translate into development. In most cases, confrontation is purely because of finance. It is either the executive is not brining enough money to the parliament or the executive is taking too much.
So, we say no to confrontation but chosen rather to oversight the functions and all that the executive is doing to make sure that every penny that we have appropriated for it is judiciously spent. So, people can see that we now have beautiful roads, primary healthcare, the best that other states are coming to learn from our model. See Edo Best programme and people are now withdrawing their children from the private schools to the public schools. When we look and see that our hospitals for the first time, are not mere consulting clinics, but giving drugs, patients adequately being taken care of by qualified doctors- if for these things we are called rubber stamp assembly, so be it.
That means we have rubber stamp for good healthcare, good education, better life and payment of salary as and when due in the state. If that is what we are called rubber stamp for, in fact, we are happy to be called a rubber stamp assembly because the essence of democracy is better life for the people. So, if we are giving Edo people better life and they decide to nickname us a rubber stamp assembly for better life we are happy to take the name.
Do you regret the action of the Edo Assembly voting against autonomy for the State House of Assembly autonomy under your leadership?
In Edo State House of Assembly, we don’t do things without consultation. We consulted with our constituents. Yes, we voted against State House of Assembly autonomy for reasons. Like I said, we consult widely. We voted against it because there are lots of issues we considered during the operation of the constitution. When you look at the issue of autonomy critically, I have to be sincere with you, when you hear that people go into public office, they steal money and become richer than they were before going to the office, you know something is wrong somewhere.
As a representative of the people, we looked at the issue of autonomy critically, and concluded that we can still achieve autonomy without necessarily altering the provisions of the constitution. Firstly, when you look at it, autonomy for legislators- that means everything about us will be first line charge. I told you earlier that we at the sixth assembly, we think about Edo people first.
We are not saying we should not think about ourselves but the people first. Democracy is evolving. It will get to a time when the issue of autonomy will naturally come in. But at this stage, we the legislators are in charge of budgeting.
That means we can decide for example that the budget of Edo State will be N170 billion or thereby. We are the one doing the appropriation but the Edo State House of Assembly can decide that out of the N170 billion, we appropriate N70 billion for the house, appropriate N30 billion to the executive and N20 billion to the judiciary, because we know that there is financial autonomy.
A time will come, God forbid, that if you don’t have people who think about their constituents, there will be serious mismanagement. Hence, we consulted with our people and they all for now objected to it. Though, the issue of autonomy is good but let it be gradual. We have to hearken to the voice of our people. Like I said, we are not representing ourselves.
Our people objected to its passage because, they argued that at the moment it might likely be abused, because democracy in Africa is evolving and we cannot start comparing ourselves with western democracy. So, let us build strong institutions first, and when the institutions are very strong, you can now do other things. That is why as speaker I want to build the Edo State House of Assembly to be a very strong institution.
Democracy can only survive when institutions, legislature, executive, judiciary, civil society, the press is strong and independent. But, when they are not strong, not independent and you jump the ladder and want to start doing things that hitherto ought to have been done and built under a strong institution, it will collapse. We met at the speakers’ conference with the presidential committee to enforce the autonomy including all states’ chief judges. We are still discussing.
There are lots of issues to be addressed before autonomy; particularly, the financial autonomy can be practicable. For example, with the autonomy does it mean we now have three executives in a state? It would mean that a speaker of a state House of Assembly will embark on capital projects, with the chief judge of a state also embarking on capital projects alongside the governor of the state.So, we have to define the roles and it is when these roles are properly defined in a democracy that you can be talking of financial autonomy. So, with superior arguments, our people came, they discussed with us and we rejected it.
So, it is not our decision per se. It is the decision of the Edo people because to them it is not yet time and we should build institutions first, very strong democratic institutions before we talk of financial autonomy.
