Senate Retreat:
The issues at stake
By Taiwo Adisa - Updated: Tuesday 03-11-2009
David MarkFrom early next
week, the Senate
will embark on a retreat in Enugu, Enugu State.
This annual event has now become an opportunity for the lawmakers to group together, listen to technocrats, review their activities, team together to analyse the present and then project into the future with solutions.
The idea of a retreat did not originate with the current Senate. It actually started in 2002, in Calabar, Cross River State, and in 2004, it held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Again in 2007, it held in Port Harcourt, while the 2008 edition was held in Kano, the capital of Kano State.
Initially, it was conceived as a biennial event, which would hold twice in the life of a Senate. But from 2007, the Senator David Mark-led Senate made some adjustments and decreed that the programme will, henceforth, hold annually and that it will be rotated among the geopolitical zones.
This means that a central state will host the event in the scheduled geopolitical zone, while issues that affect the zone will be properly highlighted. Senators will also visit the other states of the zone in groups.
Starting from 2007, the senators had ensured that zonal issues form the fulcrum of issues that seized attention at the retreats.
In Port Harcourt in 2007, the senators dissolved into syndicate groups that visited states of the Niger Delta, the creeks and the critical points in the areas.
The retreat came up with a resolution that the Federal Government needed to take urgent steps to redeem life in the area and halt human degradation in the creeks. There were tours of Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Rivers and Delta states.
During one of the tours, it was also apparent that the security situation in the Niger Delta was going out of hand, as the team, led by the Senate President Mark to the creeks of Delta State, could not proceed until the intervention of the then Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr. Timi Alaibe, and the Governor of the state, Dr. Emmanuel Oduaghan.
The leaders of the creeks (militants) had to be assured by the duo of Alaibe and Uduaghan that the visiting team meant well before they could agree to open the way for the visit to Delta creeks. Even at that, only a handful of senators could join the Senate President in the helicopter that was provided for that tour.
It is surprising that though the Senate made its report public after the retreat, the executive arm did not deem it fit to do anything on the deteriorating security situation in the Niger Delta, until everything went out of hand to warrant the recently declared amnesty.
In Kano in 2008, the Senate made the issue of desertification and collapsing textile industries the focal point of the retreat. After tours of Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Sokoto by syndicate groups of the senators, the Senate discovered the real danger of desertification and unemployment in the region. It endorsed Federal Government’s bail-out for the collapsed textile companies in Kano and Kaduna and asked the government to enhance cotton farming to boost local production of textile. It also called attention to the fast encroaching desert and its effect on life in the North Western states.
A year after the retreat, nothing concrete cannot be said to have been done by the executive arm of government on the identified issues. This calls to question the type of synergy that exists between the executive and the legislature.
In the theory of separation of powers, the three arms of government are independent, but in practice, we only see interrelationships and that should ensure a seamless execution of government objectives.
As the 2009 version of the retreat fixed for Enugu approaches, there is the need for the senators to address their minds to issues such as menace of erosion, insecurity, especially problems of kidnapping which is fast making the South East zone ungovernable, including unemployment and issues of collapsed industries.
The lawmakers need to also enhance the Legislative Powers and Privileges Act, so as to guarantee that motions passed with two-thirds majority in the chambers have the force of law.
If that had been done since 2007, the issues that have been highlighted by the senators, since the retreat in Port Harcourt and which have been adopted by clear majority during deliberations on the floor, would have been enforceable. Then, the impact of both the legislature and the executive would have been more positively felt by the people.
