Why We Are Silent On Boko Haram In Lagos

Deputy Speaker of  the Lagos State House of Assembly, Taiwo Kolawole, is known for his frank comments on issues. In this interview with Assembly Matters, he talks about the challenges facing the House

By June, this Assembly will be two years. I want you to appraise your activities since inception of the seventh Assembly.

Appraising the activities of the House depends on where you are looking at it from. But sincerely, we are a little slow this time around. When we resumed on 4 June, it was like we resumed to another holiday because there is this annual programme we attend in the United States of America. So we went on holiday for another one month to attend the programme. I also think we are a little slow looking at the number of bills we have been able to pass and the number of motions too. One of the reasons for this is that we were hyper-active last session. This definitely affected our taking off this session since we cannot just continue like that without stopping to appraise ourselves and knowing what we have been doing right or wrong and how to solve challenges.

By the time we thought we were starting, we had the problem of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) coming to disturb the House and calling most of us to Abuja. Then the litigation followed and you know that this would affect us directly or indirectly. So I am not surprised that we have been a little slow this session. There were a lot of unexpected activities. For example, nobody believed that the chair of the House would go for a long trial that would even disturb the smooth running of the House. Everybody is being careful now because we don’t know where the problem is coming from, and we are all praying to be able to solve this problem very soon.

This is not about corruption; nobody is saying the chair of the House is corrupt. The problem is all about modalities. It has slowed our performance and sincerely, it has.

On the floor, by this time, one is supposed to expect a high performance because of the qualifications of the representatives. I don’t think any of them has lower than the first degree now, unlike before and so it is presumed we should perform better, but I think the problem is that we are still unable to carry out the orientation programme for the new members. The Speaker keeps telling me that we need to go for orientation even up till now because he feels we are not doing it right. We have missed out some things we do with new members. I know we are still going to correct that and I hope come the new year (4 June), the performance is going to pick.

Are you saying that with these challenges, the House’ performance has dropped compared with other state Assemblies?

I’m not comparing Lagos Assembly with others. The situation here is like when you are checking yourself with yourself. When you compare us with other Assemblies, we remain one of the best, but when you check yourself with your records, you would appreciate what I mean.

What is the relationship between the House and the executive arm of the state government?

We have mutual respect for ourselves now…

But recently, the House complained about some officials of the executive arm disobeying resolutions of the House…

Yes, I remember it had to do with the demolition of structures in Epe, but currently there is an existing mutual respect between us, the executive arm now sees us as an arm of government that needs to be respected. Before now, we had seen situations where we invited commissioners and they went to hide behind the governor who in turn shielded them, but now, I know the governor would tell them, ‘go and settle your case with the House because they are the ones to approve your budget.’ This is an improvement on the relationship. We are now matured having been together for some years now.

Lagos is good at churning out very good laws, but their implementation has been a major problem. What is responsible for this?

We make laws every year, but cannot interpret or implement them. But we put up innovations to make sure that we are still part of the implementation, for instance, before now, when we made laws we gave the person to implement the law the power to make regulations. As time went on, we discovered that the regulations they made were like new laws. Since they have unguarded powers, they could then implement the law based on the regulations they made and hide under the same regulations to defend themselves when we raise eyebrows.

In 2001, we made a law that all regulations must be approved by the House, not by the instrument of law, but by a simple resolution. This means that you could send your proposed regulations and get the approved one same day. We now weigh such regulations and ensure they conform to the spirit behind the law.

If there’s anything the Assembly has done this session, it is that we received and worked on complaints from the public no matter how small or remote the complaint could be. We try to give our committees the opportunity to look at them, treat them and report back to the House for a collective decision. This has helped our relationship with the people and it has given them the courage to complain. If you don’t complain, how do we look at your area?

There’s the feeling that the bill on Local Government Administration would give much more powers to the council chairmen…

We have not even discussed the merits and demerits of the bill. We have only done second reading on it and I know that it has merits. We need to consolidate all the laws on local government administration. We have some that are supposed to have been dropped. There are also several amendments to these laws that need consolidation. Until we get to discussing the law would we begin to see its importance. Our committee is going to work on it and make necessary adjustments where necessary.

Why is the House or state government yet to come up with a categorical statement concerning the recent discovery that the Boko Haram sect has a cell in Lagos? Do you think there is no apprehension?

That is exactly what we are trying to prevent. We are not security men and these things are serious security issues that should be handled by professionals. It is wrong for us to start raising unnecessary noise that would create a lot of apprehension on the part of the people. In the process of causing apprehension, you are also increasing the level of insecurity. It is unfortunate that we have found ourselves in this but by God’s grace, they will not be able to penetrate Lagos.

But people are scared of the police these days because of their behaviour…

Then the people can call our emergency numbers, 767, and the issue would be taken up by law enforcers more relevant than the police.

With this high insecurity, do you see the federal government one day giving approval to the establishment of state police?

Anybody who has good intentions for this country should support the state police. It is not going to reduce the government at the centre and this is the mistake we are making. The smaller the area you are covering, the more effective it would be. We must not forget that the issue of security transcends elections and tribes. If you police your area with your people, you will get more results than policing your area with a person from Kano.

I hope and pray that they should release that power. We complain about unemployment but with state police, this burden will reduce. I think we are not really planning.

I recently told somebody that the rate at which we graduate students from the universities without providing employment could bring a serious security breach. Don’t we need a policy to make admission tighter now? We need reduced number of people gaining admission now. Others should go into other areas that bring money instantly like artisanship, rather than going to the university and coming out with just paper qualifications.

But the issue is that those willing to serve are not given the opportunity.

Nobody is giving opportunity! You aspire for it. No matter how beautiful your brains may be, if you don’t aspire to have the opportunity, nobody would come and pick you. If you know you are good, then come out and be part of it. But this is not even the problem.

The issue is that the president is very far away from the people; he appoints special advisers and ministers who are themselves very far away from the people. The appointees also appoint special assistants…it is about 10 steps away from the people.

In Maiduguri, the security report said the president should not go there. The opposition governors went and nothing happened. Two days later, the president decided to go. It is unfortunate we have not seen a leader.