By Festus Owete
With the demise early Wednesday of former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Na’Abba, Nigeria has lost an advocate of democracy, independence of the legislature and strong institutions.
Mr Na’Abba died in Abuja after a protracted illness. He was 65 years old.
The late speaker was buried in Kano, his home city, later that day. The burial was witnessed by Vice President Kashim Shettima, Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin, governors and other prominent persons.
Mr Na’Abba was born to the family of Umar Na’Abba in the Tudun Wada area of Kano city. He attended Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, graduating in political science in 1979.
While at ABU, he was elected an executive committee member of the institution’s chapter of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) founded by his kinsman, Aminu Kano.
At the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999, he joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and was elected into the House of Representatives to represent Kano Municipal Federal Constituency.
He was soon named the chairman of the appropriation committee of the House by the then speaker, Salisu Buhari, also from Kano.
But shortly after, he became the speaker following Mr Buhari’s resignation due to age falsification and certificate forgery.
While he was speaker between July 1999 and June 2003, Mr Na’Abba’s quest for the independence of the legislature came to the fore. But some are wont to argue that it was merely a survival strategy for the belligerent speaker.
Nevertheless, soon after he assumed office as Nigeria’s fourth citizen, the speaker did not leave the country’s democratic watchers and the executive arm led by President Olusegun Obasanjo in doubt that he wanted the legislature treated as an independent arm of government.
With another defender of democracy, Chuba Okadigbo, at the helm of affairs at the Senate from November 1999, Mr Na’Abba, a firm believer in Montesquieu’s theory of Separation of Power, put his foot down and resisted executive interference in the affairs of the legislature as obtained under his predecessor.
Battles with Obasanjo
The speaker’s running battle with Mr Obasanjo reportedly began when he noticed the president’s desire to pardon the sacked Mr Buhari.
According to reports, Mr Na’Abba, who was thrown up by the forces that supported and sustained Mr Buhari, feared that if pardoned, the disgraced former speaker might return to the House as the presiding officer with the assistance of the executive arm. That for him could spell doom because at the time, the PDP, led by Solomon Lar, had cleared Mr Buhari.
This is however contestable as some events later proved otherwise. For instance, there were reports that Mr Na’Abba patronised his predecessor with a contract for the supply of computers and accessories worth N50 million.
The allegation and some others prompted a group within the House led by Cajethan Dike, a lawmaker from Imo State, to root for his impeachment in December of 1999.
What is certain is that not long after, it emerged that Messrs Na’Abba and Obasanjo, despite belonging to the same party, could not work together.
With granite support from his deputy, Chibudom Nwuche, from Rivers State, the speaker floated a “Kitchen Cabinet” which helped him to confront Mr Obasanjo whom he never saw eye to eye for the rest of his tenure that was characterised by executive-legislative face-off.
Notable members of this “cabinet” included the current Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, also from Kano, who was then the appropriation committee chairman; Farouk Lawan, also from Kano, who was heading the information committee; house leader Mohammed Wakil from Borno, Mohammed Kumalia, the ANPP leader, also from Borno, and Ehiogie West-Idahosa, from Edo State, who headed the power and petroleum resources committee.
In just four months of assumption of office, the once harmless politician from Kano had become so powerful that he could confront an executive arm led by a retired general, effortlessly.
Backed by this impregnable power base to which he appeared to be answerable only, Mr Na’Abba was not only able to stave off several impeachment moves by the pro-executive elements in the lower legislative chamber but also took on Mr Obasanjo repeatedly.
That earned him the sobriquet “The Lion” while his deputy, Mr Nwuche, was nicknamed “The Tiger.”
The “cabinet” was strategic in its operation and use of power. Once it got wind of any opposition, it would meet, take a decision and come to the hallowed chamber to play out the script.
Apart from offering assistance to needy members of the 360-member House, one major weapon Mr Na’Abba deployed was the frequent reshuffling of the headship of the standing committees.
Once he doubted the loyalty of any lawmaker, he went after them. For the speaker, once you were not for him, you were undoubtedly against him.
For instance, on 22 October 2002, a group, comprising some pro-executive lawmakers, hatched a plot to impeach him. The group was led by Mr West-Idahosa, from Edo State.
On that day, the lawmakers had gathered on the floor of the House waiting to commence the business of the day but neither Mr Na’Abba nor his deputy was available to kick off the proceedings. The lawmakers waited for hours on end.
Aware of the plot, the speaker did not convene the sitting until at about 4.30 p.m. by which time the lawmakers were already impatient and angry.
About 20 minutes into the plenary, Mr Na’Abba wielded the stick. He announced the ouster of Mr West-Idahosa as petroleum resources committee chairman.
Also fired were Willie Ogbeide (Health), Jerry Ugokwe (Housing), Sanusi Daggash (Finance) and Lumumba Adey (House Services). The speaker also announced their replacements.
Expectedly, there were reactions based on the sides lawmakers belonged to. The session almost became rowdy. The Kano politician survived the plot.
Earlier in December 2000, the leadership of the House had accused Mr Obasanjo, his deputy Atiku Abubakar, and the then Rivers governor, Peter Odili, of offering bribes to some lawmakers to remove the speaker and some principal officers.
They were alleged to have given each lawmaker involved N4 million. The presidency denied the allegation.
In the main, the crisis that stemmed from the allegation almost aborted the president’s plan to present the 2001 budget to a joint session of NASS.
Mr Obasanjo was concerned that he could be harassed by Mr Na’Abba’s loyalists during the session. He was however assured at a peace meeting convened by the PDP leadership that nothing would happen. He then changed his mind and went ahead to present the budget.
Impeachment plot against Obasanjo
But the undaunted speaker was not done. In 2002, Mr Na’Abba, who had now consolidated power, and his supporters moved against Mr Obasanjo. It was at a time when the frosty legislative-executive relationship had not only become commonplace but also intense.
In a motion on 13 August that year, the House gave the president two weeks to either resign or face impeachment.
Some of the 17 impeachment offences brought against Mr Obasanjo were that he failed to implement budgets passed in the previous three years and that the military invaded Odi in Bayelsa State and Zaki Biam in Benue State without the consent of the National Assembly.
Mr Obasanjo, who was preparing to seek re-election, however, defied the motion, describing the move as “a joke taken too far.” But he was mistaken.
On 27 August, the Senate, also dominated by the PDP, and now headed by Pius Anyim, also an advocate of the independence of the legislature, threw its weight behind the impeachment plot.
There was tension in the land. So concerned were some prominent Nigerians that they had to wade in. Among them were former Nigerian leaders, Shehu Shagari and Yakubu Gowon, who pleaded with the lawmakers to allow peace to reign. The matter eventually died down.
“We have succeeded in changing him substantially as the president is now afraid of violating the law,” the “lionised” Na’Abba triumphantly said a few months after.
Despite the frictions, the speaker led the 4th House to pass 102 bills out of 314 introduced into it.
Payback time
Without a doubt, under the leadership of Mr Na’Abba, the House assumed a greater level of vibrancy. The only snag was that he and Mr Anyim appeared to be running the legislature as if they were members of the opposition.
But the payback time soon came in the build-up to the 2003 polls. Mr Anyim had chosen the path of temporary retirement from politics.
On his part, Mr Na’Abba was interested in returning to the lower chamber. But the then-ruling PDP, with Mr Obasanjo as leader, ambushed the speaker.
He won the party primary, thanks to the last-minute withdrawal of his main rival, a son of former Head of State, Murtala Muhammed.
It was speculated that the young Muhammed was propped up to run against Mr Na’Abba by Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and the presidency where he (Muhammed) was working at the time.
But only six days before the election, the party suspended the speaker, apparently to disorganise him. The Kano PDP chairman, Yusuf Kutama. alleged that he was campaigning for the Peoples Salvation Party (PSP) governorship candidate, Umar Hassan, and the ANPP presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari. Both Mr Kwankwaso and Audu Ogbeh, the party’s national chairman at the time, gave their nod.
But the reason was clear. The speaker had sympathy for another faction of the party, which supported a former governor of the state, Abubakar Rimi, who ran against Mr Obasanjo in the presidential primary.
Expectedly, the “lion” could not roar in the main election as he was trounced by the candidate of the defunct ANPP, Umar El-Yakubu.
The speaker cried foul for the woeful outing. “My opponent in the election was not the ANPP candidate, he was just a beneficiary. My real opponents were the government and the PDP,” he said.
“The whole process was staged-managed against me to achieve a predetermined end. It does not reflect the wishes of the people. I am not desperate for power. Politics is about service and I think I have done my best. Only God can give power.”
If anything, Mr Na’Abba had been mortally wounded politically. He did not rise again in that vocation. Repeated attempts to do so failed. There was no love lost between Mr Na’Abba and the PDP. Mr Obasanjo, his arch-political “enemy”, had been re-elected as president though Mr Kwankwaso failed in his bid for a second term as Kano governor.
In 2006, Mr Na’Abba, now out of office, joined the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) but could not also advance his political vocation. He returned to the PDP but in 2014 he left for the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC).
Since then he appeared not to have survived in the political mainstream. In his later years, Mr Na’Abba tried to join some political groupings vaunting a desire to reposition Nigeria.
In 2021, alongside Pat Utomi, a known opposition figure, and other like-minds, the once powerful speaker floated the National Consultation Front (NCF), a citizen-led mass political movement to mobilise Nigerians towards the emergence of a credible alternative. The group could hardly fly.
Despite these setbacks in the latter times, Mr Na’Abba paid his dues as an exemplary politician who wanted the current democratic experimentation and parliamentary independence enhanced and sustained. Prominent Nigerians, including President Bola Tinubu, have attested to this in their tributes to the Kano politician, who bowed to the inevitable end of humans 20 years after he left office.
