Emergency Powers Bill: Senate Rejects Buhari's Move to Turn Himself into a Tyrant

Emergency Powers Bill: Senate Rejects Buhari's Move to Turn Himself into a Tyrant


The move by President Muhammadu Buhari to secure emergency powers to address the nation's economic crisis may not see the light of the day as senators today rejected the bill, saying Buhari is only seeking to transform himself into a tyrant and foist dictatorship on the nation.
The bill, entitled:"Emergency Economy Stabilisation Bill 2016," will be sent to the National Assembly by the president upon its resumption from its long vacation after eid-el kabir.
However, given the reactions of some senators to the proposed emergency powers being sought by Buhari through the bill today, the bill may be thrown out on the floor of the Senate as some of the senators had vehemently kicked against it, insisting that it is dead on arrival.
According to the senators who did not want to be named, some of the provisions in the bill were unnecessary as they described the move as nothing but a subtle way of avoiding counterpart funding by the government of Buhari.
According to them, evolving the new bill only underscores the level of frosty relationship between the executive and the legislature adding that if the bill is passed as proposed, the president will gradually transform himself into a dictator and draw Nigeria back to the path of military rule which it exited 17 years ago.
According to them, without such emergency powers yet at his disposal, Buhari has continued to trample on legislative powers, explaining that if further given emergency powers, he will more or less reduce the National Assembly to a rubber stamp institution like the kind of legislatures which exist in China and Soviet Republic.
Therefore, they threatened to kill the bill before Buhari kills the entire legislative institution and by extension, the nation's traumatised democracy.
An anonymous government official had disclosed to journalists at the weekend that Buhari would seek emergency powers from the National Assembly to push his planned stimulus for the economy.
The objectives of the bill, according to reports, will include raising the value of the naira; job creation; boosting foreign reserves; reviving the manufacturing sector and also improving power supply.
The search for emergency powers by the executive is the initiative of the economic team headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo which has been saddled with the responsibility of reviewing various existing policies in the country and their effects on the economy.
The team, according to reports, examined the state of the nation and concluded that there was the urgent need to take some drastic decisions that  the nation's extant laws do not provide for.
This assumption by the team was predicated on beliefs that “the recession may be longer than expected and Nigerians will not get the desired respite, which is the goal of this government.”
As provided in the bill, the president is seeking unfettered powers to set aside some extant laws and simultaneously be empowered to come up with an economic recovery initiative within the next one year.
Among others, the bill also seeks to empower Buhari to abridge the procurement process with a view to guaranteeing stimulus spending on critical sectors of the economy;
make orders to favour local contractors/suppliers in contract awards;
abridge the process of sale or lease of government assets to generate revenue;
allow virement of budgetary allocation to projects that are urgent, without a recourse to the National Assembly.