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Let me most sincerely welcome all my colleagues back from our annual recess, a period we, as a tradition, suspend plenaries for dispassionate field engagements. It was no doubt a period of wider consultations in preparation for the tasks ahead. It was also a period of intense engagement with critical stakeholders nationwide with a view to getting feedback from our constituents; identifying issues of public interests and presenting the feedback for policy consideration in the 2025 fiscal year.
A lot of events indeed happened between the period we went on annual recess and now. The events obviously ranged from the nationwide protests to the return of long queues to our filling stations; festering instability in the foreign exchange market and flood disaster that escalated humanitarian crises in some states of the federation. Each of these public concerns, again, reminded us about the complexity of our socio-economic challenges; people’s desperation for multi-pronged antidotes and the crucial tasks of transforming Nigeria into a federation we shall all be proud of someday.
At the National Assembly, we clearly understand all these public concerns and the rights of the people to demand explanations, especially at the time of national crises. We also understand that governments at all levels are under obligation to listen to public grievances and work out strategies to address them. But are these challenges peculiar to us as a people? Is Nigeria the only country facing hard times worldwide?
Of course, countries – developed, emerging and underdeveloped – are going through turbulent times, economically and politically, across the globe. For example, Ghana and Kenya in East Africa, Argentina and Venezuela in South America, Japan and Pakistan in the Pacific, Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East as well as Greece and Spain, among others, are all neck-deep either in intractable crises that their governments are working hard to reverse or considerably address.
These countries are, like Nigeria, methodically and painstakingly responding to their challenges not just to meet public expectations, but also to create enabling environments for real growth and sustainable development. This is not, in any way, to make an excuse for the governments. Rather, it is to show that the world has entered into another era of turbulence, first started with the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020; followed by the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 and compounded by the renewed hostility between Israel and Palestine in 2023.
Each of these geo-political dynamics has grave implications for import-dependent economies like Nigeria and their internal stability. As we are all aware, the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict disrupted the importation of grains to Africa. Consequently, it triggered chronic food inflation in most African economies because most of them sourced 50per cent of their grain needs and 70 per cent of their wheat requirements from Russia and Ukraine. They could not because the war disrupted grain shipment.
Nigeria was not exempted from this grain supply distortion. Her grain supply constraint was compounded by internal instability that further decapitated her food production capacity long before the current administration office. That explained why food inflation was as high as 40.87 per cent in June 2024 before it dropped to 39.53 per cent in July 2024, and further to 37.52 per cent in August 2024. What does this decline truly suggest? It simply suggests that the multi-pronged responses of all government arms have started yielding positive outcomes. This time shall surely pass away.
These geo-political dynamics, likewise, escalated the prices of crude oil in the international market. For us, as one of the world’s oil producers, this increase should ordinarily be a blessing rather than a headache. Again, the failure to significantly and strategically invest in the development of the midstream petroleum infrastructure turned us to a victim of the geo-political conflicts. And we were faced with the realities of either returning to a vicious subsidy regime or bracing up for the escalating fuel pump prices that eventually constrained people’s living standard. We are now gradually navigating through this thorny path that our fear to decisively act constricted us.
This was the indisputable geo-political context that an import-dependent Nigeria found herself, even before the inauguration of the 10th National Assembly. These challenges became more excruciating and grievous within the first year of our four-year tenure. These are the grim and disturbing realities from which we cannot run away. As public servants, we took up the gauntlet and began addressing our heinous national challenges from the very foundation.
Fellow countrymen, we have been responding to these challenges, considering creative and innovative parliamentary initiatives. As legislators, we firmly share a conviction that the initiatives will, in no small measure, add value to the lives of over 133 million, whom the World Bank Group classified to be multidimensionally poor. And we are committed to this vital national mission for which we were elected to undertake.
But Nigerians must trust us with the power they had already entrusted to us. This is not the time to play politics with all these issues of national significance, all in the name of strategising to win the 2027 contest. We must remember that there must be 2025 before 2026, and 2026 before 2027. What Nigerians are demanding from us is the demonstration of patriotic spirit, and not the display of parochial political agenda that will never improve the lives of our people, whether in the North or South. We must not miss this period of national challenge. It is the best time to act collectively, decisively and reasonably.
How has the National Assembly been responding to all these national challenges? This is a vital question that deserves a detailed response. But I will point out a few areas that we have, independently or interdependently, addressing all these challenges. First, we have a clear understanding with all federal agencies we are oversighting that we will not tax citizens, who are multidimensionally poor. We are committed to this promise because we are in government for the people and not against the people.
This truly explains why we introduced windfall tax under the 2023 Finance Act. This legislation, specifically, imposes a one-year tax on the realised foreign exchange profits derived by commercial banks in the 2023 fiscal year. This practice is not peculiar to Nigeria alone. Countries going through turbulent economic times have embraced it in Europe and beyond, though with the sole purpose of resolving their fiscal challenges. In 2022, for instance, the parliament of the United Kingdom introduced a 25 per cent energy profits levy, which it imposed on its oil multinationals.
The levy was increased to 35 per cent in 2023 when the UK effectively slid into another meltdown. Within this time, this tax was introduced in 25 member-states of the European Union. In Greece, it was as high as 60 per cent; 70 per cent in Slovakia; 75 per cent in Ireland; 90 per cent in France; 90 per cent in Austria and 100 per cent in Belgium, each of which purely targeted electricity and oil giants that made super profits. If these countries could go this far, why can we not do the same in the national interest? It is a progressive tax aimed at taking from the wealthy to fund pro-people projects and programmes.
Consistent with our mandate under Section 59 of the 1999 Constitution, we also reviewed highly fundamental sections of the 2024 Appropriation Act to address thorny issues that could have created funding gaps and further compound our socio-economic challenges. This review enabled the parliament to mandate the executive to significantly scale up its social support to the poorest of the poor due to acute food inflation that the nation witnessed for 12 consecutive months. In addition, the executive further suspended import duty on food products, also with a view to making food more accessible, available and affordable.
At the time of the national labour dispute, also, the parliament meaningfully engaged the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress. The engagement was designed and structured to assure the labour leaders of our unflinching support; promise them our unbiased interventions and persuade them from shutting the economy that we are all working together to strengthen. Even when they did not, in entirety, trust our resolve, we proved them wrong; honoured their agreement with the executive, and sped up the enactment of the 2024 National Minimum Wage Act.
We truly committed our energy, intellect and time to make all these initiatives happen. Our drive is nothing, but it mirrors our allegiance to all our constituents nationwide and undying passion to ease vicious fiscal challenges under which our nation is reeling. We made critical interventions in the interest of all our countrymen regardless of their socio-economic status. We are still committed to more creative legislative interventions that will positively impact our economy and polity in future.
As we return fully to the parliamentary sessions, the National Assembly will, without ambiguity, revisit its decision to decisively address challenges in the petroleum industry. The industry is not optimal in its performance. This may not be unconnected to crude oil theft, endless turn around maintenance of public refineries, importation of substandard petroleum products and disruption of fuel supply, among others. Before we went on annual recess, the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, constituted an ad-hoc committee to beam searchlights on all these issues. The Senate later expanded the scope of the committee to deal with diverse allegations of economic sabotage in the petroleum industry.
Contrary to some media reports, the Senate never suspended its Ad-hoc Committee to Investigate Alleged Economic Sabotage in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry, but postponed its public hearing due to the need to address issues that border on the rules of the National Assembly. Today, both chambers of the National Assembly will resolve the issues and possibly constitute a joint committee that will continue with the investigation from where the ad-hoc committee stopped. We are committed to unearthing the roots of economic sabotage in the petroleum industry in the national interest and developing institutional mechanisms that will make the industry more efficient and functional.
We are expecting a new Medium Term Expenditure Framework from the executive. MTEF is an integral part of our budget culture that emphasises a multi-year public expenditure planning exercise; sets out the future budget requirements for existing services, and assess the resource implications of future policy changes. The consideration of MTEF occupies a prime place on the rung of our legislative agenda. This is simply because MTEF must be ready before the 2025 appropriation bill can be laid before the National Assembly.
We are equally preoccupied with the review of the 1999 Constitution. In the Senate, the Constitution Review Committee is chaired by Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau Jibrin. In the coming weeks, the Committee will hold retreats and strategy sessions; call for memoranda and organise zonal meetings on some sections of our grundnorm that should be amended. Given the pedigrees of all its members, this exercise no doubt promises a truly federative approach that will redefine and reinvent public governance in this country.
We have all these legislative initiatives before the parliament for consideration in coming weeks. Each of the initiatives is designed to develop an efficient and functional political system that works for all and not for the few. We therefore plead for more cooperation and understanding to act in the best interest of all Nigerians. As a people, we must all share the conviction that the task of nation-building is not individualistic or unilateral in nature. But it must be collectively driven at building one indivisible, resilient and united nation. We must rise above parochialism and sectionalism to reposition Nigeria, for a global role for this time too shall soon pass away.
Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, the Leader of the 10th Senate, writes from Abuja
