According to an accountant of a polytechnic, the House Committee’s pretense to performing oversight duties over higher education institutions is an elaborate “racket.” He recalled a previous encounter with the House Committee, which asked his school to bring “Ghana-Must-Go” bags full of photocopied documents to a house hearing.
“I was really shocked when we arrived together with our rector,” the accountant said. “They didn’t ask us to open the bags; they just asked the rector some questions. Of course, they have been settled far ahead of time. Therefore, within the shortest time we were asked to leave.”
An anonymous vice chancellor shared a similar experience. “Besides directing us to come with ‘Ghana Must Go’ bags of photocopied documents, we have been forced to pay money in order to get a clean bill,” he said. “I am not sure they are even reading the documents.”
“I am acutely aware that most people are too hungry and too filled with anxieties for how they will survive the next day to care about the extortion of our universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education by rapacious and conscienceless legislative bandits, but this culture should worry us all. The deeper we allow it to settle into a cultural subconscious, the more difficult hopes for a national rebirth become.
While urging heads of higher education institutions to resist the House Committee, Haruna Yerima, a professor of public administration at ABU and former member of the House of Representatives who became famous for his praiseworthy and uncommonly bold anti-corruption battles against both the executives and his colleagues from 2003 to 2007, said the legislative extortion of heads of institution is the extension of a broader, older culture of out-and-out legislative brigandage that he’d witnessed.
“What the VCs, rectors and provosts are complaining of is reminiscent of the ugly past where some lawmakers demanded money to pass the budgets of some ministries and agencies or screen some presidential appointees,” he said.
This is the legislative equivalent of abduction for ransom. We need to formally recognize and acknowledge that there is now such a thing as legislative banditry. I conceptualize it as the unethical, coercive, or corrupt practices by legislative bodies or their members, which encompass extortion, demanding bribes for favorable legislation, interfering unduly in administrative matters for personal gain, or using legislative powers to intimidate or exploit others.
The term, of course, derives inspirational and epistemological provenance from the quotidian banditry that Nigerians have now become habituated to. In other words, legislative banditry is banditry conducted within or facilitated by legislative frameworks.
The alleged behavior of the House of Representatives Committee on TETFund and Other Services is classic legislative banditry. The committee members are accused of exploiting their legislative oversight powers to extort money from tertiary institutions by making unreasonable demands for documentation and payments to facilitate the approval and implementation of projects that are already approved and funded by TETFund.
The abuse of legislative authority for personal gain or to exert undue influence over public institutions should be condemned by everyone who cares about Nigeria. It should also be resisted by the heads of higher education institutions.
Apparently, the higher education institutions are struggling to survive as it is. That was why when it came to light late last year that the federal government had asked universities to turn over 40 percent of all their internally generated revenue to the federal coffers, I wrote a stinging column on November 11, 2023, titled “Tinubu Wants Even Broke Universities to Fund Him.”
Thankfully, the government reversed the policy after this. It has turned out, nonetheless, that it isn’t uhuru yet. Universities escaped the jaws of executive avarice and jumped right smack dab in the middle of legislative banditry. Who will save them when they appear before pampered, overpaid, and slothful legislative bandits on February 27?