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00:00:00Let's now bring you more development from Ibadon, the state
00:00:03capital where an explosion has taken place, tell us about this
00:00:07incident.
00:00:11of TVC news, first with breaking
00:00:13news,
00:00:19at tv news, wherever the big news stories
00:00:23of happening, we're get up to
00:00:25of aggregate. First with breaking
00:00:28news.
00:00:41of of
00:00:56is Honorable Kafilla Okbara and she is member
00:00:59of the house of. representatives representing Cosofe federal
00:01:03constituency of Lager State and she is the chairperson
00:01:07of the committee on women affairs and social
00:01:10development. It's
00:01:17Nigerians often uh judge the National Assembly
00:01:20by laws it passes and oversights that it
00:01:24conducts from women's inclusion to
00:01:27in public uh petitions and
00:01:29in ongoing. investigations, do you believe the parliament is
00:01:33truly delivering justice and equal opportunities or is
00:01:37falling short of public expectations?
00:01:40well, the
00:01:42of 10th national assembly, or rather the tent house of
00:01:46representatives where i belong, led by right
00:01:49and abbas, so far, i think we have been
00:01:53able to do our best
00:01:57with
00:01:58of you, available resources. to us, because I
00:02:02believe um, members really want to do
00:02:05a more, but we have lot of limitations, where members need
00:02:09to do oversight and you need to travel
00:02:13to different places and you
00:02:15of don't even have the funding to do all that, so we have lot of
00:02:19challenges in that regard, and of course I believe that there have been a lot of
00:02:23loss that we have been able to pass, impactful
00:02:27laws
00:02:27of and laws that could
00:02:29you know... "we can say that as
00:02:32nation, we have been able to make
00:02:34a remarkable changes in
00:02:36of the nation, like the you know state police bill that we've
00:02:39just passed, and of course the gender bill that we are
00:02:43of speaking about recently, which we are
00:02:45in looking at it for it to
00:02:47go as
00:02:54of a an executive bill this time around, you have made lot of campaign, lot of advocacy, lot of
00:02:57efforts to reach out to. all our constituents
00:03:01across the nation to sensitize them, to mobilize
00:03:05people, to let them know what the gender bills are
00:03:09actually about, especially the reserved seats for women
00:03:12bill. so far, so good, we are ready to pass the
00:03:15bill, but the model had been the
00:03:19challenge, we have had lot of excuses and reasons why the
00:03:23bill may not go in that format, and we are looking at the electoral
00:03:26college model of which we intend to use, to pass the bill
00:03:30now, so landmark bills like this, if they are able to
00:03:34scale through and they are being implemented, they will
00:03:38be
00:03:40of informing us that this tent assembly has done what
00:03:44other assembly has ever done, because these are you
00:03:47know steps that will be taken to change a lot of things
00:03:51in terms of our
00:03:52of security across the nation and of course in terms of women
00:03:56inclusion as you know
00:03:59of the history. imbalance that we have on women under
00:04:02representation is is aliming
00:04:06and we cannot afford to leave defent
00:04:10assembly without ensuring that the inclusion bill is
00:04:13passed and implemented by the grace of good, well many nigerians
00:04:17believe that the national assembly does more talking that than
00:04:21it acts um women remain under represented like you
00:04:25said petitions drag for months and investigations really
00:04:29lead to any reasonable convictions, what should Nigerians
00:04:33believe that the house is making a real difference? yeah,
00:04:37you spoke about the public petition
00:04:40committee, which I'm also
00:04:43of member and then recently we had
00:04:45a retreat and lot of our
00:04:48of setbacks and
00:04:50of the challenges that we are facing and the barriers,
00:04:54limiting uh, you
00:04:56of know, success story were highlighted and This
00:05:00still includes
00:05:01of funding, because one, lot of Nigerians are not even
00:05:05aware that we have a committee like the public petition
00:05:08committee where any Nigerian, regardless of your...
00:05:12background regardless of where you belong, your
00:05:15affiliation, wherever you come from, as far as you're a Nigeria, you are
00:05:19entitled to write a petition to the public petition committee
00:05:22to lay your consents or your complaint or your
00:05:25grievances, but we have challenges of you
00:05:28know sometimes when people have to show up
00:05:32whether they are you know high up there in
00:05:35government or people have to travel from
00:05:39far, sometimes they don't get to show up and when you have to
00:05:42postpone and the complainants or the
00:05:44petitioner has been coming severally and then
00:05:48the you know the person they are petitioning against does
00:05:52not come up so what do you do and they have to travel from far
00:05:56away and all that and there are instances where we have
00:05:59petitionars describing some locations
00:06:02and some you know
00:06:06visible requests that we need to see for
00:06:10ourselves even the funding for... members to travel down
00:06:13to go and see that these things are done, the fundings are
00:06:17very difficult to come by, so I don't know, we need
00:06:21to prioritize what we need as a nation, we need to
00:06:25prioritize what exactly our focus should be, the house of
00:06:29representative as a parliament should be the people's
00:06:32house, and I think to a large extent this 10th assembly has been
00:06:36able to prove that, even though we are not yet there, for
00:06:40me, if I'm going to analyze, we are not here. there we are, we have
00:06:44introduced the opel week of which Nigerians are entitled
00:06:47to come in, speak to our activities for the
00:06:51week and contribute their quota and also come
00:06:55up with their own um ideas, but that is not enough, it's not
00:06:59every Nigerian that can travel there, and I think we also need to
00:07:03leverage on technology usage to ensure that you know
00:07:07parliamentary assignments get better
00:07:10results, yield better results. for instance the public
00:07:13petition committee, if we
00:07:15are able to digitalize all our
00:07:19reports, all our documents, all the
00:07:22petitions and everything that we have, even petitioners
00:07:26can you know lay their complaints and speak to us
00:07:30virtually or otherwise, so if generally as a
00:07:34government we are able to leverage on technology, it will go a long
00:07:38way to solve lot these problems. how do you respond to crit?
00:07:42who say that the national has assembly has
00:07:46become more of a tool in the hand the executive rather
00:07:50than you know being an independent arm of government.
00:07:54I'm talking about the phrase rubber stamp that has been tagged
00:07:58to the national assembly, especially the 10th assembly.
00:08:01Well, when you have instances where the
00:08:05majority the legislative arm of
00:08:08government are the ruling party.
00:08:11Sometimes. people assume that that is rubber
00:08:14stamp or
00:08:15you know that they are, they just do whatever the
00:08:19executive wants them to do. for the third assembly, i
00:08:23think Nigerians should see the
00:08:26legislative of government and the executive arm of government has been
00:08:30collaborating together, has been cooperating together and of
00:08:34course has been trying to ensure that the work together to have
00:08:38speedy results of you know bills.
00:08:43and policies that affects Nigerians directly,
00:08:46sometimes when government is trying to get
00:08:50results and there is no
00:08:52you know arguments back and forth from the executive or the legislative
00:08:56or government or disagreements, people tend to see
00:09:00it as being rubber stamp or just obeying
00:09:04the other the executive, but we forget that as
00:09:07nation and as a country we also need a
00:09:11government that can work work together, the judiciary, the three arms of
00:09:15government that can work together to get results, especially
00:09:19considering the critical states of our nation, as we speak today,
00:09:22considering the critical state of which the present government
00:09:26took over this government, remember before
00:09:30Ashinobu came, we had the subsidy where we didn't
00:09:34know what was happening to,
00:09:36you know the subsidized funds that people were saying that they are
00:09:39subsidizing the foil, the subsidy has gone now, today you
00:09:43cannot find cues in our filling station. i think as Nigerians we forget so
00:09:47quickly. then when we used to have long cubes at the filling
00:09:51station, i think for somebody like me, i will pray that the fill is
00:09:55even as high as it can be. let me just be able to get my fil and
00:09:59live here. today lot of our children, young people
00:10:03can go to the university, apply for the student loan and also
00:10:07as a parent we don't have to bother about the school fees,
00:10:11and it's not only that, they also... get stipends at the end the month,
00:10:15every month, this has never happened before in this country, before ashhuaju
00:10:18came, you find
00:10:19out that most of our governors, they were borrowing money to pay
00:10:23salaries with. government, we have never heard
00:10:26anything like that, and of course you can see the
00:10:30roads, super highways, if you look at FCT alone as a case
00:10:34study, if you know what governor wik has been able to do here,
00:10:38you wonder if we had any government even before now,
00:10:41so lot of strides have been taken, look at the minimum wage
00:10:45increment, that's a very bold step taken by a government that means
00:10:49well for the people and that is determined, i saw a video
00:10:53of um some ' retired
00:10:56soldiers, retired pensioners and they were so glad, they were
00:11:00so happy, they've never seen anything like this before, before they used to
00:11:04sleep in front the national assembly, wake up there with their mattress, their
00:11:08pillows and everything and they are just stuck there that until the
00:11:11assembly speaks for them for their pension to be paid, and all these things
00:11:15are now stories history
00:11:19just a very short while, so I believe the government may
00:11:23not be perfect. can this government do better? yes, the government can
00:11:27do better, and of course we need more
00:11:30impactful you know programs that Nigerians directly
00:11:34generally will be able to benefit, because
00:11:36there are a lot of complaints about hardship, about you
00:11:39know people not being able to afford
00:11:43you know basic things and all that, the light, our
00:11:46electricity bill very high, different complaints, but we
00:11:50also attest to you that a number of places
00:11:54a in many places the electricity
00:11:57you know supply has really improved and in many places,
00:12:01many of our estates, for instance in Lagos State, I would tell you that
00:12:05most people don't even need to use their generators, so I
00:12:09think there are a lot of developmental strides and of
00:12:13course there are still a lots for government to do to be able to
00:12:16catch up and meet the yearnings and you know the consens of
00:12:20Nigerians generally, what Nigerians need is just for them to be
00:12:24able. to have basic
00:12:27amenities, good life, be able to, we
00:12:31all travel all over the world and we know how things work there, so
00:12:35what Nigerians are asking for is just to be able to have a good
00:12:39life irrespective their status, their
00:12:42background or you know wherever they come from, and I
00:12:46think with time we will get there with the right leadership,
00:12:50the house is sp being um agencies alleged to have um
00:12:54operated. said illegally, how
00:12:57did institutions report reportedly function for years
00:13:00without proper legal backing? does this expose a
00:13:04systemic regulatory failure and oversight on the part
00:13:08the national assembly? it does, it does, and this is the
00:13:11truth. i was personally embarrassed, for me, i
00:13:15think this is a national embarrassment
00:13:18for us to have case like that, and immediately
00:13:22the house got wind of that, the... they were able to set up a
00:13:26committee, fact finding committee, which i think you know they
00:13:30are still on it, the report is yet to be presented to the
00:13:34house, and i believe as nation we need
00:13:38to, immediately that has happened, we need to be proactive, we
00:13:42cannot continue to defend issues like that, we need to quickly
00:13:45have a you know an audit of all our
00:13:49agencies, look at where is wrong, because
00:13:53for for me the way i think for. to have that, maybe there's another, so we need
00:13:57to look at, audit the system, fish out all these
00:14:01ghostts agencies that we may have, even ghost workers,
00:14:05they may still be out there, so we need to do that, and we
00:14:08also need to be more responsible, more
00:14:11responsive to the needs of
00:14:14nigerians, because all of us in
00:14:17public offices, whether as legislators or we are in the
00:14:21executive, we are all here by the will the people. 'we
00:14:25are all here by you know the
00:14:29mandates of our people and we should be, there's nothing else
00:14:33we should be thinking about than whatever concerns the people and we should
00:14:36work for the people, so I think as a government from
00:14:40the executive from the legislative arm, we
00:14:44should ensure that this investigation that is
00:14:47ongoing leads to logical conclusion, without
00:14:51sweeping anything under the carpet, we must get the truth,
00:14:55the facts and we must ensure that
00:14:58whoever, no matter the number that they
00:15:02are, must be brought to book, and Nigerians must not be
00:15:06disappointed by the outcome the investigative
00:15:09panel for this agency. All right, we still have some
00:15:13more to discuss, but let's take this very quick breat and don't go
00:15:16anyway have more for you on the program, stay with us, we bring it
00:15:19back. This is your frontal seat to the heart of
00:15:23power, watch
00:15:24the hall. chambers every Saturday at 9:00 p.m.
00:15:36Ogbara and
00:15:37we have been speaking. about issues issues pertaining to the house of
00:15:40representatives and the national assembly in general, well some
00:15:44government agencies sometimes ignore
00:15:48invitations the national assembly. should the parliament
00:15:51have stronger enforcement powers against public officials who
00:15:55refuse to appear? we already have
00:15:59strong enforcement powers, it's just that most the
00:16:03time we don't fully implement such
00:16:06powers. and sometimes when you as
00:16:10legislator try implement
00:16:13fully, you get to have some interferences here
00:16:17and there sometimes, so but
00:16:19at the same time we are politicians
00:16:22and we are all Nigerians, so we try to do our
00:16:26best in our own space, and um, for some of
00:16:30us who are particular about better
00:16:34Nigeria, better government and... better
00:16:37life for all Nigerians, I believe
00:16:41that we must continue to do our oversight the
00:16:45way we all to, we need to replan,
00:16:48restrategize and rejig our funding system
00:16:52in the house so that we can ensure that we are independent
00:16:56in terms of our oversight functions, when you are trying to go and
00:17:00oversight an agency and is that agency that will buy your
00:17:03tickets that will fund your
00:17:07your... that will pay for your hotel and whatever you
00:17:10need, mean how do you oversight such an
00:17:14agency, he will pays the piper, the takes to tune, so
00:17:17sometimes you don't get to get the desired
00:17:21result that you ought to get, we have such
00:17:24limitations, so as house i think we need to sit back, reflect
00:17:27in the coming assembly and see
00:17:31how we can work together in the interest of this
00:17:35nation, nigeria cannot... continue to be business as
00:17:38usual, we cannot continue to do things the same way and expect to
00:17:42get different result, so there are we have our flaws,
00:17:46we have our shortcomings, we have our limitations, so but I
00:17:50think sincerely with the right sincerity of
00:17:53purpose, we should be able to look into these areas and ensure
00:17:57that we do our oversight function very well, we ensure
00:18:01that budgetary allocations budgeted for ministries,
00:18:05departments and agencies. is are judiciously
00:18:09used and of course our budgetary system we have to ask
00:18:13legislators scrutinize and look at every
00:18:16line, every line. i saw a video recently to
00:18:20where they were saying that somebody said he did not see the
00:18:23budget, i don't
00:18:24want to mention anybody's name, but this is the truth, some don't
00:18:28see that budget at all, they don't go through it at all,
00:18:31many, i don't want to go down
00:18:35uh, you know, many people don't. get to see the budget to
00:18:39see what is actually because is
00:18:41a is a bulky is a bulky document and we need
00:18:44to ask legislators actually scrutinize maybe the issue
00:18:48of this agency fake agency that came up you
00:18:52know if they had been proper scrutiny and everything
00:18:56probably would have
00:18:57you know been able to identify that but i think since
00:19:01the investigative panel is still ongoing by the time the report
00:19:05comes out will be able to know where the... fault really came from,
00:19:08because as legislative arm of government, it's not in our power to
00:19:12create you know uh such an agency, so by the
00:19:16time they finish the investigation we will be able to know what exactly
00:19:20has transpired, but think as a legislative arm of
00:19:23government, we are doing our best, but our best is not
00:19:27yet enough. if you had to convince a skeptical
00:19:31nigeria and that the national assembly is still capable of protecting the
00:19:35weak against the powerful, what? evidence and not promises
00:19:39now would you point to? well
00:19:42um,
00:19:44I will um tell any Nigerian
00:19:47today that Defense House of
00:19:50Representatives is doing a lot in the interest
00:19:53of all Nigerians. With
00:19:56the public petition committee that we have, we find
00:20:00out
00:20:01that lot of Nigerians have been able to use this channel to be
00:20:05able to air their grievances. and we have been able
00:20:08to collate such reports, we have been able to
00:20:12ensure that you know our resolutions
00:20:16are implemented, we have people that were you
00:20:19know unjustly removed from work
00:20:23or maybe their land, maybe land
00:20:27allocation issue and things like that, different stories, i don't even want to
00:20:30go into all those stories and we have been able from our resolution as a
00:20:34house been able to ensure that they get justice.
00:20:38lot of Nigerians we are test to that, even though the percentage
00:20:42of Nigerians that have been able to use this channel are very
00:20:45minimal for me if I will rate it, it's still very
00:20:49minimal not, many Nigerians know that they have that
00:20:52window to be able to add their grievances and get
00:20:56justice, so and what we need to do more is to ensure
00:20:59that Nigerians have
00:21:01access to the committee, is
00:21:05accessible, we are also
00:21:07you know delivering justice and we are also ensuring that
00:21:11any Nigerian irrespective their status are listened
00:21:15to, so this is very vital aspect,
00:21:18and of course I will also assure... Nigeria that in the
00:21:22house, the way we ensure that the bills are passed, it's
00:21:26a process that is very transparent, when a bill is
00:21:30passed, it is the will the people that is passed, it's not just
00:21:34bill, because when a bill is introduced to the house, it goes
00:21:38to a first reading, it goes through second reading,
00:21:40it goes for public hearing, when it gets to public hearing,
00:21:44everybody is invited, we publish, we we we
00:21:48advertise on the tv, even though those that may not have
00:21:52television may not know what we are doing or those that do not have
00:21:56radio or those that that cannot
00:21:58you know get to newspapers, but we publish all these things
00:22:02and nigerians relevant stakeholders come up for the
00:22:05public hearing to air their views, point
00:22:09out their observations, their requests, what they think we should
00:22:13do and how we should do it, so we now collate all these
00:22:17ideas together to amend. what you have introduced to the
00:22:21house and then we use the report to go for
00:22:25third reading and then the process goes on and on so you find out that it's not
00:22:29just bill, an original bill by a law maker most
00:22:32the time do not end up
00:22:36never never ends up the way it came because
00:22:40Nigerians would have contributed and relevant stakeholders would have
00:22:43contributed to ensure that that bill reflects the
00:22:47will and the wish the people so so far so good, this is
00:22:51how we operate in the house, basically what we do is to make
00:22:54laws, to represent and of course over
00:22:57oversee um our relevant ministries and
00:23:01agencies and
00:23:02in terms of oversight we have done a lot of
00:23:06remarkable oversight functions that have been
00:23:09impactful where we need to you know
00:23:13address corruption where we need to address
00:23:16anomalies where we need to address inadequacies. and you
00:23:20know other is like that, we do our best to ensure that we
00:23:24get results and like I said we can do better,
00:23:2750% of our oversights, as I speak today, 50%
00:23:31of our oversights and not what they should be, but we can
00:23:35definitely improve on all this and we can do better, the house of
00:23:38representative is the people's house and Nigerians should be rest
00:23:42assured that we are there to represent them, we may not be
00:23:45doing enough as they
00:23:48expect, but We are definitely doing our best
00:23:52within the capacity and
00:23:54you know the available resources that we have. All right, very quick one before I let
00:23:58you go. I heard that you were not able to secure your party's ticket to
00:24:02return to the house of representatives and more so you
00:24:06even lost your ticket to another man.
00:24:09Well, how, what do you think this does or how
00:24:13do you think that this affects the uh championing of
00:24:17more seats for women in the national assembly? and what would be your next line
00:24:21of action? well, thank you very much. well, I cannot
00:24:25accept that I lost to anybody yet
00:24:29until the final list is released, because I want that
00:24:32election, and whatever
00:24:36result that was published was mere
00:24:40written, it was merely written by just whoever wrote it, I don't
00:24:44know yet, but we are still on it and we are still discussing
00:24:47about it, and for me, I think gender
00:24:51conversation, any conversation around the gender inclusion that we
00:24:55are talking about, should not be confused
00:24:58for men and women, men
00:25:01versus women issue. it is a
00:25:04conversation around us,
00:25:08ensuring that we have better Nigeria, we
00:25:12have growth and development for this country, and of course we must build
00:25:16nation where talent, knowledge,
00:25:20or even service is not limited
00:25:24by gender, and I believe that once we are able
00:25:28to identify this, we can build better nation for
00:25:31this country. For me, for the the primary elections that we just
00:25:34held, if you watch the
00:25:38videos the primary elections that we had, you will know that I am the
00:25:42one with the numbers in my constituency, and I still believe that I won
00:25:46that election, and we are waiting for the final verdict of. the
00:25:50party, we are waiting for the official announcement from the party,
00:25:53ibara, i am the one with the numbers for kosof federal
00:25:57constituency, i am the one that the people want and
00:26:01my people as still waiting for the party to resolve
00:26:05that and since we did the primary elections i must say that this is the first
00:26:09time i'm speaking about the
00:26:12election you know that we had
00:26:15held this
00:26:16is the first time i'm speaking publicly about it because i believe the party
00:26:20knows what to do there had been so many intrigues so many
00:26:24lies so many fabrications and all that but i am
00:26:27not to be moved by all those rumors and all that
00:26:31so i'm still wait team for the final verdict from the party
00:26:35and we have continued to do our work, have continued to campaign for the party, we have
00:26:39continued to work for the party, because we believe that party is
00:26:43supreme and the party's decision is going to be
00:30:48Hello and welcome to labor lenti, I'm Sharony Jason, on this week
00:30:52edition the program will be focusing on the financial sector
00:30:56and the government policy, especially that the banking.