By Lawal Nasir
The House of Representatives has again invited the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr. Olayemi Cardoso, to appear before it. This time, the issue is alleged irregularities in the payment of pensions to retirees of the apex bank.
The invitation, which followed a motion by Rep. Hussain Jallo (APC-Kaduna), is understandable on compassionate grounds. No one wants to see elderly citizens who served their country being denied their entitlements. The motion paints a grim picture of hardship, unpaid arrears, and exclusion from pension increases. It notes that the number of CBN pensioners has dropped from 5,104 in 2011 to about 3,000 today. These are serious issues that deserve legislative attention.
But the question is: does every serious issue require the presence of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria?
The answer, if the House is honest with itself, is no. And it is time the Green Chamber resisted the urge to drag heads of ministries, departments and agencies before its committees at the slightest provocation.
This is not the first time the House has summoned Cardoso. Since his appointment, the CBN Governor has been invited, summoned, and re-invited over issues ranging from exchange rate policy, to Ways and Means, to bank charges, to now pension administration. If the pattern continues, it will become an established practice where the personality of the office holder becomes more important than the substance of the issue.
That is dangerous for institutional governance.
Let us be clear about what the CBN is. It is the nerve centre of Nigeria’s monetary system. Under Cardoso, the Bank is in the middle of the most delicate reforms in a decade – fighting inflation, restoring investor confidence, stabilizing the naira, cleaning up the opaque intervention programmes of the past, managing interest rates, and navigating a global economic environment that is anything but stable. The Governor has enough on his hands to worry about. Adding pension administration, a matter that is essentially administrative and operational, to his daily legislative worries is a misplacement of priorities.
Every organization as large as the CBN has a bureaucracy designed to handle specific functions. The CBN has a Human Resources Department. It has a department that handles pensions and retiree benefits. It has directors, deputy directors, and pension administrators who are paid to handle these details. If there are allegations of non-compliance with pension agreements or faulty implementation of a harmonization policy, the logical first step for the House Committee on Pensions is to invite the Director of Human Resources, the Head of Pensions, or the pension administrators themselves. They are the officials in the system who can handle it, who have the files, who can explain line by line what went wrong.
Why go straight to the top?
This habit of always calling the head of an institution is what turns oversight into showmanship. Oversight is constitutionally mandated and necessary. But effective oversight is not measured by how many high-profile personalities you can parade before the cameras. It is measured by results. If the Committee invites the relevant directors and discovers systemic failure, nothing stops it from escalating to the Governor. But to start with the Governor for an issue that is clearly operational is to put the cart before the horse.
It also sends a wrong signal about how the legislature values the time of critical economic managers. The CBN Governor is not a minister with a small portfolio. His statements move markets. His absence from his desk, even for a day to prepare for and attend a House hearing, has consequences. Every hour he spends in the National Assembly defending pension schedules is an hour he is not spending on monetary policy, on liaising with international partners, or on supervising the financial system.
And to be fair to Cardoso, he has not shown disrespect to the legislature. This is a Governor who has honoured invitations in the past, who has appeared before both chambers, who has provided explanations even on matters that predate his tenure. He has demonstrated, through his actions, that he respects the oversight powers of the National Assembly and understands the principle of separation of powers. That respect should be reciprocated. Respect is not a one-way street. If a man honours your invitation consistently, you do not repay him by making his appearance routine, as if his office has nothing better to do.
There is also the risk of trivializing the summoning power of the House. The power to summon is a powerful constitutional tool. It is meant to be used sparingly and strategically, to compel attendance when other avenues have failed, or when the matter is of such national importance that only the head of the institution can answer. If the House summons the CBN Governor over every issue – from core monetary policy to pension arrears to perhaps soon even staff canteen matters – the power loses its weight. When a truly critical issue arises that demands the Governor’s personal explanation, the invitation will look like just another routine call.
What the House Committee on Pensions should do is simple. As directed by Speaker Abbas Tajudeen, it has four weeks to investigate. In those four weeks, it should call the pension administrators, the relevant regulators like PenCom, and the representatives of the affected pensioners. Let them bring documentary evidence. Let them reconcile the figures. Let them establish whether there was indeed non-implementation of approved policies and whether pensioners were excluded from increases on the basis of extra-statutory conditions. If after that exercise, the Committee finds that the problem is a policy failure that requires a decision from the Governor himself, then and only then should it invite Cardoso to state what corrective measures the Bank will take.
That is orderly, that is professional, and that is how oversight is done in serious parliaments around the world.
The welfare of CBN pensioners is important. After serving the nation, pensioners deserve fairness, transparency and prompt payment. The House is right to champion their cause. But championing their cause does not require dragging the Governor’s name into the headlines every time. Solve the problem by engaging the people who manage the problem daily.
The Green Chamber should not make the dragging of personalities a usual practice. Let it focus on the issues, not the individuals. Let Cardoso be allowed to focus on stabilizing our economy, while his officials answer for administrative lapses under their watch. If our honourable lawmakers do this, both the economy and the pensioners will be better served.
Lawal Nasir is based in Abuja
