by Alexander O. Onukwue

The Senate passed a bill to grant its members and other legislators immunity covering every matter discussed in plenary and at meetings of committees.

It was one of the 33 bills passed on Wednesday as part of the Constitution Review. The immunity clause, as we might loosely call it, has not gone down well with some observers.

Why should the Senate grant itself another form of immunity?

It already has one which it shares with the President and State Governors, preventing them from prosecution while they serve in office. Now they get to have another sheen of covering for anything they choose to say while at plenary?

The full title of the Bill says that it seeks to “institutionalize legislative bureaucracy in the Constitution” and that it is in line with international best practices, but it still doesn’t make it a suspect move. Ideally, the idea would be that granting the legislators immunity for what they say during official meetings will make them come clean on true and sensitive matters which their constituents want to know about.

However, that could also provide them the license with which to make incriminating statements without being held liable for them.

The Senate and other legislative houses by extension are generally in the bad books of Nigerians for being the bane of the progress of the nation, mainly due to an apparent inclination to corrupt tendencies. The major bone of contention with this new immunity clause is whether it makes the legislators more accountable and transparent or not. If in the negative, it surely would not be in the interest of democracy and the progress of the nation.

Editor