By Moses E. Ochonu
As Nigerians, we tend to obsess about the federal government, federal politics, and executive office holders. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, since, as they say, all politics is local, we need to periodically evaluate the performance of our legislative representatives, who are responsible for relaying our problems to the center and for bringing the benefits of national citizenship to us from Abuja.
Legislative effectiveness can be measured in two ways: the number of bills sponsored and co-sponsored, and the number of projects and benefits a legislator brings home to his/her constituency and its people.
In our part of the world, democracy is not considered an abstract undertaking, a system founded on intangible ideals. In 1999, Nigerians did not embrace democracy for its own sake. They did so because its promoters promised that democracy would solve real problems, improve lives, and confer ameliorative benefits on our beleaguered people. Like other people, they regard democracy as a conduit and catalyst for the provision of public goods and consider it a failure when it fails to fulfil that expectation.
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In many parts of the developing world where poverty gives democracy a peculiar character, bread and butter existential issues and anxieties shape people’s expectation and evaluation of elected officials’ performance. A legislator’s performance ledger is often determined not by the bills they authored but by whether and to what degree they have empowered their people with jobs, infrastructure, welfare, and other kinds of help.
We may quibble with this practice as an abuse of the original idea of legislative functions, which is usually about bringing the needs of your constituency into the legislative process so that they can be addressed through legislation, but bringing home projects and money is not as sharp a deviation from the norm as one might think.
Even in America, where they allegedly practice a more established variety of democracy, and where the relative wealth of the country ought to shift the discussion of legislative effectiveness from tangible benefits to intangible, policy-oriented legislative intervention, the idea of legislators using their influence to bring federal benefits to their constituencies is central to legislative politics.
Congress men and women are expected to corral significant slices of budget earmarks, projects, and other goodies towards their constituency. The logic is that, the money belongs to the people in the first place and flows as revenue and taxes from local constituencies to the federal government, so asking for some of that money to fund projects and development in their constituencies is only natural.
That is now a paradigm of American legislative politics. Legislators are rarely remembered by, or rewarded for, their number of sponsored or co-sponsored bills. What people remember more is what tangible resources and projects members of congress brought home to their constituents. Which is why some members of congress now dubiously take credit on social media for goodies contained in legislations they voted against, tweeting dishonestly about how this or that project will transform their constituency or ease the lives of their people because of their legislative efforts. They know that such legislative goodies are what resonate with constituents.
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So powerful is this idea that it is articulated in the everyday language of American culinary offerings. Americans call the legislative process of securing projects and benefits from the federal government “bringing home the bacon.” This phrasing is now a staple of American popular political lexicon.
Americans consider bacon as a food item that makes everything better either as a flavor, condiment, or main component in dishes, so it’s the go-to metaphor for satisfying a need and providing material relief and satisfaction. Bacon is also a popular American metaphor for money, benefits, and other objects of gratification and sustenance. The metaphor thus encompasses the entire gamut of benefits that an effective legislator can attract to his/her constituency.
For those who find the bacon metaphor objectionable for religious reasons, Americans sometimes use the metaphor of cheese.
It is not ideal that legislators become steeped in the provision of direct benefits to constituencies, but the reality of electoral politics everywhere now means that voters expect legislators who earned their votes and want to do so again to bring home the bacon or the cheese.
Coming back home to Nigeria, it is only natural that people in each Nigerian constituency expect and demand tangible dividends from their representatives as the distant and opaque operations of the federal government increasingly fail to directly impact their lives.
In our feeding bottle federalism in which the federal government controls everything and is the preeminent distributor of resources and benefits, a legislator’s effectiveness is judged on the extent to which he/she can extract and channel resources and opportunities from the federal purse to his/her constituency. These could take the form of federal jobs, slots, projects, and opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility for constituents.
In the spirit of prioritising proximate local political impact over distant federal politics, let me go down to the local politics of my constituency of Ado/Okpokwu/Ogbadibo federal constituency (Enone) and say “with my full chest” that my House of Representative member, Dr. Francis Ottah Agbo, has brought home the bacon. He has brought it in various forms — jobs in federal agencies for youths of the constituency, infrastructure projects of various kinds, and direct welfare interventions.
A comprehensive list of his direct impact projects is impossible to compile, but here are some highlights. He forfeited his salary to a cash empowerment scheme for orphans, widows, and other vulnerable constituents. He funds skills acquisition and empowerment programmes for youths of the Constituency, pays JAMB registration fees for all desiring youths, routinely provides relief materials and succor to communities ravaged by natural disasters, and has distributed a variety of Covid-19 palliatives to Enone people. Agbo has provided free high-breed seedlings and other agricultural inputs to farmers in the constituency. Finally, he has distributed empowerment materials such as motorcycles, cars, generators, clippers, hair dryers, grinding machines and many others to ease the socioeconomic and physical mobility of youths and stimulate entrepreneurial endeavors at the grassroots.
It is government money at work, yes, but bringing home the bacon is an art and a science. It requires political skill, acumen, and hard work. It requires getting your proverbial hands dirty and feet wet in the political trenches.
For a politician in the minority especially, it requires a level of political maneuverability that few politicians are capable of. Many of these resources, like those in the American appropriations system, are fought over by many national constituencies in a zero-sum competition for limited resources, projects, and opportunities. Therefore, a politician who successfully steers a large proportion of these benefits to his/her constituencies has done well and naturally attracts the commendation and adulation of his/her constituency. If said politician is in the legislative minority, then they’re punching above their weight.
That is the reason I am happy with my friend, Dr. Agbo, for swamping Enone constituency with the metaphorical bacon and cheese he dexterously attracted from the federal government. His minority caucus membership considered, he has punched way above his political weight, attracting a disproportionately large share of federal resources and opportunities to his constituency.
If he were not my friend, I’d still be happy with his representation, and I’d still be moved to express my satisfaction with his representation so far. But, correcting for the natural biases of friendship, I am placing on the record my acknowledgement of Agbo’s effective representation in the hope that doing so will encourage him to do more for our people.
…Ochonu is a Professor of African History, wrote from the United States of America