According to the US Federal Administrative
Procedure Act 1946, an administrative “agency means each authority … of the
Government of the United States other than Congress, the courts.”17
In other words, an administrative agency is constituted by the executive branch of government. You should note that
the executive branch of government may be
called an administrative agency because it implements the laws enacted by the legislature. Also, the executive arm
may be so-called by virtue of the fact
that there are constitutional provisions which expressly delegate power to it.
Again, when an enabling Statute delegates power to an administrative agency, it is the executive that, in fact, inaugurates or empanels the administrative agency.
S. 5 of the CFRN 1999 establishes the executive arm
of government. It is pursuant to this provision that administrative agencies
come under the umbrella of the executive branch. These agencies are to be found
at the Federal, State and local government levels.
Kenneth Culp Davis has offered a more descriptive or functional
definition of an administrative agency. According
to him, an administrative agency is a governmental authority, other than a
court and a legislative body, which
affects the rights of private parties through either adjudication, rule-making
investigating, prosecuting, negotiating,
settling, or informally acting.
You should note that an administrative agency may be called by different names such as a commission, board, authority,
bureau, office, officer, administrator, department, corporation,
administration, division, or agency.19 Also worthy of note is the
fact that for agencies that are created by the
constitution or whose existence is constitutionally recognized, their powers
and functions are to be found in the Constitution itself. On the other hand, the powers or functions of
statutory agencies are contained in the enabling Acts. It is this cluster of powers and functions
– with which they affect the
private rights and obligations －that make administrative agencies tick.
Administrative agencies are ubiquitous in the sense that they
are found everywhere – at the Federal,
State, and local government levels. And administrative agencies appear to be
jacks-of-all trade – doing those things that all the other arms or branches of
government can do. For example, they are,
like the legislature, authorized to prescribe rules and regulations; to, like
the prosecutors and judiciary, empowered to determine whether or not the law
has been violated and to impose penalty as appropriate; and to, like the
President of the country, confer
privileges on persons or institutions they deem
fit.
Powers and Functions
of some Federal Administrative Agencies
As we have earlier observed, agencies could be
created either by the Constitution
or by Statute. In the former, the
Constitution directly recognizes or creates some agencies and vest in them
appropriate powers and functions. As far as the latter is concerned, the
National Assembly creates or authorizes the creation of agencies when it
delegates power to an administrative agency.
Recall that since the National Assembly has the exclusive capacity to
legislate on the 68 items contained in the Exclusive List of the CFRN 1999, it
is potentially the greatest creator of administrative agencies. Note that the
status of the agencies created by the
CFRN and by Acts of the National
Assembly differs. Such difference is a direct reflection of the discrepancy
between the constitution and a statute. We will
now discuss some constitutionalized agencies and statutory agencies.
Constitutionalized Agencies
S. 153(1) of the CFRN directly creates many agencies including, inter alia, the Code of Conduct Bureau, Federal Character
Commission, Federal Civil Service Commission, Federal Judicial Service
Commission, and the Independent National Electoral Commission. By virtue of S. 153(2), the composition and powers or functions of these bodies are contained in
Part I of the Third Schedule to the CFRN. We
shall look at them seriatim.
Code of Conduct Bureau
The Code of Conduct Bureau, which consists of
a Chairman and nine other members, is empowered in Paragraph 3 to:
a) receive assets declarations by public officers;
b) examine the declarations in accordance with the Code of
Conduct or any law;
c) retain custody of such declarations and make them available for
inspection by any citizen of Nigeria on such terms and conditions as the National
Assembly may prescribe;
d) ensure compliance with and, where appropriate, enforce the
provisions of the Code of Conduct or any law
relating thereto;
e) receive complaints about non-compliance with or breach of the
provisions of the Code of Conduct or any law in relation thereto, investigate
the complaint and, where appropriate, refer such matters
to the Code of Conduct Tribunal;
f) appoint, promote, dismiss and exercise disciplinary control over
the staff of the Code of Conduct Bureau in accordance with the provisions of an
Act of the National Assembly enacted
in that behalf; and
g) Carry out such other functions as may be conferred upon it by the National Assembly.
You should note that the nucleus of the duties of the bureau is the
prevention and control of corruption amongst public officers. These officers
are required to periodically declare their assets so that any accretion to their wealth can be
justified or queried. The bureau does this against the background of the Code
of Conduct for Public Officers (Part I, Fifth Schedule). Any violation is forwarded to the Code of
Conduct Tribunal (Part I, Fifth Schedule) for necessary action.
(b) Federal Character Commission
Set up by Paragraph 7 of the Schedule, the
Federal Character Commission in Paragraph 8 has power to:
(a)
work out an
equitable formula subject to the approval of the National Assembly for the
distribution of all cadres of posts in the public service of the Federation and
of the States, the armed forces of the Federation, the Nigeria Police Force and
other government security agencies, government owned companies and parastatals
of States;
(b)
promote, monitor
and enforce compliance with the principles of proportional sharing of all
bureaucratic, economic, media, and political posts at all levels of government;
(c)
take such legal
measures, including the prosecution of the head or staff of any Ministry or
government body or agency which fails to comply with any federal character principle
or formula prescribed or adopted by the Commission; and
(d)
carry out such other
functions as may be conferred upon it
by an Act of the National Assembly.
(e) For federal character-related comments, see Module 2, Unit 3.
Federal Judicial Service Commission
a. Advise the
National Judicial Council in nominating persons for the appointment of the
Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), a Justice of the Supreme Court, the President
of the Court of Appeal, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, a Judge of
the Federal High Court, and the Chairman and members of the Code of Conduct Tribunal;
b. Recommend to the
National Judicial Council, the removal from office of the judicial officers
specified in sub-paragraph (a) of this paragraph; and
c. Appoint, dismiss
and exercise disciplinary control over the Chief Registrars and Deputy Chief
Registrars of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the Federal High Court and all other members
of the staff of the judicial service of the Federation not otherwise specified
in this Constitution and of the Federal Judicial Service Commission
Paragraph 12 of the Schedule establishes the
Commission. It has power to:
Federal Civil Service Commission
Paragraph 11 of the Schedule vests in the Commission the power:
(a) to appoint
persons to offices
in the Federal Civil Service;
and
(b) to dismiss
and exercise disciplinary control over persons
holding such offices.
Independent
National Electoral Commission
The Independent national Electoral Commission
(INEC) is in Paragraph 15 empowered to, inter
alia, organize, undertake and supervise all elections to the offices of the
President and Vice-President, the Governor and Deputy Governor of a State, and to the membership of the Senate,
the House of Representatives and the House of Assembly of each State of the
Federation; arrange and conduct the registration of persons qualified to vote
and prepare, maintain and revise the register of voters for election purposes.
The Commission is also charged with the duty
of registering political parties, and monitoring their organization and operation.
For a country like Nigeria that is still trying
to find its democratic feet, the role of INEC cannot be overemphasized. The
country has had the problem of electoral
rigging every time elections are held with the latest being the 2007 elections
that brought the different regimes at both Federal and States levels to power. You
will recall that one of the
reasons for Buhari and Atiku’s seeking
judicial invalidation of the election of
the late President Yaradua was
because of the massive rigging that marked the elections. And Yaradua’s inauguration of the Uwais Panel
was born of his desire to put in place
a system that would guarantee that every vote counts.
Statutory Agencies
In its capacity as the law-making arm of
government, the National Assembly has enacted or is deemed to have enacted so
many Statutes which authorized the establishment of administrative agencies.
Such Statutes include the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Act
2004, Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) Act 2000, and NDLEA Act
of 1989. Note that these statutes respectively established the EFCC, ICPC, and
NDLEA.
Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
This is an anti-corruption, anti-money
laundering agency established to combat corruption, money laundering and other
financial crimes. It was established by the Federal Government in response to
the external stimuli generated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on
Money Laundering. FATF had declared Nigeria to be Non-Cooperating Country or
Territory (NCCT), that is, a country which inadequately provided against money
laundering.
Some of the functions of the Commission under
S. 6 of the Act includes the investigation of all financial crimes including
advance fee fraud, computer credit card fraud, contract scam, etc; the
coordination and enforcement of all economic and financial crimes laws and
enforcement functions conferred on any other person or authority; and the
adoption of measures to identify, trace, freeze, confiscate or seize proceeds
derived from terrorist activities, economic and financial crimes-related
offences or the properties the value of which corresponds to such proceeds.
Additionally, S. 7 of the Act empowers the
Commission to cause investigation to be conducted as to whether any person,
corporate body or organization has committed an offence under the Act.
Moreover, the Commission is empowered to cause investigations to be conducted
into the properties of any person if it appears to the Commission that the
person’s lifestyle and extent of the properties are not justified by his source
of income.
In a country like ours where many persons have
assets or wealth whose origin they cannot confidently disclose, the relevant
provisions of the Act are salutary. The
EFCC appears to have made some modest progress in its task of cleansing our
corrupt system as manifested in the number of convictions it has recorded and,
most important, the assets it has confiscated or forfeited. However, the EFCC
appears not to be making use or good use
of S. 7 as it tends to generally believe that its capacity to investigate a
corruption allegation is dependent on the willingness of aggrieved members of
the public to report to or petition the body.
Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC)
The setting up of the ICPC in 2000 was about
the first attempt by the country to tame the hydra-headedness of corruption
both in high and low places. Under S. 6 of the Act, the Commission has a duty
to receive and investigate any report of the conspiracy to commit or attempt the commission of the offence of corruption.
As we can notice clearly, the ICPC predated
the EFCC. The relationship between the two agencies is that while the ICPC
focuses more on corruption generally, the EFCC concerns itself with particular
aspects of corruption bordering on financial crimes. There are, however, cases
of overlap in their functions. This has generated calls by some individuals for
the government to rationalize the two agencies.
National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA)
S.3 of the NDLEA
Act 1989 provides for the functions of the NDLEA. Some of them are the:
•
Adoption of
measures to eradicate illicit cultivation of narcotic plants and to eliminate
illicit demand for narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances with a view to
reducing human suffering and eliminating financial incentives for illicit
traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances;
•
Adoption of
measures to identify, trace, freeze,
confiscate or seize proceeds derived from drug-related offences or property
whose value corresponds to such
proceeds; and
•
With a view to ascertaining whether any person has involved in offences under
the Act or in the proceeds of any such offences, to cause investigations to be
conducted into the properties of any person
if it appears to the agency that that person’s life style and extent of the
properties are not justified by his
ostensible source of income, taking such measures that may ensure the
elimination and prevention of the root causes of the problems of narcotic drugs
and psychotropic substances; Administrative agencies are called by different names by
different governments. They equally perform different functions.
In Nigeria, there are such agencies directly created or
recognized by the CFRN unlike others
which are the creation of Acts of the National Assembly. Some of these agencies
are charged with responsibilities critical to the survival of the country. In this regard, the EFCC, the
ICPC, and NDLEA are exemplary.
Administrative agencies are to be found in all
sectors of the economy. In your environment, you should cultivate the habit of
identifying such agencies and their functions and powers.
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