In my last week’s column titled: ‘Rising spate of strongmen in Nigerian politics,’ I reviewed the dominance of strongmen and continued existence of weak institutions in the nation’s polity.
I submitted that while South Africa is blazing the trail in Africa in building strong institutions with the resignation of former President Jacob Zuma and his subsequent corruption trial, Nigeria, the supposed ‘Giant of Africa’, is leading from behind as it is replete with strongmen who have shown by their actions and inactions that they are bigger than our institutions.
On Thursday last week, I was stunned by the submissions of the Personal Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie, who poured invective on a fellow radio guest on Kiss FM Abuja, for urging Mr President to throw in the towel on grounds of ill-health. She didn’t stop there, she went further by calling the guest, a legal practitioner, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘ignorant’. How low can the President’s handlers go in defending their principal?
Last week’s snubbing of the Senate by the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, for the third consecutive time and his response to Senate’s resolution describing him as an ‘enemy of democracy’ and ‘unfit to hold public office within and outside Nigeria’, clearly indicates that the police boss has the strong backing of the powers that be.
Otherwise, how can you justify the fact that the leadership of the National Assembly had reported the chief law enforcement officer to President Buhari, yet nothing was done about it? This goes to show one thing: if Idris could flagrantly disrespect the directives of the Commander-in-Chief on the incessant killings in Benue State, much less the Nigerian Senate.
I can’t agree less with the submission of a distinguished colleague, Fred Itua, who described the Senate as being ‘officially dead’. What is left now is its funeral.
On the other hand, the Saraki-led Senate is the architect of its own misfortune. Where is the report of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters on President Buhari’s payment of $496 million to the United States Government for the purchase of twelve Tucano military aircraft without National Assembly approval? This report should have been submitted a fortnight ago. What happened to the report of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs on the alleged harassment of the Chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee, Matthew Urhoghide, for asking his colleagues to invoke Section 143 of the 1999 Constitution against the President? What about the report of the Aliyu Wamakko-led Committee mandated to investigate the allegation of $25 billion contract scandal levelled against the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Maikanti Baru by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu? The nine-man panel was inaugurated since October 2017.
Truth is: when your sense of judgement is clouded by political consideration for a President that wants your funeral at all cost, you become an object of ridicule to his aides. Nobody takes you serious any longer.
This explains why the IGP, in a swift response to Senate resolution, described it as a “deliberate blackmail, witch-hunting with mischievous motives to hand-twist the IGP to pervert the end of justice…” The statement was silent on the spate of killings across the country, which formed the second leg of his invitation by the upper legislative chamber.
As it stands, the Senate President has only succeeded in digging his own grave. Like former Roman general and statesman, Julius Caesar, who was assassinated by a group of nobles in the Senate, Saraki has also been butchered by the Executive on the slaughter slab, as we await his interment.
Meanwhile, with three months to the commencement of party primaries for the 2019 general elections, most senators nursing reelection bid may most likely not return.
The just-concluded – or maybe not – nationwide ward and local government congresses of the All Progressives Congress (APC), have left most lawmakers with bloody nose, having failed to install their loyalists as ward and local government party executives.
From Cross River, Oyo, Ogun, Rivers, Kaduna, Bauchi, Zamfara, Kogi, Ondo to Kano States, lawmakers have opened the Book of Lamentations to express their displeasure about the exercise. The victims include: Rabiu Kwankwanso, Monsurat Sunmonu, Magnus Abe, Isah Misau, Kabir Marafa, John Enoh, Suleiman Hunkuyi, Shehu Sani, Adeola Olamilekan, Ajayi Borroffice, Yele Omogunwa, Dino Melaye among others.
Since the bulk of automatic delegates at both levels to elect Senatorial and House of Representatives candidates during primary elections are from there, the implication is that any federal lawmaker that has been shut out at these levels, is as good as not securing a return ticket – except of course he defects and flies the flag of another political party.
