The
present Senate serving the Nigerian people runs the risk of being remembered as
the worst since 1999. Public Relations Consultants and media officials of
this particular Senate have done their part flooding both the print and the
online media with details of how productive the Bukola Saraki-led Senate has
been, and they have been quite aggressive in telling us about 30 important
Bills which when passed, will change the face of Nigeria and deliver change.
The
Senate according to one report has considered over 125 bills, debated over 48
motions, and passed three bills. But nobody is apparently impressed. During the
Jonathan administration, the Senate was the better regarded of the two
legislative chambers. While members of the House of Representatives in the
Seventh Assembly behaved as if they were a band of students’ unionists, the
then Red Chamber projected an image of maturity and temperance, even if it was
also self-serving! With the 8th Assembly, the House of
Representatives, apart from the shameful resort to physical combat over the
distribution of “juicy” committees in November 2015, has shown itself to be
better organized than the present Senate. The critical difference is that of
leadership. It is one of management. It is a matter of weight and
politics.
What is
clear is that the leadership recruitment and selection process in the
legislative arm of government is as critical as it is in any other sphere of
government. During the 7th Assembly, the politics of the
emergence of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal,
a PDP lawmaker who became an agent and later, chieftain of the opposition
party, ensured that the House remained almost permanently in a frosty
relationship with the Executive. Likewise, the manner of Bukola Saraki’s
emergence as Senate President, marked again by alleged disloyalty to his own
party and collusion with the opposition for personal gains, has laid the
foundation for the supremacy of intrigues, cabals, and the politics of mischief
in a Chamber that should be devoted strictly to the making of laws for the good
governance of Nigeria.
His
colleague in the House of Representatives also emerged under controversial
circumstances, but Yakubu Dogara’s politics seems to be better managed.
Saraki’s politics is made more complex by the fact that he has strong roots in
the two dominant parties in the National Assembly and has proven to be
extremely influential across party lines, making him a dominant force in Nigeria’s
current power equation, and most certainly, a threat to other power centres.
Online,
the Saraki-led Senate claims that it has done a lot, even if it has spent more
time being on vacation in less than a year, and obsessed daily with the
politics of contradictions. The Senate President once reportedly boasted that
the Senate under his watch has helped to block corruption by helping Nigeria to
save money. He talked about the Senate’s probe of the Treasury Single
Account (TSA). But now, here is the contradiction: Many Nigerians would
find it difficult to see how a Senate whose leader is on trial for
corruption-related matters, and that has chosen to buy for its members, luxury
SUV vehicles at inflated cost can claim to be helping Nigerians at a time when
the economy is on a tragic downward spiral, and yet the same Senators had
allegedly collected vehicle loans. This has brought the Senate condemnation
from both the Nigeria Labour Congress and a coalition of about 400
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
But we
know where the problem lies: politicians are always playing games, and the
Senate under Bukola Saraki’s watch has acted more than once, as if it is
against the people. This Senate has had to reverse itself thrice in the last
one month following public outcry about its lack of moral rectitude. The
painful reality is that the impression has now been created that the Senate as
presently constituted is playing the politics of one man. It has reduced itself
to a Saraki-must-stay-and-the-Executive-and-anti-Saraki-APC-leaders-must-bow-Red-Chamber.
Most members of the House of Representatives have tactfully stayed away from
this abuse of privilege and utter contempt for the original mandate of the
National Assembly, but they need to be advised to also stay away from the kind
of infectious madness that seems to be seizing hold of the Senate. It is a form
of madness that encourages recourse to farce, burlesque and conspicuous
acquisition.
Determined
to show support for their embattled Senate President who is on trial before the
Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), and whose name has also been mentioned in the
Panama Papers scandal, many of the Senators abandoned the Senate Chambers and
started following their boss to the Tribunal. On one occasion as many as close
to 50 Senators abandoned their primary assignment and chose to go and play
politics at the Tribunal. If this seeming relocation of the Senate to the
Code of Conduct Tribunal was meant to intimidate the presiding judge, His
Lordship has refused to be intimidated, either by the crowd or the convoy of
buses or the retinue of 90 defence lawyers. He has now chosen to attend
to the case on a daily basis. The number of Senators doing follow-follow has
since reduced: it will of course, be absurd to shut down the entire Senate to
embark on sycophantic frolic. Nonetheless, the Saraki case is taking its toll
on the Senate. It has placed it on a collision course with a court of competent
jurisdiction, with the Executive and also divided the ruling All Progressives
Congress.
It has
also led to a situation whereby the lawmakers even attempted to change the Code
of Conduct Bureau Act in an obvious attempt to frustrate the Saraki
trial. In less than 48 hours, the amendment bill went through first and
second readings. If there had been no public outcry, the lawmakers would have
passed the bill in less than 72 hours. It would have been the fastest
piece of legislation ever, and yet it was meant to be self-serving: making a
law to sabotage due process, even when they know that a law cannot have
retroactive effect. When that failed, our Senators came up with the ingenious
idea that the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal must appear before the
Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions. An indignant crowd
of civil society agitators also shut that down. The Chairman of the CCT
has also been a target of campaigns of calumny. Saraki’s supporters are
throwing everything possible into this matter, where the legal process fails,
the legislative process is deployed; when that also fails, an internet war,
rallies, protests, all designed to win the public mind is launched.
Senate
President Bukola Saraki may not have read Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws
of Power, for he seems to have broken too many of those laws already;
perhaps he has read The Art of War by Sun Tzu. He should have
been told that to rush headlong into war without mastering the dynamics of
power is costly. This is one bitter political lesson about the strategy of war
that Senator Saraki is currently learning. But now that he has gone
so deep into the battlefield, he may no longer be allowed to surrender or
retreat, even as his troops are gradually fleeing. Saraki has stepped on the
proverbial Banana peel; as he struggles for survival, our Senate, the people’s
Senate, must not be allowed to fail as a public institution. Senator Saraki
should step aside, for now, as Senate President. If he emerges victorious from
his travails, his colleagues should do him the honour of reinstating him to
that office of honour, without question. But if he loses, he should remember
that war only offers two possibilities, and even when a warrior wins, there may
still be dangers on the way back home. In all, the politics of Saraki’s trial
should not consume the Senate, and indeed the 8th Assembly.
“So far, so good”, Saka Olawale wrote assessing the
present Senate. I don’t think so. If anything, this Senate needs to be rescued.
Whatever explanations our present set of Senators offers would be difficult to
believe given the manner in which they have exposed their own limitations. The
Senate cannot even keep documents. Copies of the 2016 Budget vanished from its
custody. The copies when eventually found mutated into versions unknown to the
Executive arm that presented the same Budget at an open ceremony.
For five
months, the Senate is embroiled in a needless controversy over the content of
the Budget. What is worse: In almost one year, no Senator can be quoted as
having said anything engaging or profound. The only Senator who makes a serious
effort to display some common sense is far more active on Twitter than on the
floor of the Senate. The more prominent Senators are known for their rabid
politicking or their wardrobe or exotic cars or the comedy that they provide.
One of them even came up with a bill to gag free speech. It was in this same
Senate that some male chauvinists declared that women cannot have any equal
rights with men, and so a Gender Equality Bill is unacceptable.
They
failed to realize that in the United States, whose Constitutional democracy we
are copying, a woman is only a short distance away from emerging as
Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party and as 45th President
of the United States. I imagine many of them struggling to be photographed with
the same woman if they are so privileged. Was it also not in this same Senate
that a member argued that Nigerian lawmakers should only patronize
Made-in-Nigeria-women? This was meant to be a “brilliant” contribution to a
debate on the need to promote Made-in-Nigeria goods. How dumb! And this
kindergarten level statement actually generated some debate!
Challenging
as the democratic process may have been, Nigerians can still remember a few
Senators of old who sat in that same Assembly and made impact with their
interventions and insightful speeches. To now have a group of Senators who
crack jokes, borrow their imageries from road side bars, embark on a frolic, or
spend time on sycophantic exertions, and when called upon, prove annoyingly
incapable of analyzing and interrogating policies and making solid
contributions is sad. We expect this to change.
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