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.
REUBEN
ABATI IS A JOURNALIST AND FORMER MEDIA SPOKESMAN TO PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN
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