Dr. Reuben Abati
Dr. Reuben Abati
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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