Jonamisogyny in Tambuwal’s House

A new word is eager to come into existence and enrich our political lexicon. The word is “jonamisogyny”. It is coined from Jona (often used in social media as a diminutive for Jonathan, the surname of our President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan), and the English word “misogyny”, defined by my Wordweb dictionary as “hatred for women”.

The prefix Jona puts misogyny in a special category as “hatred for women associated with Jonathan” – an approximate definition of the new word. For the actual definition of “jonamisogyny”, as deducible from the exposition that is to follow, is “hatred for women serving in Jonathan’s government”.

Like the recently coined word “sanusisation” (from Sanusi, the first and last names of the suspended Governor of our Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi), which means “engaging in unabashed self-contradiction” or “unabashedly making self-contradictory claims about the same matter” – as Mr. Sanusi did by giving $49.8 billion, $12 billion and $20 billion as the amount he alleged was missing from our nation’s coffers under the Jonathan administration – I think “jonamisogyny” would be a good word to add to the English dictionary for general use.

That’s besides its local identification with an era in our political evolution, in which undermining the incumbent President either directly or by demoralising his appointees has become a major index of political “astuteness” for those who engage in such conduct and their supporters, a trend that sparked national outrage with the directive of the opposition party to its federal legislators to block the 2014 budget, signalling the subjection of national interest to petty partisan politics.

The new word has arisen from the attitude of the House of Representatives which Hon. Aminu Tambuwal heads as Speaker to three distinguished female appointees of President Jonathan, namely, Ms. Arunma Otteh, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke.

First, Otteh: As Director General of Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), she openly accused Hon. Herman Hembe, a member of the House of Representatives, of dealing corruptly with SEC. Without negating the allegation, the House recommended Otteh’s sack at the end of its seemingly distractive “investigation” of her that followed; the “investigation” had to do with allegations of mismanagement and corruption against her. And after President Jonathan refused to remove her from office as recommended by the House, the House withdrew SEC’s allocation from the 2013 budget apparently to starve the organisation of funds and frustrate her out of office.

Curiously, Hon. Tambuwal later alleged that President Jonathan’s body language condones corruption, while seeming oblivious that his ignoring the House’s sanction on Otteh after she accused one of his colleagues of corruption can be interpreted as a sign of his encouraging corruption by his own body language.

And here’s what a former National Youth Service Corp member with SEC, writing in Nairaland Forum, said of Otteh in response to the allegation of corruption against her: “…that lady is one fine anti-corruption Amazon. They want to frustrate her out of office so it will return to business as usual”. (Source: http://www.nairaland.com/994380/why-fg-reinstated-arunma-oteh)    

Enter Okonjo-Iweala: The Finance Committee of the House of Representatives, chaired by Hon. Abdul-Mumini Jibrin, invited her for a presentation and having arrived she pleaded with the committee for another date to make the presentation, citing ill-health. But rather than grant that simple request, even on compassionate grounds, Mr. Jibrin responded to her with a brusqueness that included these words: “Listen, you can decide what will happen only in the Ministry of Finance but not in the Committee of Finance.”

Who can read Mr. Jibrin’s remark closely and his disposition as he uttered it and not notice the male chauvinism behind it, of a man who believes in promoting male domination rather than merit in public service, who feels his ego threatened in the proximity of an accomplished woman, and so betrays impulsive animosity towards her as a symbol of the empowerment of her gender as “rivals” to men like him who would rather return us to the pre-affirmative action era when unprogressive men would deny a woman the opportunity to occupy an important office even if she was the most qualified person to do so?

Yet, we have a sign of the worsening of the antagonism of the House (under Hon. Tambuwal) to women in Jonathan’s government in its recent directive to its Committee on Public Accounts to investigate the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, for “the alleged squandering of N10 billion over a two-year period on the arbitrary charter and maintenance of a Challenger 850 aircraft for unofficial use”, following a motion by Hon. Samuel Babatunde Adejare (APC, Lagos), as reported inThis Day of March 21, 2014. (My emphasis.)

The This Day report further states that “the House also mandated its Committee on Natural Gas to scrutinise the non-remittance of funds accruing from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG) to the Federation Account from 2004 to date,” as Hon. Adejare further alleged against Mrs. Allison-Madueke, and that the House was “acting on what it termed reliable evidence.” (My emphasis).  

Indeed, nothing may be said against an arm of government acting as if it seeks to extract probity from a public servant, even as Mr. Hembe’s case suggests that it would rather not point its searchlight for probity on its own members. But when that acting reveals prejudice against a potential or current subject of an investigation, it becomes deserving of the critical attention of people like this writer, who believes that institutions of state should not be reduced to avenues for promoting bias, or that the temple of justice, at whatever level, should not be allowed to be desecrated by the chauvinism of those who seek to administer justice in whatever form.

The prejudicial and therefore defective nature of the House’s case against Mrs. Allison-Madueke is apparent from its reference to her alleged charter of the aircraft as “arbitrary” and the supposed evidence against her as “reliable”. Two seemingly plain words but heavily laden with significance, especially when one considers their implication that the House has ruled on the culpability of the accused even before investigating the allegations against her. As a mark of neutrality, which is necessary for fair hearing, the House should have waited to arrive at the conclusion as to whether the charter was “arbitrary” or not, and the “evidence” reliable or otherwise, after an investigation at which she makes her full defence. Not before, as in the present case.    

Isn’t the behaviour of the House like that of someone asked to conduct a national census, who then makes a comment suggesting which part of the country is more populated even before he has commenced the exercise, justifying his being divested of the responsibility for that prejudicial comment?

Faced with such glaring institutional prejudice, would the accused be wrong in believing that she cannot be given fair hearing by her would-be investigators? I think not. 

It remains to state my conviction that the House’s “case” against Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, like those against Ms. Arunma Otteh and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is in furtherance of the negative politics of trying to undermine the Jonathan Presidency directly or by demoralising people, especially women, in his government – a manifestation of chronic “jonamisogyny”.

Ikeogu Oke