Last week, we discussed how senator Abboh announced his arrival as the youngest member of the house of sin (Sinate) by assaulting a pregnant woman, one of those Nigerians for whom he is supposed to be making laws and conducting oversight functions.
The Red Chamber as a group has also committed the ‘sin’ of turning the serious business of lawmaking into one huge joke. They created the local and global record of approving the whole ministerial nominees submitted by the President (23 of them without any questions) including the one who unabashedly declared that he had a right to decide when and when not, to obey court orders.
A member who had a corruption case dangling around his neck was made a ranking member of the committee on EFCC, just like those with electoral cases were in the past asked to overseas INEC! That was why Senator Abaribe referred to the exercise as an endorsement hearing, rather than a confirmation hearing!
The Senate has also been transformed from a retirement home for former governors and party leaders to an old people’s home of sorts. Analogue oldies who were in charge while I was shouting Ali-Must Go at UI in more than 30 years ago, are now our lawmakers. What do old people do? They dream (Acts 2.17; Joel 3:1) and how do they dream? They sleep!
Young ones also dream but when they dream, they wake up and pursue the dreams and that is why it is a vision. The oldies dream and dream on. You want me to name names? Just go to the net and search for sleeping Sinators! Some have been in government for the past 40 years and having been retired and tired, they sought accommodation in the Senate, the only OPH funded directly from the federal purse! And this is because of the caliber of the old people there.
Our people say that when the she-goat is chewing cod, the kids watch and learn. While those in the house of sin are retired, tired and old, and thus respond to natural imperatives by sleeping, the young ones in the Green Chamber are younger, more agile, full of energy and are still seeing visions. Therefore, they have to find ways of using these youthful attributes and thus they transform themselves to horrible boxers and wrestlers.
In the Senate, the President listened to the voice of the opposition party (did you say parties…?) while constituting its leadership team. In the Green Chamber, the Speaker spoke only to his own interest and decided to appoint minority officers for the minority party. The ‘winners’ are Mr Elumelu (Minority Leader) Toby Okechukwu (Deputy Minority Leader) Gideon Gwani (Minority Whip) and Adesegun Adekoya (Deputy Minority Whip).
This is against the nominees of the PDP for these posts (Kingsley Chinda, Minority Leaders; Chukwuka Onyema, Deputy Minority Leader, Yakubu Barde, Minority Whip and Muraina Ajibola, Deputy Minority Whip). I must admit that I don’t know how this is usually done either constitutionally or politically.
Members of the opposition party took exception to that. It is a normal political and social tendency for people to take offence whenever they feel cheated. However, the members reacted in a way that is far from honourable. They engaged in first class pugilism and free-style wrestling in which there was neither a referee nor a linesman and everything was thrown into the ring!
It was a horrible scene acted by horrible members! My heart beat widely when I heard the name, Chinda, as I immediately remembered the River State House of Assembly crises of about 6 years ago. But I don’t think it is the same Chinda and I can’t confirm whether both of them are related. However, if I were in that house, I would have been very cautious when that name cropped up. If you want to know why, go and review what happened in Port Harcourt during that wild-wild legislative era, when five became the majority against 26 and there were up to three maces in ‘attendance’.
The Rivers State scenario of old is also repeating itself at Edo and Bauchi states where the simple grammatical mathematics of minority and majority has become difficult to interpret. On Bauchi, two Speakers emerged while in Edo; only 9 out of 24 were inaugurated and shared all the offices among themselves. Honourable indeed!
Other Matters: Checkpoints, security and the ease of travelling
The gods are angry, a sacrifice must be performed and the white chalk is needed! This is what a policemen, detailed to provide security along the Benin bypass told me thrice, on Thursday 8 August 2019. The man was a Yoruba man, who spoke a good dose of Igbo, which he claimed to have learnt while serving in Lagos.
However, let me begin the story from the beginning. I had to go home for a thousand and one engagements, the key one being the Igbo-Ukwu 2019 Ili-ji (new yam festival). On my entourage were my beloved, the Acting President of Igbo-Ukwu Development Union, and a driver I had hired to drive me down for that day (You see, the son of man is going down gradually and that was why the man who drove effortlessly from Enugu to Jos, to Gombe, to Maiduguri Kano, Kaduna Abuja and back to Enugu) is now finding it difficult to drive from Lagos to the east).
We had left Lagos around 5.30am and our estimated arrival time (EAT), barring any traffic gridlock, was circa 12noon. However, the Nigerian Policemen were on duty! Between Ijebu-Ode and Benin, we encountered more than 50 police roadblocks. At a stage, it was so bad that while you being harassed at roadblock X, you would notice roadblock Y, about 500m away.
And each contingent would search the booth of the car, check your particulars, and ask for your tinted permit and all that. The consequence was that despite the free flow of traffic, we got home around 3pm! And the extra 3 hour delay was due to the activities of the policemen who were searching for herdsmen in the boot of our car. And one of them was the man who demanded for white chalk with which to make sacrifices to the gods of Benin!
Is that how the catch the herdsmen who emerge from the bush, strike and disappear? Do the herdsmen wear red caps; drive along the expressway and particularly on Sagamu-Benin Expressway? How do stationary police teams, whom everybody knows where they are stationed, provide security? Why do policemen allow easy passage to unregistered cars who pay 200 naira per checkpoint but asks those whose cars are duly registered for documents?
And which one is better: the policemen, who stop, search and ask asinine questions or soldiers who just block the road with logs of wood and watch as you people struggle over the consequential artificial traffic? And back to my police friend, who made him a priest of Bini Kingdom and why must he be the priest to demand for white chalk for the sacrifice…along the expressway? . We have been measuring ease of doing business. It is time we start measuring ease of travelling because ease of travelling is also related to ease of doing business!
Ik Muo
