Did Abaribe, others slumber away in Senate as colleagues ‘sowed tares’ into Electoral Act?

Nigerians, who thought that the minority members in the Senate could be any different from other senators, or may be of any relevance to the Nigerian people beyond their self-interest, may have abandoned that notion long ago. The lawmakers showed their colour early in the life of the 10th Assembly.

At the outset of the 10th National Assembly, the buzz word was that the opposition senators and members of the House of Representatives would checkmate their colleagues from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

But over time, they have proven that there is no difference between an APC senator and PDP or LP or APGA senator. They have a common goal- to remain relevant, and if possible, in the National Assembly, till death.

The goodies they enjoy there make it difficult for anybody to differentiate between the opposition lawmaker and a legislator-member of the APC when they debate on matters that revolve round their perpetuation in office or the remunerations that should come to them.

The way these things go, it would seem that the opposition senators and Reps have perfected their plan to always feel distracted, go into momentary trance or even absent themselves from chambers whenever issues that may put them on the spot is to be debated.

This probably could have explained what happened on the floor of the Senate last Wednesday.

By the way, some of these lawmakers may have secured their seats at the National Assembly as a result of the glitches that were allowed in 2023 by the immediate past INEC chairman, Yakubu Mahmood. So, to expect that they can possibly cover that route ahead another crucial election is sheer hallucination. Nigerians were disappointed that their votes could not count in some of the elections because the technology that they thought would have been deployed to ensure credibility of the elections was not used. The then INEC boss leveraged a provision that made the deployment of technology discretionary.

So, the masses of Nigeria have been on the National Assembly’s jugular on the need to amend that clause and make it boldly mandatory for the INEC to deploy e-transmission of result in 2027. That aspect of the Electoral Act was especially the most important to many Nigerians.

So, on the day the all-important debate on Clause 60, which directly deals with electronic transmission of election results was debated, Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia South) and his minority members apparently slumbered right inside the chamber (obviously distracted). They were so deep in the slumbering that they did not know when the “enemy’ sowed tares into the Act.

At the moment Tahir Mongunu, Senate chief whip, looked toward the section of the chamber where the opposition senators were sitting, he saw what looked like dead “men and women” snoring away. Pronto, he moved the motion that the Senate should retain Clause 60 “as enshrined in the 2022 Electoral Act.”

Then, in what equally looked like a choreographed coup, Jibrin Barau, deputy Senate president, seconded the motion in a muttering tone. And before anybody could say “Jack”, and before many lawmakers could process the implication of retaining the word “transfer” instead of explicitly mandating real-time electronic transmission, the presiding officer, who had been waiting in the winds, muttered something like a voice vote and followed in quick succession with the hitting of the gavel. He now shouted triumphantly, “The ayes have it.”

In fact, it was his sonorous and celebratory voice that jolted the opposition senators back to life, and they began to scream, “whodunit!” when the Rubicon had already been crossed.

Like the Jewish rulers who wanted to deny the resurrection of Christ, Abaribe and his colleagues wanted to feign ignorance of the coup against the Nigerian people. Immediately, they sprang up on their feet to sandpaper their laxity.

Thousands if years ago, the soldiers guarding the tomb where Christ’s body was lai, after his crucifixion, were sternly instructed to sell a lie that his disciples came in the night to steal the body. So, Abaribe and Co. went to town claiming that the Senate did the right thing and not what was being circulated in the media space. That is the most pathetic aspect of it all; that they still claimed the right things were done, without knowing that the train has since left the station!

A story is told about a man who was mandated to securely keep a prisoner, but he was negligent. He paid heavily for it.

“And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver.

“And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel said unto him, so shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it,” (1 Kings 20” 39-40 (KJV).

By the same token, there is no amount of explanation that the Abaribe group can give to Nigerians that should exonerate them from the blame of being looking the other way at a time their contributions mattered most. If you ask me, the “Distinguished” senators are worthy of many stripes!