Imagine a people’s Senate

IT has been a very determined fight to wean one’s thoughts from the unremitting buzzing shame in the Nigerian Senate. But as much as one tries, this has been a very challenging one. Everywhere you turn, the Godswill Akpabio/Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan matter in the Nigerian Senate keeps screaming its embarrassment at you and at our country. Yet the obstinate players have continued to act indifferent and unconcerned. Yet, it is easy to see through their seeming detachment to behold a thoroughly debased institution. The Senate’s actors have been working hard to create a plausible make-believe that the thoroughly embarrassing matter is simply about the rules of the Senate and their application. These people have been labouring unsuccessfully to alienate the Senate President from the mess. They think we believe their hogwash that the issue is not about their main man whose position confers on him the moral and constitutional duty to competently bring those rules to effect for the oneness of his colleagues.

We salute people like Senator Francis Fadahunsi who have some shame and have displayed this. Senator Fadahunsi spoke as an elder and showed maturity when he touched on this very vexatious matter.  He charged his colleagues on competence, morality and the like. These are things which would lighten the heart. Like virtues they would keep you happy with yourself and with your creator. From what Fadahunsi said on the floor of the Senate, in which one could hear a pin drop while he spoke, he earned the kind of character and personality Senator Edward Kennedy attributed to himself.

Kennedy said: “I am an enjoyer. I have enjoyed being a senator, I’ve enjoyed my children and my close friends, and I’ve enjoyed books and music and well-prepared food, especially with a generous helping of cream sauce on the top. I have enjoyed the company of women. I have enjoyed a stiff drink or two or three, and I’ve relished the smooth taste of a good wine. At times, I’ve enjoyed these pleasures too much.” Senator Edward Kennedy might be seen as a little unbridled in this sincere submission, but he was quite genuine. As a scion of the famous Kennedy dynasty of the United States he had most of these things he talked about even before being elected into the country’s Senate. He even had more than the regular privileges because of the influence of his father. But when he was in the Senate, he earned the sobriquet “The Lion of the Senate” not just for his long stay there, but for what he turned out to be in the life of both the United States’ legislature and the American citizenry.

We mostly do not have that kind of personal sincerity here. Even if a few people express themselves in that manner, our politicians do not do so. We see only when the actions of our political and sundry leaders tell us all that which “The Lion” of the United States’ Senate said of himself. They would suddenly begin to cruise in new, expensive cars and abruptly leave for more expensive communities and neighbourhoods. We are the kind of people who cover their yam so as to eat in peace when we are blessed with a bountiful harvest. This, however, does not mean that we are humble when we have munificent blessings.

Yet, our senators live like ‘Ted’ Kennedy lived. They still live generously like that on our bill. One of them in the lower chamber of the Nigerian legislature proved it in an extraordinary way sometime in the life of the last administration. He had to ship his four wives and some of his numerous children to the green chamber of the National Assembly in Abuja from God-knows-where, to prove that he is both “an enjoyer” and that he enjoys being a Nigerian lawmaker. He proved that he loved and enjoyed his being a lawmaker, and showed the world his treasures – his wife and children.

None of our senators had been as audacious as that member of the House of Representatives. It was a bizarre display but many senators might not mind doing the same. Their better display of maturity notwithstanding, it is not in doubt that a lot of our resources is sunk into the maintenance of our troublesome 109 children. That is why every little attempt at a superficial inquest into who they really are always triggers all forms of resistance and reactions.

We remember that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, as a new senator for Edo North, went by a route and was made to eat the humble pie. Oshiomhole told the world that he had to use his personal funds to buy furniture because the ones in the office he was assigned had been taken away by the previous occupant. He was told to apologise for saying that and was lectured that those pieces of furniture, including computers, air conditioners, tables, chairs, etc., were losing 25 percent value each year. Oshiomhole apologised to the senate for saying that he bought furniture by himself because his office was cleaned. What could be more enjoyable for any enjoyer?

Indeed, there is hardly anything the Nigerian citizenry cannot tolerate as a people. Our spoilt politicians—at every level—keep testing us with various types of bad leadership and we would simply swallow it. A few would rant in the media and vanish thereafter. Then, they would give us a worse dimension of themselves and further push the boundaries of bad governance and immorality. In the Senate, for instance, the opposition has been made so irrelevant that most Nigerians now believe that this concept no longer exist in the Senate, the entire National Assembly system and in the country. Of course, Senator Ireti Kingibe while in the heat of her own trial in this same senate, cried that the Nigerian Senate is “not opposition-friendly.” That was a heavily pregnant statement from the depth of experience. Today, one of the numerous children from that pregnancy is the current reverberations from the Akpoti-Uduaghan show. Kingibe saw victimisation firsthand and now, we have subsumed everything about Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan in the exaggerated noise of feminism, patriarchy, politics and ethnicity. The issues have been so muddled that truth has taken flight.

And as sad as this is, we are still too blind to see how Nigerians are so divided when it is about politicians and their politics. We have no place for our battered country. Why must this be so? Why are we not showing any iota of concern about the fast descent of morals and rectitude in our beleaguered country? Perhaps, there might be need for a new Nigeria because the one we live in has become an eroded land. But who will bell the cat? Imagine asking Nigerians to rise against their politicians in peaceful protest and call for reforms…

On the day Natasha was crying “Order 10!” to use her privilege as a senator, she was denied that privilege while the words “prepare her for suspension; let the sergeant-at-arms take her out” escaped into the microphone. The Senate eventually obeyed the words of their emperor.

Imagine a Nigerian Senate which is asking questions on why fuel imports into the country have jumped again despite the noise about increased local production. Imagine a debate in our National Assembly on the eternal energy crisis in the country and the unbridled corruption in the power supply system.

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