It is almost an impossibility to think of the Nigerian parliament without its siamese appendage of scandals. In fact, scandals are almost like its imprint, its banner, its representation. From 1999, when the Fourth Republic experiment began, the parliament has been buffeted with a huge dose of scandals, so much that if there is an institution that attracts greater derision than it, it can only be the police.
In its defence, many have said that the legislature is this vilified because it is relatively new among the comity of governmental arms. Remember that of all the arms of government, the legislature is the only one that has suffered heavily under the bullets of Nigeria’s repeated binge of military takeovers. The moment the military top-brass, with shining epaulettes on his shoulders, walks into the then Radio Nigeria to say “I Colonel/Brigadier…”, while all the other arms of government – the executive and judiciary – are left to continue with their functions, the legislature is spiked forthwith and the military institution begins to rule through decrees and edicts. It is the argument of those who defend the parliamentary excesses that have become the legislature’s imprimatur that the fact that we were not used to that arm of government conduces us to finding faults with it and always scape-goating it.
The graveyard of Nigerian parliamentary scandals is rife with the ghosts of characters like Salisu Buhari, Evan/s Enwerem and so many others. Even though Nigeria started well in 1999 in the National Assembly by revering that institution of law-making, the institution soon deconstructed itself. It became a scum, an object of gutter reference and a place where you would be seeking a needle in a haystack if you were looking for men of integrity. Men and women there see it as a huge commercial enterprise and place where quick and illicit money could be made in a jiffy. It is a home of loafers and scoundrels who warm seats for four years and ship huge cash home. I guess since that day when a former police top brass said that one of the outlaws, armed robbers to be specific, whom he once investigated while in office, was a “Distinguished Senator” who seated comfy inside the hallowed chambers, Nigerians’ respect for that office tumbled down and collapsed. Thereafter, the National Assembly is rightly viewed as a place where people with everything but patriotism for fatherland gather to discuss issues of their personal existential survivals.
So when the Dino Melaye issue came to the front burner of discourse, not many Nigerians were shocked. It merely brought again into the limelight an issue that many Nigerians had come to a conclusion about a long time ago. For instance, in a Nigeria where every family tries to impress excellence on their offspring, telling them that once their academic foundation in the secondary school was effete, only divine intervention would ensure a shining tomorrow for them, won’t the child cite the instance of his political leaders’ academic records? If someone could build such a skyscraper of a today on such murky and wonky foundation of a past, hasn’t the law of nature – that you can’t build something on nothing – been terribly hit by so doing? If leaders with below average records could rise to political recognition, how can you persuade the legion of struggling students in schools today that hard-work pays? Or that character and learning define ultimate marks in life?
Check how Senator Melaye has treated the so-called hallowed chambers since he came on board. It was he, a “Distinguished”, who looked at a fellow woman senator and threatened to impregnate her… on the floor of the “hallowed chambers.” I am told he has however denied this. It was same Senator Melaye who has turned the parliament into a circus for jest-mania when he wore an academic gown to plenary. You begin to wonder if that floor is meant for playing ludo or ludo playing is excused so far as you belong to the right circus or caucus? How then do outsiders see us vis a vis our parliament? Don’t they see us as possessing the Dino Melaye gene or that he is emblematic of us all? Do they not see us as playing the fool, citing as empirical justification for this foolishness our ancestral linkage to our ape ancestors which racist historians claim we still parade its effigies and irrational disposition?
So when outsiders fail to take the National Assembly seriously, you seldom can blame them. As it stands now, no one sees the National Assembly less than a House of Commerce or a House of Derision. Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo has called it unprintable names, among others. Why would Oby Ezekweseli and Itse Sagay not call the Senate unprintable names when, like the proverbial old man who weaves grains of corns round his waste who has now become the subject of derision of chickens, the Nigerian national parliament has lost every of its respect and acclaim? That is why parliamentary summons, an erstwhile potent weapon for whipping errant people to line, has lost its cudgel and those whom the legislature summons tell it to its face that it can go jump inside the Zambezi River.
In all these however, let us remember that we cannot destroy the Nigerian parliament and hope to get worthwhile laws; we cannot destroy our parliament and make the Ghanaian legislature ours. No matter how execrable the present crop of Nigerian parliamentarians are, the parliament as an institution of law-making, deserves to be respected. The Dino Melayes would soon become footage of history and we will get back our parliament, complete with its aura of respect, awe and verve.
and then