While the members have chosen not to stand with him, it is now for us to queue behind the man and call the bluff of the compromising lot that has chosen not to stand for truth and justice. While their numbers average the hundred mark, ours run into several millions. And our confidence should be renewed by the fact that absolute power resides with the masses in an ideal democracy.
Nobody would have thought that a time will come in the history of this nation when a member of the National Assembly—an institution that has become somewhat synonymous with looting and plunder—would rise up to the occasion against its leadership, look the dis(honourable) members in the eyes and say: you reek of filth. But the events of the recent past in the green chambers of the Nigerian National Assembly seem to be proving our scepticism wrong. Alas a messiah of sort has risen within the house and has left no one in any doubt of his mission: like Hercules, to clean the Augean stable and slay the larnean hydra of corruption.
And like all revolutionaries in history who set out to exorcise an ignominious past and enthrone a new beginning for the greater good of the greatest number, true to the utilitarian model of the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, he has become the butt of the vilest affronts at the hands of a cabal for whom the green chambers has become a pseudo money market. With the latest act being an unceremonious suspension handed down by an Ethics and Privilege committee so called, whose method repudiates the very ethos of good ethics. How true the observation that corruption always fights back!
Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, the member representing Kiru/Bebeji Federal Constituencies in Kano State at the House of Representatives and until recently the Chairman House Committee on Finance and Appropriation, is no doubt in the eye of the storm. The circumstances leading to his present ‘troubles’ is one that has dominated public discourse. His only fault, as far as we are concerned, was standing for the course of truth and transparency and speaking truth to power, but which his traducers say are against the extant laws of the House and have since shamelessly handed down a punishment to satiate their egos and prove a point. But all of those appear to be achieving the opposite and the man has since taken his case not only to the conventional courts, but also to the court of public opinion – a move that has continued to win him social currency and grassroots support to the irk of the many who want him ‘dead’.
The trajectory of the crisis that crystallised into his suspension, albeit by subterfuge, last week, is one that needs no further adumbration as too many a Nigerian are now at home with the scandal that rocked the 2016 appropriation bill involving the principal officers of the House. But what provokes wonder and begs for decisive action is the extent the members of the House are willing and ready to go in bringing down the axe on a man who in saner climes should be deserving of praise.
At the resumption of plenary last week after a protracted recess, the near blanket show of support and veiled vote of confidence passed on Speaker Yakubu Dogara, choreographed by the infantile and agbero-ish adorning of “I Stand With Dogara” mufflers by the Pro-Dogara camp, was a testimony that ours is a parliament where the virtues of integrity and good conscience have long been traded for both rascality and thuggery. By that ignominious act, they unwittingly put the message across thus that an act only becomes a wrong for want of popular support. Therefore, whereas Dogara and co. may have padded the budget, they are not going to probe the weighty allegations simply because they ‘stand with him’. It was indeed a sad day for democracy in the entire sub-saharan Africa. However, they seem to have missed the plot.
It didn’t occur to the ‘honourable’ members so called, that the desperation with which they have churned out diverse strategies of buffeting the man only speaks to one thing: that he must have spoken the truth. And if not the whole truth, a substantial portion thereof. Of course, nothing else can explain the unbridled desperation with the latest act in the menu, being the surreptitious and clandestine manner the panel secured his suspension, even when the man was absent from the proceedings. A process which many lawyers would agree was a mockery of the twin pillars of natural justice: Audi alterem patem and Nemo Judex in Causa Sua.
How could the committee have gone ahead to try the man when he had unequivocally stated his lack of confidence in its Nicholas Osai chairmanship? Why was the session not made open to the ‘public’ in accordance with the provisions of the constitution, as provided in section 36(3)? And from whence did Dogara assume the moral justification to set a panel in motion given the enormity of allegations raised against him by Jibrin? Assuming the illegal suspension is not upturned, how does the House intend to carry on with plenaries without the presence of Jibrin, knowing that the circumstance of his suspension was born out of contrivance and a repulsive dislike for the truth? And where does the House place Nigerians in their shenanigans? Does the escapist act of calling a dog a bad name to secure its conviction a testament of bravado?
If the ‘quartet’, as Jibrin rightly dubbed them, have no skeletons in their closet, is it too much of a thing to ask from them to step aside while investigation into the allegations are concluded? Is not a clear conscience the best ‘candidate’ for a trial? Were it to be in a more serious nation, shouldn’t the likes of Yakubu Dogara, Yusuf Lasun, Ali Doguwa and Leo Ogor have stepped aside and waited to be given clean bills of health by an independent committee of inquiry? Why then must a man who blew the proverbial whistle be made a victim on the basis of the consensus of a ravenous cult whose hands are soiled?
Let it be said that Nigerians are not altogether oblivious of the magnitude of heist that has over time become the rule of thumb in both chambers of the National Assembly. In the no distant past, several accusing finger were pointed at the legislative arm on allegations not too different from the type we are once again confronted with today.
Of these, two readily comes to mind. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has more than once described the members of the assembly as a bunch of ‘rogues and armed robbers’ who only meet at plenary to share their loot. The erstwhile CBN governor and current emir of Kano State, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, it would be recalled, got involved with the National assembly four years ago after revealing to Nigerians that as much as 25 percent of Federal Government overheads go into floating the National Assembly, describing the members as “corrupt and constituting a big drain on the national treasury”. It is instructive to note that on those two occasions the reactions of the members took the same confrontational approach that terminates in making a victim off the whistleblower or pouring expletives and vituperations on such persons.
That the current national budget could go down in history as the most corruption-laden appropriation bill is no longer an issue for debate, no matter what the National Assembly wants Nigerians to believe. The signs are all too clear for anyone, except the wilfully blind, to see. And a reading together of the pieces of evidence that have become the rump of the budget presents the gloomy portrait of a budget process midwifed under a climate of fleece. The stamp on this assertion being the birth of the term ‘budget padding’ in our political lexicography.
But the good news is that the man of the moment and certified ruffler of feathers, Hon. Jibrin Abdulmumin, appears to be a different kettle of fish. He is not a man to be barked nor shoved off. He has spoken and reiterated that sycophancy is not the hallmarks of his personality and has harped his reprehension for fawning adulation. He calls himself a blunt and fearless extrovert who’ll stand firm for the cause of what he believes in, no matter the tyranny of the majority. This much, we have seen in his countenance since the battle line was drawn.
While his opponents see him as man chasing vendetta, he is on the contrary committed to legislative reforms; which is a supreme good and not the impotent claims of abuse of House rules that is bandied by Dogara and his ‘Ethics’ committee. And this is where his campaign must resonate with Nigerians — the ultimate victims of legislative malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance.
On August 27, he said on his twitter account, “when a new speaker emerges and the other principal officers replaced, I will write to the presiding officers of both chambers to commence a radical internal reform in the entire national assembly beyond budget, to cover performance, assessment, running costs and allowances, investigations e.t.c. If the reform so done by the national assembly is not made public latest by December, I will take it up and lay bare before the general public even if I am alone”. If only he had known that the Brutus and Cassius of our parliament were plotting his suspension from the house.
However, From this much, it becomes easy to glean that Jibrin feels the same frustrations and helplessness Nigerians have suffered under a National Assembly that has elevated impunity and incompetence to an article of faith and corruption a standard of conduct, with little or no care for transparency.
Suffice it to say, therefore, that in the 17 years of the institution of the National Assembly since the turn of democracy in 1999, there has been no member with an acute distaste for corruption and an unbridled hunger for reforms and change like Hon Jibrin. He is not only the shining light of leadership with transparency and accountability. He is in the tiny league of elected public officials who reinvigorate the lost hope of many citizens that things may never get right here. He is our closest shot at enthroning a leadership culture that’ll not be guided by looting and the rapacious plundering of national wealth but one that is anchored on transparency and accountability.
While the members have chosen not to stand with him, it is now for us to queue behind the man and call the bluff of the compromising lot that has chosen not to stand for truth and justice. While their numbers average the hundred mark, ours run into several millions. And our confidence should be renewed by the fact that absolute power resides with the masses in an ideal democracy.
Finally, how we handle the fleeting tiff between Jibrin and the leadership of the House will go a long way in voicing our true stance on corruption in high places. The options, fortunately enough, are twofold. Whether to keep silent in the face of the gargantuan injustice rocking the lower chamber of our National Assembly crusaded for by Dogara and the lot ‘standing with him’, or to join arms with the only symbol of revolutionary change, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, who is set to turning around the crooked norms of the past and enthroning a leadership style and a parliament of our collective aspirations. The option we elect, may we not forget, will be for posterity to judge.
Edo Botched Polls
Despite the controversial postponement of the Edo State elections from the 10th to the 28th of September, ostensibly for security concerns, what transpired last week in Edo State, assuming we want to call it an election, could not be described as a model exercise that can be held out as a postcard for free and fair elections, unfortunately. It came with the full trappings of the impishness and rascality that have over the years become the poster of our electoral process: ballot box snatching, monetary inducement of the electorate by agents of political parties, visibly compromised security agents, intermittent problems with card readers, allegations of doctored results, police harassment and intimidation, among a host of other shenanigans that put a huge question mark to the fairness of the process, if the reports in the media are anything to go by.
While the electoral umpire, INEC, may have tried in making sure the process received a clean bill of health with the introduction of the practice of voting immediately after accreditation, the influence of politicians have proven to be a huge storm to weather. It was therefore expected that the main opposition PDP would reject the result of the election, for what they believe was a stage managed exercise by Adams Oshiomohle, handsin-glove with the security agencies allegedly acting on the script of Abuja. But can it, in all honesty, be said that the PDP will be coming to equity with clean hands given reports of monetary inducement by their agents in their perceived strongholds and other places during the election? Couldn’t it have been a case of one party out-rigging the other? Whatever the case may be, it is indeed sad and most unbecoming that after spending huge funds in organising elections, political parties and their candidates still look to the election tribunals as the final arbiter of the fairness or otherwise of the process. What should be an exception has since become a standard practice in our electoral regime over time. What is wrong with us?
56 Years of Independence, Ahoy!
A few days ago, we marked 56 years of nationhood. 56 years of a political freedom that has since made us the boss over our affairs, both domestic and international. Like every anniversary, it is a time for introspection and retrospection into the future and over the past respectively. Many writers have expressed divergent views on the state of the union 56 years after independence. While for some, there is nothing to celebrate being that every anniversary presents only a nostalgic fervour of the good old days against a gory picture of a country presently on the edge of a precipice, courting a precipitous fall. Others like Reuben Abati, writing on the subject, think there is a lot to cheer about despite the various problems that have dogged our progress. Expectedly, the mood of the nation foisted a low-key celebration without the pomp and fireworks that normally characterise the day.
For us, 56 years of Independence readily brings to consciousness years of wasted opportunities and untapped potentials and sadly this trend may continue if we do not return to the drawing board to chart a new course for man and country. The most glaring evidence of this is the picture of a nation at war with itself. Of a nation struggling to reinvent herself. With secessionist forces, East of the divide, beating drums of war and calling for self-determination; a most potent insurgency in the North-East by Islamic fundamentalists calling for a Shariah state with reports of captured parts of our territory; and a ferocious militancy in the creeks of the delta denting the wealth of the nation and threatening war, it would be understating the point to say that we sit on the keg of a gunpowder and may be on our way to Kigali at the least confrontation. Having said this, our greatest challenge at 56 is not our economic doldrums but the battle for our sovereignty.
Current and subsequent administrations, therefore, must, as a matter of urgency, do all within the ambits of their powers to placate all centrifugal forces threatening the continuous existence of the country, for it is only when we have a country at peace that every other dividend of governance can be enjoyed. This independence, therefore, calls for more introspection and efforts at fostering national cohesion and not any form of celebration.
Raymond Nkannebe, a lawyer and public affairs commentator, can be reached at raymondnkannebe@gmail.com. Twitter: @RayNkah.
