In the beautiful land of Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, the waves of corruption eat off the layers of integrity like time and nature washing off the strata of sedimentary rocks. For the seventh time in 25 years, these resplendently dressed members of the Red Chamber have suspended a ranking member for daring to expose the underbelly of an established tradition.
Abdul Ningi, the man perpetually representing Bauchi Central constituency accused his peers of working on two budgets one for public view and a second padded for presidential assent. Even for unshockable Nigerians the audacity of our political brigands ought to be galling. Except of course, Nigerians have been reduced to fighting for daily subsistence to really care what their bourgeois representatives do.
Corruption stories are bad copies for any news medium. Nigerians prefer the salacious stories like how many gigolos queue to share the bed of a 72-year-old private female billionaire whose 48-year marriage has crashed.
However, take a pause and picture a group of distinguished gentlemen, clad in the finest babbar riga, agbada or ishagwu and inconsequential attires in-between; sitting in the hallowed halls of power or in their various committees, scheming and conniving like characters straight out of a Soyinka tragedy how to make the nation poorer without exposing themselves. Painfully, there are no tragic heroes here, only opportunistic politicians dreaming about how to fill their pockets as deep as the crevices of a black hole.
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Sinnator Ningi dared to break ranks and shine a light on the dark underbelly of their nefarious activities. He had the temerity to suggest that perhaps, just maybe, padding the annual budget wasn’t the most honourable way to slash cuts off the nation’s cake. He suggests that after the extinguished house had passed the budget, some people probably worked overnight, to add their own cuts.
Ningi was not a newbie when Ghali Umar Na’Abba and Pius Anyim, then leaders of the Irrational Assembly did a similar thing. They worked overnight to help Obasanjo have his way on a law already passed by both chambers of the assembly. Even back then, the heavens did not fall as Na’Abba confessed that Anyim ‘knew what we did.’ Later, he would further show how base the legislative arm is when he dumped soiled bribe money on the mace of the Green Chamber; money allegedly from the executhief to subvert the legislathief process.
If you think that this is the only few instances of the dogs of sleaze, wagging the tails of the dishonourably extinguished members, you are wrong. There was a time, when the senate, allegedly, approached ministerial nominee Ahmad Nasir el-Rufai, to pay them millions if he wished to be cleared as a minister of the federal republic. The Senate waited over two decades to serve its cold dish of revenge on el-Rufai when Tinubu nominated him again as a minister. They made sure he did not ‘pass’ his screening forcing the former governor to dust up his research papers to complete his suspended PhD project.
For his insolence, Ningi was promptly suspended, joining the illustrious ranks of six other sacrificial lambs that dared to upturn the apple cart in the past. Of course, the suspension is illegal even by the Senate’s extant rules. In the trials of the legislature, legality takes flight when collective greed is at stake. Two ranking members of the Red Chamber, its president, Godswill Akpabio and Opeyemi Bamidele both lawyers knew they were not playing by Order 67(4) of the Senate Rules or the celebrated canons of fundamental human rights and fair trial taught in law school.
Nobody should blame Akpabio. Graduating in law without the privilege to practice could make even the best lawyers rusty about the basic canons of the law. For Akpabio, the gods of politics have been cracking the palm kernel of his success since he left the law school and it is yet to disappoint. Both legal icons probably worked by the maxim – de minimis non curax lex – a Latin jargon meaning that the law does not concern itself with trifles. It would have been tantamount to wasting precious time and trifling to set up a committee to investigate Ningi and his accusations. Perhaps Na’Abba’s ghost whispered to his ears – Ningi knew what we did.
While Ningi would be losing his salary and allowances for the three months he’d spend at home, except he decides to challenge his illegal suspension in court; his constituents can be assured that by the time he is back, they’d be getting every penny allocated to him for the infamous “constituency projects” that led to the suspension. Who needs a legislative version of a Julian Assange exhuming the secrets he and his peers want buried under qualified privilege?
Like a wise old owl, the presidency has chosen the path of the four little monkeys. It has buried enough scandals in nine months that it is not the most qualified to point a finger at others. It probably knows; after all that when they point one accusing finger at others, three fingers are pointing back at them. Rather than ruffle feathers, like good players; the presidency has allowed the chips to lie on the exact spot where they fell.
We, the people know that in our national politics, the principle is “you rub my back, I rub yours”. From the highest echelons of power to the lowliest office assistant with the magical fingers to make files disappear, corruption reigns supreme, like a monarch overseeing its unquestioning subjects.
In the boiling cauldron of the pervasive stench of graft and dishonesty at all levels, our esteemed sinnators have the gall to lament their tarnished reputation. They cry foul at the mere suggestion that their rags of integrity may be laundered on the powerless cords of electric poles. They forget that the elder that ties a cob of corn on its sash of authority makes it exigent for fowls to start the chase.
Imagine the temerity. These people are elected in graft, so how could they imagine that they could govern with integrity or even know what it means on a Google search engine? They are led by people who crossed the floor with impunity, and graduated into ministerial opulence where an attempt to investigate them added an infamous statement to the dramatic lexicon of investigations – honourable minister, off the mike, please! If these people think they have integrity, it is because it never had a meaning to them in the first instance. Nigerians do not respect these chaps, at best; they simply tolerate them, like captive kidnap victims tolerate the forced authority of their captors.
Ningi should count himself lucky that the Ndinguri factor of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross had not succeeded in boxing oxygen. If they had, he’d be begging for rations of the gas to complete his jail term or buried under the rug, like the many inconclusive enquiries he and his colleagues have conducted on the floor of the legislature. Corruption hates challenges and those who swore to uphold its tenets don’t welcome snitches. As for Nigeria, the only reason it enjoys these shenanigans is because people need the comic distraction from the crippling challenges of personal survival.