Power play and the dangerous indulgence

Senate President Bukola Saraki, called it a show of shame. It was. No Nigerian, no matter his political affiliation, could have been proud of the shameful siege on the National Assembly on August 7, by the hooded operatives of DSS. Its director-general, Lawal Daura, has been thrown under a moving trailer. Was it his own show, scripted and executed by him? Or was Daura made the fall guy, someone who was conveniently made to take the blame to protect his ogas at the top in order to assuage public shock and rage?

We do not yet know why it happened or the interest it was intended to serve. We have had hints of both. We know, however, that it left the country and its leaders, with gobs of shame on their faces. We know too that our country is in imminent danger of descending into chaos if the politicians are bent on assured mutual destruction. We do not deserve this.

 At his press conference August 8, Saraki spoke with obvious pain when he said: “In no circumstances should this have happened. And we as a nation reaped the bitter fruits instantaneously, as evident in media images relayed around the world, images that shame us as democratic nation.”

Nineteen years of democracy appear to have taught our politicians nothing about the basic rules of the government of the people. Self-interest still subordinates the observance of the rule of law to the interest of the few at the expense of the many. The detestable African big man in one shape or another is the emerging face of our national politics today, thwarting efforts to help this country grow democratically. Shame.

 It is not the way to go. It is not the way to grow our democracy. And certainly, it is not the way this lumbering African giant can reclaim its potential and assume the position the rest of the world had virtually reserved for it: the incontestable leadership of the African continent.

In 19 years of civil rule, our democracy has been repeatedly battered with the clubs of impunity and the cynical disinclination to play by the rules of civilised political game. This should be the best of times; the time to savour the fruits and the dividends of democracy; this should be the time for us to showcase our democracy as a thriving system of government in a country that has scratched its head for so long to get it right. This should be the time to show that we have learnt the right lessons and are faithfully and dutifully applying them to guide our every step in our long walk to democratic nirvana. This is the time to show the world that we have recovered what we lost in the eight years of strong man Obasanjo when we could not distinguish between democracy and dictatorship. We are rapidly regressing.  

The August 7 invasion of the National Assembly was not the first time the second arm in our form of government has been so brazenly assaulted. The first time was earlier this year when some thugs invaded the Senate in session and forcibly removed the mace. They were organised and funded and sent forth to belittle us as a nation by some elements within and outside the Senate. The police, probably complicit in that criminal show of shame, arrested no one. So, no one was punished for the desecration of the upper legislature.

It is no news that the eighth Senate of the Federal Republic has been having an uneasy time with the presidency. Despite copious and hardly convincing denials by both sides, the Nigerian public is not unaware of what is and has been going on. Under our form of government, it bears repeating, government rests on the tripod of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Each arm has a sacred role to play to ensure that we are governed with fairness and justice; and that the rulers and the ruled respect the constitution and play by its rules. If one of the three arms is broken, it would be impossible to expect the government of the federation to stand firm. Those who gave us this form of government expected the three arms to work in harmony, each according the other due respect. 

Co-operation in government is not about the faces one likes. It is about accepting that faces matter less than the more critical challenge of advancing and protecting the interests of the people as vital institutions of democracy. The change we voted for in 2015 was anchored on these fundamentals: a) a radical paradigm shift in the way we manage our party politics, conduct our elections and govern ourselves in the three tiers of government; b) respect for the rule of law in a manner that ensures the general public that although some are more equal than others, the small man expects his rights as a citizen not to be trampled under the jack boots of the privileged, the powerful and the rich; c) that good governance would be given a local habitation such that we would recover our nation’s soul lost in the heady years of arbitrariness.

We appear to have forgotten those collective aspirations captured in the change slogan. The travails of the National Assembly and its principal officers are, in effect, the travails of the Nigerian nation. Sadly, the big men cursed with seeing no further into the future than the tip of their noses, believe that because they have the might, they have the right. It is a mistake, a very bad mistake. The mighty and the powerful are oft led astray by the absolute sense of absolute power.