By Barometer
In a brief display of power pugilism, the Clerk to the National Assembly, Mohammed Ataba Sani-Omolori, decided to take on the Chairman of the National Assembly Service commission (NASC), Ahmed Amshi, in one of many power plays that have become the leitmotif of all three arms of Nigeria’s government.
Although the ill-advised former clerk went down in the third round after the wind was forcibly removed from his sails, the match was nonetheless exciting.
It started the same way many political fights start: dispute over a piece of legislation in this case the National Assembly Service Act 2014 (as amended).
The NASC had, at its 497th meeting, agreed to retire the clerk and some other 150 persons, whose identities do not affect the plot of this narrative, as they never stepped foot in the ring.
The Clerk to the National Assembly responded via a press release, defiantly, as though to say Lord Acton was right about power doing a number on the wielder’s mind.
He claimed the 8th Assembly had amended the retirement age in the National Assembly Service Act and that the NASC had no power to turn him out. A brave shot.
The leadership of the House of Representatives was alleged to have waded into the matter by the agency of a letter attributed to Sanusi Rikiji, the Chief of Staff of the Speaker of the House.
The letter was swiftly disowned and legend holds that its author remains a phantom and enigma till date. Back in the ring, blows were being exchanged, with all the science of experienced political pugilism.
More letters, an emergency meeting on Friday, and Omolori was winded. It was top-hole Nigerian drama, similar in plot to the recent exchanges that the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and suspended Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) treated Nigerians to, but not as gory in its detail and certainly not as embarrassing.
What made Omolori, a lawyer and accomplished member of the royal family of Ebiraland, taint what should have been a respectable retirement by wading into battles on points of law, which hardly ever end fairly?
There is a pervading mentality in Nigeria, and indeed most of Africa, that remaining in any top public office will lend relevance to a person.
Even Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, after serving as the fifth and twelfth president of Nigeria for a total of eleven years, still made active attempts to elongate his tenure in a constitutional fiasco that left him utterly chastened.
The innate desire of Nigerian leaders to keep holding on to power at all costs is a reflection of the comforts that come with holding offices.
For leadership in Nigeria to grow, this outlook to public service needs to be corrected by heavy censuring of public officers. Sections relating to tenures of officers in public offices should remain extremely difficult to modify.
Public officers should be able to separate their true identities from their official capacities lest they keep falling prey to the inordinate urge to order the sun to stand still and the moon not to go down.
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