The 9th National Assembly should listen to the voice of reason. In their quest for quality leadership, they should shun the bedlam of the politically ruined.
Doing otherwise would be baiting perdition, as the 8th National Assembly has done.
On the leadership question, therefore, anything from Bukola Saraki, outgoing Senate President, and Yakubu Dogara, outgoing House Speaker, ought to attract instant but negative buzz. The duo is the tag-team that derailed the present National Assembly.
The Muhammadu Buhari executive had its own challenges. But Saraki and Dogara spectacularly rebranded, by their actions and inactions, the 8th National Assembly as an ultra-selfish coven, driven by its members’ primitive greed; not by the pressing need of their electors.
That would explain the near-total clear-out of the old chamber, though many a hustler survived, just as many a dutiful member sank, in what speaks to the Biblical phrase of the innocent carrying the can with the guilty.
Though Dogara survived, it’s immensely pleasing that Saraki, the fountain head of that rot, got consumed by voter anger. It’s a dire warning that perfidy is execrable!
But the Saraki debacle issued from the tragic delusion that politics was a-moral; and, with spin, you could turn the wrong right, and the right, wrong — “government magic”, in Fela-speak! It’s reassuring furious voters won’t have that crap.
Long before US President Donald Trump and aides dawned with their “alternative facts” (a euphemism for pure fabrication), Nigeria had witnessed own loss of pristine innocence, on that stark and sacred temple, where wrong is wrong; and right is right.
That tragic loss was on 12 June 1993. On that day, a presidential election held. Moshood Kasimawo Olawale Abiola (MKO), the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate won. Bashir Tofa, the National Republican Convention (NRC) candidate lost. The election itself was deemed the best ever, in Nigerian history.
Yet, a certain Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (IBB), strutting as a self-named “military president”, decided to play God; and purported to cancel the democratic will of the people.
Gen. Sani Abacha, his Khaliffa (successor), in those never-again days of reckless military rule, with its power sans responsibility, seized power; and clamped MKO into gaol, from where he never came out alive.
In-between IBB and Abacha, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo too, hee-hawed: neither hailing the MKO mandate nor nailing the IBB electoral crime. He settled for and actively pushed a grey area of peace-without-justice, the grand fraud of Interim National Government (ING), just to side-step a sacred mandate.
Even Obasanjo’s No. 2, during their military rule days, Major-Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’ Adua, right in the Abacha era “National Constitutional Conference with full constituent powers”, played the politics of anti-MKO score-settling, against the principle of upholding the truth.
However, when the dust cleared, all of the dramatis personae, in the anti-MKO plot, ended up in grief.
Obasanjo and Yar’Adua got gaoled for alleged treason, from which Yar’Adua never made it out alive. Abacha, the gaoler, himself expired in controversial circumstances, leaving behind a horrible stench of sleaze and graft.
Ay, IBB has lived through it all. But even he would appear much chastened, weaned from that rush of tragic delusion, of not only “being in office, but also in power”.
That had pushed him to write himself into the dustbin of Nigerian democracy history, because of his annulment debacle, even when, in spite of his suspect motives, he ought to now be venerated, for organizing the freest election Nigeria ever had.
But the grandest loser, of them all, would appear Obasanjo. Yes, he made it from Abacha’s prison to president, all thanks to the Army Arrangement (AA) – apologies to Fela — of 1999; and was prime beneficiary of the June 12 debacle he helped to nurture and sustain, with his ING role.
But somehow, he also helped to crash the conservative ruling coalition that had held from independence, and even all through the military years – no thanks to his tragic attempt at remaking the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in his own stark image; and therefore drove away many (wo)men of conscience from that conclave.
Now, out there in the cold, Obasanjo is self-condemned to periodically screed and bawl; screech and howl, all to grab attention – with each successive racket having less impact than the previous one!
And now, horror of horrors! The grand recognition of June 12, instead of May 29, as the true Democracy Day, takes off this year; and Obasanjo is alive and well to see the event – a pestilence he had done everything, in and out of office, to stave off! But lo! This cup won’t pass over him!
This then, was the background to – and the hefty comeuppance of – the elite conspiracy against June 12; and Nigeria’s tragic arrival, at that terrible pass, of the loss of political innocence.
Still, that made little or no dent on Saraki, as he waltzed his way, into his own self-made hall of shame, after which he would lose everything – including the political fiefdom he inherited from his father, the late Baba Oloye, Dr. Olusola Saraki.
For him, it was perfidy undiluted: sold his party for personal gain; pawned that party’s inalienable right – the deputy Senate presidency – to the opposition; and conspired to turn his party’s legislative majority into a pitiable minority, in hyper-active plotting to cripple his own party’s presidency!
That was the wind. But then came the whirlwind, and Saraki’s political paradise got completely smashed!
From the formidable emperor of Kwara, Saraki has become the political equivalent of the internally displaced person (IDP), fleeing for dear life, hibernating in some temporary camp! Talk of sitting in limbo, apologies to Jamaican reggae great, Jimmy Cliff!
But aside this personal ruin, Saraki’s 8th NASS, like Abacha’s Stone Age dictatorship, got blown away too – with crippling stench of legislative tyranny, that could well have been, but for prompt voter anger!
As with June 12, Saraki’s personal and NASS debacle has shown trashing decency, for short-term expediency, has its grim expiry. As Saraki himself could tell, it could be extremely gory!
Which is why the cant oozing from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is rather amusing. In parliament, a minority party has its place, just as the majority. That perking order was settled by voters.
Therefore, any attempt to grandstand to the contrary, could equal fast-paced doom — and Saraki is living proof. That could mean morning yet, on PDP’s day of trauma – and further decline, despite the grand delusion of electoral rebound.
But to the 9th NASS: learn from Saraki’s ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ crash. Vote leaders that can drive the people’s representatives to serve the people. That — not personal aggrandizement – is what you were elected to do. Any other way leads nowhere but perdition.