Tag: Babachir David Lawal

IN calling for the suspension from office and prosecution of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal, the Senate has begun to revel in legislative activism on  a scale that probably astounds the lawmaking body itself. The Senate accuses Mr Lawal of gross abuse of office, particularly regarding the role he and his proxies are alleged to have played in awarding, receiving and shoddily executing about N2.5bn Internally Displaced Persons-related contracts. He denies wrongdoing. But the chairman of the Senate ad hoc committee that investigated the hastily awarded contracts, Senator Shehu Sani, insisted that Mr Lawal, an engineer, used his position to enrich himself by awarding contracts to companies he had interest in. One of those companies was Rholavision Engineering Limited.

A livid Mr Lawal, however, shot back: “I can recognise a vendetta and witch-hunt when I see one; so, I am wondering if I should bother myself about it at all. You may wish to know that I was never invited to the hearing. Apparently, the Senate has an agenda best known to its leaders. Corruption is fighting to drag all good men down to its muddy, slimy level.” Considering the damage the DSS report on Mr Magu has done to the president’s team, the SGF will be under pressure to step aside or find ways very quickly of exonerating himself. That will, however, be difficult. Mr Lawal speaks obliquely of vendetta without indicating what offence his enemies allege against him or why he thinks that corruption is fighting back. Many officials of the Buhari presidency, including Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff accused of buying houses abroad and living above his means, are under one pressure or the other to come clean on their assets and properties.

It is helpful that the Senate is taking a more active interest in holding the government accountable to the people. That activism is a product of the initial alienation the legislature suffered when President Buhari assumed office and began his effusive display of sanctimoniousness. But whether that activism and seeming altruism reflect a principled and intuitive understanding of the Senate’s role in entrenching democracy, or it was simply a desperate cry for accommodation in the Buhari presidency, is hard to say. Furthermore, now that the legislature is playing a more active role in government, who is to hold it in check, when, as ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo said, the legislature itself is also reeking of corruption in a galling way?

It is not known how the SGF contract scandal will end, for it is still at its infancy. But it does appear that the initial disturbances and tremors in the Buhari government and the misunderstanding between various institutions and agencies represent nothing more than a ploy to create a situation of balance of terror or mutual assured destruction for the combatants. If democracy is to endure, the rule of law must not only prevail, institutions without exception and individuals in high places must be stringently held accountable. By an accident of fate rather than systematic deliberateness, the judiciary and the executive are now being held in some appreciable way accountable. The legislature must be made to follow suit, even as the public must slowly begin to understand that Nigerian democracy can neither mature overnight nor be sanitised comprehensively in one fell swoop. Under Chief Obasanjo’s prefectural brusqueness, institutions behaved fairly predictably and cooperated with one another, at least superficially. Now, thanks to a recalcitrant DSS, a more activist Senate, an insufferable EFCC led by the waspish Mr Magu, the alleged contract shenanigans of a beefy and accusatory SGF, and above all a disconnected, distracted and sometimes bemused President Buhari, the principles of natural selection are furiously nurturing an evolutionary soup from which, hopefully, if the economy permits, a better and brighter democratic tomorrow can emerge.