The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Honourable

  • Oloyede: Honour for the Honourable

    Today is another day of glory and history in Lagos. All ways from different parts of Nigeria will lead to the Centre of Excellence. At the instance of ‘The Sun’ newspaper, a gathering of Nigeria’s who is who will take place once again and the venue is Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island where a glorious recognition session will be held in honour of some great Nigerians who deserve honour. Among those to be honoured are some outstanding Nigerians in various fields of endeavour and flamboyant politicians who are considered to be frontline performers in their political terrain.

    The occasion is meant to be a show of recognition to certain patriotic Nigerians as an incentive for relentlessness in their excellent performances in public service.

    The most likely focused personality on today’s occasion is the current Registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, OFR, FNAL, who is being honoured as the Most Outstanding Public Servant of the Year 2018. He won the same award two years ago (2017) at a similar occasion organised by New Telegraph and this article is similar to what yours sincerely wrote at that time in this column.

    This man’s unique patriotism and honesty at this period of epidemic corruption in Nigeria, especially among public servants, have become a special historic point of reference. His remittance of about N16 billion to the treasury of the Federal Government of Nigeria in less than just about two years of his assumption of office as JAMB Registrar, compared to remittance of less than N2 billion in almost twenty years in the same JAMB, is unprecedented in the history of this country.

     

    Who is this Prof Oloyede?

    He is the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin and the current Registrar of JAMB. Any citation about his birth, growth and schooling may not be relevant here since the award to be given to him today is about integrity and not academic qualification.

     

    Observation

    For every age of human life there are particles of history that relay to us the successes or failures of the previous ages. And from such successes or failures humanity endeavours to draw a guide for itself which may serve either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement or both.

    At a time like this when anything new and progressive is a great reminder of the sad flight of hope in Nigeria and its replacement by despair, it behoves only some die hard patriotic optimists to take a positive and progressive leap as an indication that all is not lost in our country after all. One of such optimists is Prof Oloyede.

     

    His Intellectual Prowess

    From his early age, this man has consistently been a bookworm as there was no book within his reach that he would not want to read and digest. His excellent academic performance in the University he attended as well as his exceptional administrative acumen as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin could therefore not have come as a surprise to those who know him closely.  But besides academic brilliance, what actually lifted him in life is his genuine goodwill and sincere selfless service which he is always eagerly ready to render towards helping others. His sacrifices in this sphere are quite legendary and his phenomenal rise can only be classified as a reward for it from Allah.

     

    His Tenure as VC

    If, during his tenure as Vice-Chancellor, the University of Ilorin could rise so loftily from a very modest foundation and tower above many other Universities that preceded it in Nigeria then the hope that a new Nigeria could still emerge from the debris of the old can no longer be a national nightmare.

     

    The Worth of Institutions

    “Institutions are worth no more than the men who work them”. This quotation is  culled from a speech once delivered by Prof O. O. Akinkugbe, the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin. That quotation is partially in tandem with a verse of the Qur’an thus: “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change the evil contents of their minds…” It was on the premise of that pregnant quotation that Prof Oloyede built his unsurpassable achievements as the Vice-Chancellor of the same University of Ilorin between 2007 and 2012 as a way of encouraging the Nigerian youths of today on the pleasant possibilities of tomorrow. For some of those youths, that tomorrow has earnestly begun with the same Prof Oloyede as their model in JAMB. The men described by Prof Akinkugbe in that quote are not by any means ordinary. And the soils from which they sprang are not by any standard restricted to any particular area of study or style of life. Thus, since the tree of life has many branches and roots, no topmost twig should presume to think that it alone has sprung from the mother earth. There is no restriction of the signpost of life to any particular person, place or time.

     

    Parable of Greatness

    Greatness is like a magnet which attracts only the relevant elements to itself.

    It was because some people including a British writer and poet, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who won Nobel Laurel in 1907 were unmindful of the above quote that the world is in turmoil today. In the conclusion of one of his poems, Rudyard Kipling once asserted thus: ”Oh! East is East and West is West; never the Twain shall meet…” That poem later came to intensify the perennial hostility between the East and the West which the latter came to adopt as a permanent policy to the detriment of global peace and harmony. But what neither Kipling nor the West seemed to understand about the seeming natural divide in the world is the existence of an abstract confluence similar to a knuckle that holds the blades of a pair of scissors together. Just as the scissors cannot operate effectively with one blade so can no man with one focused educational eye correctly claim to be the main signpost in any field of human endeavour. That is what distinguishes Prof Oloyede from many others. He combines the Eastern and the Western education together with the intention of utilising both jointly to the benefit of humanity. And that is now manifesting nationally.

     

    The JAMB Registrar

    Prof Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede is a household name in the academia not only in Nigeria or Africa but also in the entire world just like the University he was privileged to head for five years in Ilorin. What qualified him for such a vertical position is an interesting question for which most inquisitive minds may earnestly seek an answer. And the answer is not far-fetched.

    Like some rare men of letters and knowledge, Prof Oloyede wears an intellectual binocular with which he sees life from a bird’s eye view. And this is evident not just in his management of the University of Ilorin for five years but also in the humility, selflessness and patriotism with which he demonstrates civility in all its ramifications. The difference between a man of letters and that of knowledge is quite clear. While the one sees life through the common eye, the other sees it through an uncommon binocular.

    In the days of Socrates, Aristotle and Herodotus, when education was an adorned virtue used as a yardstick for measuring civility and value, no one cared about the material gains accruing from it. Bastardisation of education only set in when certificate was introduced as a means of evaluating its material worth. Thus, with certificate, mere literacy began to be misconceived as education. Whereas literacy is just an added value to education the modern day man has ignorantly but arrogantly interpolated the one for the other. This is what Prof Oloyede resented in his academic odyssey when he chose to combine Eastern education with that of the West with a determination to use the advantage of both as a fertilizer for the academic soil of Nigeria’s future which was why he specialized in Arabic and Islamic Studies even at the professorial level.

    Many ignorant Nigerians including journalists had queried Oloyede’s educational background, even as Vice-Chancellor, in their vainglorious belief that Arabic and Islamic studies had nothing valuable to offer a progressive nation. Apparently, such blind sceptics did not know that some other Nigerian celebrities like the renowned literary  Prof Kole Omotosho, the author of ‘Just Before Dawn’ and the current Alake of Egbaland Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo as well as Prof Isaac Ogunbiyi and even the former First Lady of Ondo State, Mrs. Funke Agagu obtained their first University degrees in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Ibadan. Yet, all of them and others are Christians. Looking at these mentioned personalities and many others like them very well which sensible person can show how their educational backgrounds diminish their greatness in life. Arabic which is naturally spoken by about 400 million people in the world is one of the few languages used to conduct meetings and conferences at the United Nations.  It is only in Nigeria that such naivety with which to denigrate a person for making a choice of career can thrive.

     

    His Philosophy of Life

    Prof Oloyede’s philosophy of life seems to tally with that of Daniel Webster who in a memorable poem stated as follows:

    “If we work marble it will perish; if we work upon brass time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instil in them just principles; we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity”.

    This is the philosophy that propelled him to adopt contentment as a personal principle right from his early age. While giving his reason for contesting for Vice-Chancellorship of the University of Ilorin, he once told some medical students of that University who paid him a congratulatory visit on his assumption of office as the new Vice-Chancellor that he never intended to contest for that office. He however made a clarification that when an academic charlatan with an ulterior motive in the same University threatened to expose him if he dared contest, he (Oloyede) saw it as a challenge to put his privacy on a public table. His intention was not to contest but to see what would be exposed in his privacy. But as God would have it he emerged as the Vice-Chancellor without an iota of blemish.

    Before contesting for that post he had served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor twice. First he was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academics and later Deputy Vice Chancellor Administration in the same University of Ilorin where he had spent his entire tertiary academic life. Yet, it was only by a mere dint of fortuity that he contested for the post of Vice-Chancellor of that University.  He relayed the story above to the visiting students as a form of admonition that nothing in life is comparable to conscientious service to humanity with humility and patriotism.

     

    Evidence of His Patriotism

    As the President of African Vice-Chancellors, when he noticed that the position of the Executive Secretary of the Association of African Universities (AAU) was more important and more beneficial to Nigeria than that of the President which he occupied, Prof Oloyede encouraged some of his Nigerian colleagues to apply for that post promising that he would resign his Presidential position in that Association to enable a Nigerian emerge as Executive Secretary. But typical of Nigerians, most of his colleagues did not believe him. However, when the time came and one of them applied, Oloyede surprisingly resigned just after two years in an office where he was supposed to spend four renewable years. Following that patriotic display of strategy, Nigeria began to benefit greatly from the post of Executive Secretary which was then held by Prof Jegede, a former Vice- Chancellor of National Open University (NOUN). And to show appreciation to Prof Oloyede over his large heart and patriotism, the AAU Board appointed him as a Board Member of that Association.

    Only a few Nigerians in the academic field can surpass this humble man’s record when it comes to the ‘nitty gritty’ of academic prowess, discipline and integrity. Yet, you can hardly notice it in his demeanour.

     

    His Ladder to the Top

    Prof Oloyede was not only the first ‘FIRST CLASS’ graduate of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Ilorin and the very first alumnus of that University to obtain a PhD in that same University, he was also the first Director of Academic Planning and first alumni President to be a member of the Governing Council of the University. Oloyede is the first Unilorin alumnus to become a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and subsequently the first alumnus to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University.

    Not only that, he is the first Vice-Chancellor in Nigeria to introduce Computer-Based Test (CBT) as a method of screening applicants for admission into the University. An invention which institutions like WAEC and NECO later adopted. This ingenuous personality was also the first Vice-Chancellor to lead a second generation University to the number one position in Nigeria based on external ranking. He also became the first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor to emerge as President of the Association of African Universities (AAU) and at the same time the Chairman of Association of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU).

    He was also the first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor to combine the Board membership of International Association of Universities (IAU) with those of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and Association of African Universities (AAU).

    With the above listed ‘FIRSTS’ he was able to make Unilorin the first Federal University in Nigeria to run an uninterrupted academic calendar throughout his tenure and this made it possible for Unilorin to be internationally ranked as one of the very best 20 Universities in Africa. Also, through Prof Oloyede’s astute academic administration, the University of Ilorin was able to maintain the first position among Nigerian Universities for three consecutive years (2009, 2010 and 2011).

    While giving his first annual report entitled ‘I BELIEVE’ barely one year after he became the Vice-Chancellor, he reflected on that determination thus: “History tells us that Julius Caesar with his legions sailed over the channels from gaol and arrived in today’s England. He did a very clever yet incongruous thing to ensure the success of his army. Halting the soldiers on the chalk cliffs of Dover, he burnt every ship by which they crossed, leaving them with nothing but determination to succeed or perish, with the only means of retreat consumed by the red tongues of fire. It was that determination, powered by courage that made the legions to advance and conquer. They did not look back and the rest is history”.

    “I believe”, he continued: “that with the caesarean determination of avoiding destruction and being focused on the set goals, the University of Ilorin, by all standards, a great University can be greater. Our goals are to fulfil our mission, attain our vision and engrave the name of the University on the psyche of global reckoning through the adoption of best practices. I believe that this is possible along the dictum that says “whatever human mind can conceive and believe man can achieve”. “I believe that we can do it if we are determined”. It is that courageous belief that is now seeing him through the hitherto turbulent voyage of JAMB.

     

    Conclusion

    “Who shares his life’s pure pleasure and walks the honest road; who trades with heaping measure and lifts his brother’s load; who turns the wrong down bluntly and lends the right a hand; he dwells in God’s own country and tills the holy land”.

    Professor Oloyede has done precisely that and Nigeria is a witness. It is now left for the present days to raise up their voices in prayer saying GOD BLESS YOU so that the future days can chorus AMEN in response.

  • The traitor within

    A lawmaker got impeached for embezzlement of public funds. Today, that Speaker emerges from dishonour as “pride to her people.” Our thieving “Honourable” of yesterday, is today, an informed choice for ministerial appointment. That shameful “Honourable” has been exonerated and venerated as a fine stateswoman by the same assembly that disrobed her.

    A party chairman was prosecuted for dipping his hand in the public till, and he was issued a sentence, that even now, resounds as a pat on the back. A thieving pilfered the treasury silly, and he is let off the hook in an astonishing act of political expediency.

    A dishonest bank chief was caught stealing poor customers’ savings to service her vanities, and those of her rich, spoilt clients, and she was issued a punishment justifiable as a modest and enjoyable vacation.

    Political thugs, assassins, arsonists, executive fraudsters and murderous public officers are let off the hook in the wake of suspicious plea bargaining and bullying of the state. Such realities suggest rapid deterioration of our morals and mind. And the reasons are hardly far-fetched: despite our professed righteousness, the Nigerian society ennobles mindless profiteering off the state by public officers and their associates.

    The situation worsens by Nigerians’ seeming desperation to substitute virtue for vice and approximate the rewards for uprightness to loathsome ridicule, and an inclination to witch-hunt the just and ethically sound.

    This is not to imply that certain honest individuals do not exist in our clime, but they are persistently repudiated and consumed by the system they are committed to serve. Nigeria’s culture – despite our claims to probity – in fact, reveals a deeper evil than we renounce.

    It reveals the extent to which pretentiousness, selfishness and greed, erodes the average Nigerian’s capacity to grasp the precepts of honesty, human rights and associated values. It reveals a culture from which the expectations and realities of humanity has been totally wiped out.

    The downside is that public officers we elect to serve as the means to the attainment of our various ends, end up exploiting us as the means to insane ends. The greedier we evolve, the more neurotic we become – as elected representatives and electorate – in our practice of leadership and citizenship “for the general good of society,” “for the good of future generations” and everything and anything, except humankind.

    Hence the appalling recklessness with which we acquiesce to bestiality of all kinds, accept betrayal and the most atrocious mode of leadership indefatigably imposed by a treacherous minority on our wanton majority.

    A unilateral breach of contract characterizes the Nigerian leadership. Governance in Nigeria today, involves the most insidious form of tyranny exemplified by wanton disregard for human life and an indirect use of physical force. It consists, in essence, of one man or a group of men exploiting and monopolizing the material wealth of the entire nation, and then refusing to extend the benefits accruable from the exploitation of such resources – which is a cardinal principle of government by representation – to all.

    This privileged few ceaselessly misappropriating the nation’s wealth to themselves, can be likened to commonplace, contemptible fraudsters. The Nigerian leadership commits grievous acts of fraud and extortion utilising variants of an indirect use of force; which consists of obtaining material values, not in exchange for values, but by the threat of force, violence or other forms of unconscionable deterrents to any citizen courageous enough to challenge them and demand his constitutional right to equity promised as core dividend of democratic governance.

    Consequently, many Nigerians in desperate bid to be socio-politically correct, have perfected the art of moral subterfuge; the hallmark of which is the perverse inclination to aver that a thieving Governor actually means well or a light-fingered Speaker couldn’t help defraud the nation of hard-earned billions and dip his hand in the public till – because they were helpless pawns in the manifestation of a monumental rot the nation should be done with.

    There is no moral difference between a 20-year-old who resorts to armed robbery or advanced fee fraud to actualise his dream of owning a yacht, an expensive bar, penthouse and state-of-the-art Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), and a Governor, legislator or President who in desperation to amass wealth and operate a Swiss bank account, advocates some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs and means – which are usually enshrouded in dense patches of venomous fog to hide the fact that millions of lives are devastated and national growth, grievously stunted, in the actualisation of such public goal.

    There is no excuse however, to justify the selfishness and greed of a Nigerian populace that persistently yields to cravings and temptations by which it loses its right to fair government and it’s much sought epoch of peace and abundance. Progress can only be achieved by a conscious effort to challenge the status quo and demand that among other things, a country’s leadership live up to promises it made at election time.

    Picture by what leaps our lot would improve if Nigerians did not involve in such abject perversions and evasions that spur them to delude that some criminally-minded and power-thirsty politician is motivated by patriotic concerns for the “public interest.”

    Picture what realities the nation could approximate if every citizen desisted from bartering their mandates for chicken-feed, rationalising and driving their minds into states of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that their favorite public officers are actually, mistaken or evil.

    The current generation of Nigerians will continue to plug away and die in preventable misery if they continue to worship and celebrate state actors and elected representatives, who pleaded for our votes,  that they may afflict us with poverty and unmitigated misery.

    Democratic tyrannies and corrupt governments continue to thrive wherever the governed barter their chances at progress, for a token, or gross, dangerous bigotries.

    As 2019 approaches, let us not articulate our miseries and dissent, like the proverbial pawns, eternally programmed to self-destruct.

  • The Honourable Art of Resignation

    It is beyond speculation that the Nigerian state faces a crisis of grave magnitude. But the absence of a critical interrogation of officialdom in relations to the fundamental principles of modern governance leads to an even more terrifying moral and political void.  In the circumstance, some fundamental principles on which modern governance is anchored which always seem to elude us must now be brought back to the front burner.

    One of these is the honourable and noble art of resignation. Resignation, like preferment itself, is an integral part of the arcane rituals of domination which preserve the integrity of governance. Without integrity, there is no hegemony. This is because domination cannot be based on force and coercion for long.

    It is with sadness and weary resignation that we note that the noble and honourable art of resignation is a stranger to these climes. Africans simply don’t resign. They are forced out. Even when they are recalled from the Diaspora, resignation is not part of their social framing. The culture of resignation always seems so strange and un-African simply because it is a product of politics with principle and public service powered by visionary self-sacrifice and the suppression of ego.

    Yet in moments like this even as the state appears a hopelessly lost case, a few resignations might help. In civilised climes, whenever a government suffers a major public policy reversal or retreat, a few resignations are inevitable. Resignations are the secret elixir for a failing government. Like a magic balm, they help to soothe frayed nerves and reassure the public that the sacred covenant between them and the rulers is intact. More importantly, resignations help to restart the stalled clock of governance. A national project is, after all, not a one-crisis wonder.

    Accompanying this festival of fear and trembling and in fact prompting its dark arithmetic, is a tectonic shift in public awareness and citizen participation in governance. Since it was caught napping by this paradigm shift, it is obvious that this government needs help from concerned and patriotic Nigerians about how to get going again.

    Enlightened self-interest dictates so. This is not about any transformation agenda. That is gross self-delusion. But there are fates worse than imaginary transformation. Having shot itself in the foot by a badly misjudged public policy and with its major economic plank consumed by public adversity, this government must be helped back to its feet in the national interest.

    At no other point in our history have ethnicity and the ethnicisation of the presidency become more obvious and damaging to the national spirit. To be sure, this is a phenomenon that predates Jonathan. Every presidency that Nigeria has produced, from Shagari to Jonathan through Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, has resorted to playing the ethnic card when the going gets rough. But with Jonathan, this tribal caterwauling has reached its crescendo and ultimate nation-disabling possibility. This is not a sensible game for a minority group just coming into its own. Jonathan must rein in the antics of his excitable rabble-rousers.   .

    In looking out for help, the government must first help itself. Humility dictates that the Jonathan administration must now go back to the drawing board. But it must shed some ethical baggage. For some of his advisors to go about pokerfaced as if nothing has happened is infuriating and damaging to the logic of public order and responsibility. Even in Stone Age societies, arrogant incompetence and lack of elementary wisdom could not be rewarded with cosy preferment. The wages of public obloquy is swift resignation.

    All those officials who staked their prestige, authority and dubious acclaim on a misbegotten public policy that has badly backfired at such a huge cost to the national fabric must now resign and give way for Jonathan to inject fresh blood into his team. However skewed and rigged against the poor and the wretched of the earth, even neo-liberal economics is predicated on a certain western rationality.

    That rationality has its obligations. Margaret Thatcher, the hand-bagging matriarch of monetarist economics who once famously pronounced that there was no such thing as society, was forced to resign when it became obvious that she had become a disruptive and bitterly divisive figure in British society. It is only in the heart of darkness that public officials want to eat their cake and have it.

    Honour is a major platform for the national project, and a major plank for a truly nationalist ruling class. Without honour, there can be no national project or a nationalist class for that matter. The Nigerian nation is predicated on a series of overlapping and interlocking paradoxes. The paradox of the Nigerian post-colonial polity is that honour has become an essential commodity.

    An essential commodity is a necessary commodity. But in the cruel semantic irony introduced by military rule, an essential commodity is a rare commodity that is not readily available.  Yet without honour anchored on core values and a fanatical adherence to their dictates, there can be no coherent or cohesive national project or a Nationalist elite worth its salt.

    It is only in rare and extreme cases that you find people resigning from public office on their own volition or out of respect for personal and public integrity. Resignation is simply out of it even where the official has become a hazard to public health. The problem is that public offices are often viewed through the prism of ethnic quota or tribal census. You are not in office to represent or project certain ideals but to promote and project certain primordial loyalties. Nobody ever willingly spits out a juicy morsel.

    In the ethical void, certified thieves are often given a hero’s welcome when they return to their ancestral homesteads. As the Americans famously said of Mobutu, he may be a bastard, but he is their bastard. As long as primordial loyalties override national interests and core values, there will be no nation or a national elite class that is worth its salt. In that case, the very idea of Nigeria as a nation will be a mere notion or notification of intent for a very long time.  This is not some grim prophesy but a statement of fact. Without a pan-national ruling class to drive its core values, the nation is a nullity ab initio.

    Painfully, it must now be added that our major religions and some of their principalities have not been of any help to the nation in driving its core values and building a nationalist ethos. When religious notables romance with political notables who have swindled their way to power, and who have brought their nation to economic ruins, doubts prey on the minds of ordinary folks about the efficacy of honour and principles.

    In the north, a feudal protection racket based on organised religion has allowed the scions of the oligarchy to get away with blue murder. But it is now obvious that this protectionist racket has overreached itself as political sharia has mutated into the real thing, threatening the base and very basis of the theocratic order imposed by Usman Dan Fodio.

    As it is at the moment, only the hard-pressed Nigerian military is standing between the north and a blood-soaked enactment of Afghanistan on African soil. The twelfth imam will not come from the Sultanate but from the old empire of Idris Alooma.

    In the south, particularly in the roiling urban centres, the phenomenon of Pentecostal predation in the guise of prosperity preaching and other forms of spiritual racketeering have led to massive alienation and a dazed withdrawal from the state as a source of succour and solace. This has led to all kinds of anti-social activities ranging from violent robbery, kidnapping, extortion and the rise of mafia-like criminal cartels. Since this is based on the spiritual magic of wealth without hard work, the negative radicalism of it all keeps everybody very busy and both the rich and the poor permanently awake.

    The question must now be asked as to whether our extant religions can drive a nationalist ethos without being adapted and subordinated to local conditions. But it is also obvious that because of its transcendental message, religion goes beyond nation space and time. In fact Islam is implacably contemptuous of the nation-state paradigm. Yet it was not until certain European nations overthrew the colonial suzerainty of the Catholic Church that they came into their own as the true embodiments of the will of new states.

    If a political elite cannot overcome political and economic difficulties, it is hard to see how they can overcome spiritual contradictions and religious roguery. In fact as it is evident in contemporary Nigeria, religious roguery is an ideological apparatus of the state often deployed in hegemonic battles for the consciousness of the populace. Once the state is absolved of the responsibility for the prosperity of the populace, penury becomes a marker of personal worthlessness and divine disgrace.

    In the light of this multi-dimensional elite failure spread across spiritual, economic and political realms, there are those who believe that a national elite that cannot manage national integration will also mismanage national disintegration. The Nigerian political class is so corrupt and incompetent that it is simply incapable of the cultured and civilized procedure that led to the dissolution of the old Czechoslovakia.

    It takes empire builders to build an empire even where it has lapsed into disgrace, just as it takes genuine nationalists to build a nation even in ruins. Those who cannot build anything cannot maintain anything. This is why we must return to first principles. One of these is the culture of resignation. Let us return to the honourable art of resignation.

     

    • First published in 2012

     

     

  • Honourable members indeed!

    SIR: Thursday June 25 will go down the annals of Nigeria’s history as, yet, another day members of the House of Representatives showed how hallowed enough they deemed the “hallowed” Green Chamber of the National Assembly.

    It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of patriotic Nigerians to see our “Honourable” members engage in fighting for leadership positions aimed at giving them the leverage to amass for themselves and cronies, the wealth of the nation rather than fighting for the entrenchment of true democratic practices or the unleashing of democratic dividends to the to bring them out of the current untoward economic challenges of poverty, unemployment, insecurity, corruption, etc.

    If one may ask, what is honourable about the members when they’re wont to engaging in physical combats for reasons that, in the long run, doesn’t have any positive impact on the citizenry, but instead, leaves them bewildered and dismayed as well as further dent the image of the country?

    It’s utterly appalling to see our supposedly honourable members throw their sense of honour to the winds and engage in physical combats at a time when they should be combating the humongous and burgeoning economic, social, political, cultural and other challenges facing the country.

    To recall that this awful incident is happening at a time when the dust raised by the controversies and intrigues surrounding the elections of NASS leadership had hardly settled down really leaves the citizenry wondering if the 8th Assembly, especially the House of Representatives, is really ready to drive the country’s legislative business to the next level.

    It’s really disheartening to also note that the legislators at the heart of this inglorious fight are members of the ruling APC that had promised Nigerians positive change and a departure from the hitherto, business-as-usual paradigm in the nation’s 16 years of uninterrupted democratic experience. And this has truly left Nigerians bitterly querying the nature and type of change the APC want to bring to them.

    There’s no doubt that our legislative system is a very crucial segment of our current system of government. There’s also no doubt that our legislative arm of government is meant to be populated by individuals who are deemed honourable and respectable due to the fact that they are saddled with the task of making laws that will bring about  the unity, peace and progress of our country.

    However, a situation where these “personalities have decided make fighting and worthless altercations their stocks in trade truly leaves much to be desired. It puts a question mark on the extent to which our legislators, especially those at the House of Representatives, are honourable enough to legislate and produce for the nation, worthwhile laws needed for her holistic development.

    It’s extremely important that while our representatives in the legislative arm of government go about parading themselves as honourable members, they should also realise that true honour isn’t just gotten, but earned; that it doesn’t just come on the basis of desire, but on the basis of the recipient deserving it.

    Our legislators must get off this beaten track of senseless melee in the execution of legislative business, and embark on the true act of legislation, especially in this time and season where the nation’s economy is performing at one of its lowest ebbs.

     

    • Daniel Ndukwe Ekea,

    Umuahia, Abia state.