Of the two houses of the National Assembly, the Senate is the place where you are less likely to find unbridled passion. You can count the number of times when things threatened to spin out of control. One occasion was the ‘burial ceremony’ for former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda.
The ‘officiating minister’ was then Senate President Ken Nnamani. Even in such heady circumstances, the best senators could come up with were comedy skits – like Adolphus Wabara’s speech mocking the then president before voting ‘no’. When the gavel finally came down it was to off-key chants of something akin to a football match victory song.
But for pure, undiluted passion you have to go to the ‘Green Chamber’ where the House of Representatives sits. Over time, in their bid to resolve thorny issues, punches have been thrown and furniture hurled in all directions.
Sometimes the passion in the House gets deadly. When the so-called Integrity Group decided in 2007 to overthrow then Speaker Patricia Etteh, the chamber was split down the middle. One legislator who opposed the insurrection was dragged on the floor and dumped outside the chamber. Dino Melaye, the Speaker’s most vocal advocate, had his expensive shirt shredded. For the late Aminu Safana, another loyalist of the embattled regime, it was all too much: he slumped and gave up the ghost.
Many have sought to make sense of the difference in character of the two chambers and have come to a few plausible conclusions. Senators are fewer in number and tend to be older. The House, on the other hand, accommodates over 400, much younger individuals. The youth factor means there will be hundreds with very low boiling points – making for a very combustible chamber.
Against this backdrop, you can imagine my surprise watching on television as two senators tugged at each other’s voluminous babanrigas – waiting to let fly with jabs and uppercuts. We were denied what was turning out to be quite superb entertainment by the spoilsport intervention of a couple of peacemaking senators.
The day after the aborted senatorial boxing match I read accounts of what provoked the altercation, but came away even more confused. Some said the fight was triggered by the debate over President Goodluck Jonathan’s failure to sign a bill requiring him to deliver a state of the nation address yearly at the National Assembly.
Another version blamed it on the charged discussion over plans by Zamfara State Governor, Abdulaziz Yari, to arm a local militia as part of his administration’s efforts to curb spiraling crime.
For me, what was important was not legislators getting excited once in a while: we’ve seen them do similar things in places as far afield as Turkey and South Korea. What was great was that debate was shifting – even if for a day – from the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) agonies.
It was great to see our lawmakers at work. But what work?
Before the shoving incident, the legislative business on everyone’s lips was the amendment of the 1999 constitution. But of all Nigeria’s most pressing problems the highlight of that exercise from the Senate end was a proposal limiting executive tenure to a single six-year term. Now, we can add another priority item to the lawmakers’ list of achievements – a bill requiring the president to deliver one more boring speech.
Not to be outdone, the House committee saddled with the same constitution-tweaking assignment has rolled out its own recommendations. One move guaranteed to generate much discussion is the proposal to strip executive office holders of immunity.
The question I ask myself is: who cares about immunity? In a country of 160 million people those likely to be directly affected by this provision are less than 100. Even if you impeach and jail all of Nigeria’s governors it will not resolve our electricity crisis.
How many government officials who don’t presently enjoy this constitutional protection from prosecution – be they in legislative houses or some parastatal – have been brought to book? Removing the immunity clause is no guarantee that there will be diligent prosecution, or that men would swear off crime, or corruption will suddenly plummet.
I would feel much better if it is established that dueling senators nearly came to blows over the Zamfara security question. Insecurity is an issue for which the political establishment has not come up with anything that approximates an answer. Yari’s proposal may be unorthodox and even dangerous, but at least he’s come up with an idea.
Boko Haram is the screaming advertisement of Nigeria’s crisis of insecurity. But far from the frontlines of terror in the North-East, the country lies prostrate before an army of armed robbers, kidnappers, pirates, illegal bunkerers, ethnic militias and sundry malcontents.
National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), speaking at the National Civil-Military Dialogue in Abuja a few days ago painted a picture of the gravity of the situation. He said terrorism and other security challenges had thrust the armed forces into joint operations with the police and other para-military outfits in 28 states. That is all of Nigeria bar eight states!
It is an unusual situation when soldiers get involved with internal policing; it is an emergency when an ad-hoc measure becomes the norm. Our embrace of the unusual is admission that the Nigeria Police as presently constituted cannot deliver on internal security.
We should be asking why our police are so overwhelmed. At over 400,000 men ours must be one of the largest national police forces in the world. Yet the force is hobbled by its structure, underfunding as well as manipulation by political office holders.
Those who are unnerved by Yari’s armed militia have not come up with a more creative alternative. Their solution is as lame as they come: post most policemen to Zamfara. The question is what difference have they made in the states where they are supposedly found in numbers.
Nigeria is too complex to continue to operate one national force. Even the British who once ran the police here don’t have one national organisation, but city and community outfits like the London Metropolitan Police and others.
The exchanges involving Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi and the Police Commissioner, Joseph Mbu, are further evidence that the present structure has long overshot its sell-by date.
A situation where a supposed chief security officer of state cannot give instructions to the resident police boss is impractical. You can extrapolate and envision a scenario in which the Inspector-General of Police doesn’t take instructions from the president – but from some higher powers elsewhere.
It all brings the state police solution front and center of the discussion. The Federal Government cannot fund the police adequately. The force is running in most states because of the benevolent intervention of governors.
People say states are not sensible enough to manage their own police, yet they are mature enough to fund the force. Managing the police is no different from running any other human organisation. The fact that they bear arms is irrelevant. What is needed is definition of the parameters under which state police will operate.
Yari’s proposal in Zamfara is a crude form of local policing. But rather than burying our heads in the sand and hoping that the Nigeria Police will suddenly become effective, let’s admit that times like these call for more radical solutions.
Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba who understands what we’re saying nailed it in the senate last week when he said it was time to look again at the state police idea. Here’s hoping his colleagues can overcome their fears and embrace the future.
