HOW that the heat generated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “special statement” seems to have subsided and the follow-up by former military president Gen. Ibrahim Babangida has caused a civil war in the Hilltop mansion, it is fitting and proper to move on to other matters that are no less important.
Obasanjo, you may recall, has since launched a Coalition – some call it Commotion – for Nigeria Movement (CN) after advising President Muhammadu Buhari not to pick up the gauntlet in 2019. Babangida and his media aide Kassim Afegbua are battling the wages of shiftiness, an attribute many will not hesitate to decorate the former military leader with.
As I was saying, it is time we moved on to other matters. Among such weighty issues is the unnecessary contempt with which our senators are held, even among those who, by virtue of their standing, should be custodians of protocol and etiquette.
Nobody considers the intellectual and physical exertions that go into lawmaking and oversight duties which keep them burning the midnight oil. All we talk about is their fat pay packet as if we knew what they actually earn.
The other day Senator Dino Jonah Melaye took some time off his new video making venture – he has just released one in which he excoriated Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello; in the earlier one he was on the street hawking groundnuts and many thought he had gone nuts. He led the Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Wastage in the Nigerian Customs Service to the Customs Headquarters in Abuja. Comptroller- General Hameed Ali did not go downstairs from his office to receive the Very Important Visitors (VIV). He simply waited in his office until they were seated in the conference room before showing up.
Melaye, the distinguished senator representing the good people of Kogi West, immediately charged him with a breach of protocols, a rather serious offence in official circles. “Mr CG, rather than meeting us here at the conference room by way of courtesy, you’re supposed to have met us at the ground floor on arrival into the premises. That has been the practice of statutory bodies headed by Chief Executive Officers like you,” he told Col. Ali.
The Senator banged the table with a gavel he had brought with him. The Senate was in session, Melaye – yes, Melaye – presiding. Oh; what a session.
But Ali, a veteran of such battle of wits, would not be bullied. “I don’t need to come downstairs to receive you, just as nobody in the Senate or House of Representatives has ever come out to receive us anytime we visit the National Assembly,” he replied. “So, there is no breach of protocol for not coming down to welcome you since appropriate officers have been assigned to do so. Our protocol is our protocol and should be allowed to be. In fact, by way of etiquette, it is the committee that is supposed to come to my office first on arrival and not just come straight to the conference room.”
Needless to say, the meeting ended on a stormy note. No photographs. Nor handshakes. Nor tea and other niceties to which Customs is said to be accustomed.
If Ali is summoned to appear in uniform and explain the “economic wastage in Customs”, we should not be surprised. A little courtesy to lawmakers surely goes a long way.
Perhaps the CG did not understand all this talk about protocol, etiquette and such elements of officialese. Such ignorance could someday cause a dutiful senator to move a motion for the abolition of the Customs Service. The “ayes” will have it and, just like that, our Customs will cease to exist. But, to be candid, these are compassionate people; I do not see them doing that.
The Melaye-Ali row reminded a friend of mine of an encounter with a Senate committee last year. Some fertiliser suppliers had been summoned to, as they say, shed light on their bids for the yearly contracts. The planting season was on. It was that time of the year when all hands must be on the plough to avert a devastating food shortage.
The company’s spokesman told the lawmakers that it was being owed for supplies it had delivered in the past and that in the new scheme it had supplied about 85 per cent. With payment, it would be able to supply the remaining 15 per cent, the gentleman said.
“But you don’t have the capacity for this job,” a member of the committee said.
“We have. We have already done 85 per cent. We have the capacity for this job and more,” the company chief insisted.
The argument went on and on. All about “capacity”. Flustered, the company chief kept quiet. The distinguished senator – all senators are distinguished – who led the committee looked straight into the eyes of the now subdued company chief and said: “We say you don’t have capacity; you keep screaming that you have capacity. I put it to you on behalf of this distinguished committee that you don’t have capacity. Listen. You went to the Villa and showed them capacity. You went to the Ministry of Agric and showed them capacity. Now, show us capacity.”
He was all smiles. Obviously showing some understanding of the word “capacity”, the company chief smiled in return and promised to be back – apparently to show his “capacity”.
The story is told of how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was being summoned last year to explain one thing or the other. So frequent were the summons that many thought the CBN had moved its offices to the National Assembly.
On one of such occasions, said a source close to a lawmaker whose colleague is a friend of one of the uncles of a member of the panel that met with the bankers, one of the senator could barely conceal his indignation.
“Every time we read in the papers that the CBN has injected $200m into the forex market to prop up the Naira; who is getting the contracts?” he demanded.
“Nigerians want to know and this committee will do everything within its power to let Nigerians know who is getting the contracts; $200m today; $250m tomorrow. Haba! The contractor must appear. Who signed the contract? Was there due process? Was it competitive? Is that the best we can do? Why were we not carried along? You award contracts without telling us and when Nigerians demand an answer, they want us to come up with one. Enough. Henceforth, the CBN must not intervene in the forex market or any market – Gerin Kasua, Ariaria, Oba Market, Oyingbo, Balogun; any market at all without the express permission of this committee.”
However, of all the hazards of lawmaking, none seems to be more of immediate danger than the continued stay in office of the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu. A court has said the Senate has the power to confirm the appointment of a chairman for the agency. Based on this, the lawmakers are asking the Executive to nominate another person for the job. The Presidency does not appear to be ready to do this; it would rather swim or sink with Magu.
How do we resolve this logjam? Simple. Let’s just pick a senator for the job. Won’t that save us all the rigmarole of background investigation, security report, and formal Senate interview?
A curious (and dubious?) amnesty
IMO State Governor Rochas Okorocha has ignited another controversy. He has not created a new Ministry. Nor has he erected any new statue. The fresh row is about the amnesty His Excellency has granted some seemingly repentant lawbreakers, including Emenike Agamu (aka General Red Scorpion).
Red Scorpion is said to be number four in the hierarchy of leaders of the late Don Waney’s gang, which reportedly killed 23 people on New Year’s Day in Omoku, Rivers State. Some other members of the gang, including Waney’s brother, have met a bloody end.
With the security agencies in hot pursuit of other members of the collapsing criminal empire, it is curious that Owelle Okorocha will suddenly announce an amnesty for the group. Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike is angry. He has said that the amnesty is not binding on the state. He believes it is a desperate step by some suspected criminals to evade justice.
Is the amnesty not preposterous? Isn’t the timing curious and dubious? How are we sure that Red Scorpion will not, like his late boss, go back to running a criminal enterprise?
Don Waney was once pardoned by the government of Rivers State. He even got a chieftaincy title to the bargain. Yet, he would not forsake crime, until his sensational life of crimes collapsed under a hail of bullets fired by patriotic security agents. Will the killing and abduction of innocent people stop now? Will the destruction of oil pipelines end?
Let’s hope Okorocha has not got it all wrong this time.
