Tag: Saraki

UNLIKE President Donald Trump of the United States who has no presidential bone or cell in his body to fit his vaulting but misplaced political ambition, both Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara have grown hesitantly into their roles as top leaders of the National Assembly. Despite massive criticisms and sometimes bad press, they have held down their jobs quite compellingly. Both fought bravely and ferociously to win office, holding as they went along nearly all rules and regulations governing such contests with all the realpolitik contemptuousness they could muster. Dr Saraki won because he dispensed with standard administrative ethics, and he has ruled the senate with an implacable hold of its jugular. Hon Dogara, on the other hand, triumphed more ethically, supported by hardened and menacing backers, but without the subterranean machinations that defined the struggle in the upper chamber.

However, about two years into the job, and despite growing into it as well as they can manage, and holding their offices resolutely, neither has seemed to demonstrate a deep understanding of the gravitas that ordinarily surrounds their positions. Neither has seemed to want to go beyond holding office and fending off rebellion. Given largely the disinterestedness of the presidency in the affairs of the legislature, especially the hobbling intrusion of the president’s health challenges, both principal officers seem set to last very long in office. Rather ironically, their staying power and the chance accretion of authority and gravitas to their image, if not reputation, have combined to widen their appeal in the legislature and weaken the legal and legislative opposition to their reigns.

They are, however, not invincible. They should ennoble the offices they occupy, as much as those offices have in fact ennobled them as bright and perceptive politicians and principal officers. But until Dr Saraki is done with his huge legal encumbrances and the ethical challenge that vitiated the force and appeal of his election in the senate, it is hard to see him ennobling that office. He has played politics with a suavity that is uncommon in the chamber, and he has balanced interests as much as the situation will permit him. In addition, he has incentivised lawmakers and fiercely defended the power and independence of the senate. Yet, despite his seeming brilliance, despite his hold on members, and despite his calculating moves behind the scenes, there is absolutely no ethical or ideational depth to his politics. Indeed, given his business background, much of which paid no attention to his future political prospects, there can be no depth whatsoever.

Hon Dogara may not be enmeshed in an ethical miasma like Dr Saraki — if the Hon Abdulmumin Jibrin challenge to his leadership is discounted — and he has also seemed to run the affairs of the lower chamber with much aplomb. But he too has not displayed the kind of ideological surefootedness the country needs in these desperately barren times. Some of his speeches have soared, and his past actions have not attracted so much revulsion, and he has taken positions on germane issues that prove in retrospect to be sensible. But he has sometimes seemed as if there is a disconnect between his person, which he has done well to camouflage and emits confusing signals, and his actions and positions. In short there is a meretriciousness to his actions and policies, as if he is desperate to please, unlike the more bullish and iconoclastic Dr Saraki.

Except the country can find the judicial muscle to unhorse Dr Saraki, he will hold court in the senate for the next two years. The significantly hobbled Buhari presidency — perhaps more because of the divisions inside Aso Villa — does not mind working with and tolerating a Saraki senate. Dr Saraki himself has enjoyed that division, and on occasions, such as the stalemated confirmation process of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss, Ibrahim Magu, he has synergised quite robustly with the powerful secret service. Dr Saraki will continue to have the back of the president, as he showed during a consideration of that disingenuous second medical leave letter written by President Muhammadu Buhari; and both the president and the presidency, seeing him as a counterpoise to certain powerful political interests, will also have his back.

Hon Dogara seems even more likely to survive till the next polls, regardless of his bitter conflict with his governor, Mohammed Abubakar, a lawyer like himself. Not only is he representing his Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa Balewa federal constituency for the third time, he is popular in Bauchi State and the House of Representatives. He has also proved a consensus builder, and somewhat an iconoclast, given the way he defied his party to contest for the Speaker’s office and his description of Gov Abubakar as being irrelevant to the needs of Bauchi people.

In the early days of the anti-corruption war, when both the senate president and speaker were regarded as a part of the problem, it had appeared like the electorate favoured the sacking of the National Assembly (NASS). That wish proved to be grandiose, unrealistic and hasty, especially in view of the dictatorial tendency shown by the Buhari presidency. The NASS is more entrenched now than it was last year, and will undoubtedly become much more forceful and active in the years ahead. The country needs a strong but more importantly ethical legislature. Gradually, too, more qualified and ethical candidates will get elected into the legislature if voters show the perceptiveness needed to turn things around and put the right people in office. That transformation will not happen overnight, nor, as other parliaments elsewhere have shown, will corruption, conspiracy and injurious connivance be completely expunged from the business of lawmaking. As everyone knows, the parliament, irrespective of its deficiencies, is the greatest bulwark against absolutism and the erraticism of military adventurers.

The poor health of President Buhari may have complicated the politics of re-election in 2019 and put the country on tenterhooks. But while nothing can be taken for granted, the NASS leadership may consider setting a great but different precedence. The Nigerian constitution borrowed heavily from the American presidential system. It is perhaps time Dr Saraki and Hon Dogara took that borrowing a notch higher by frequently addressing press conferences to expatiate on legislative issues and give the public insights and perspectives into critical executive actions and policies. The chairmen of the NASS media committees cannot do the job as well as the two principal officers. If the president, at a time, recognised the need to have a media chat, but abandoned it because of lack of depth and discipline and democratic convictions, it would not hurt the more modern Dr Saraki and Hon Dogara to consider conducting frequent 30min or one hour press conferences.

Dr Saraki seldom addresses press conferences, except when he can’t avoid a controlled interview, perhaps because he doesn’t trust himself to answer, without gaffes, some of the radical questions newsmen may put to him. What, for instance, would he say if he was asked why he had not stepped down over his trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal? He would stammer. Hon Dogara seems more at home answering questions, and does not appear to possess the imperious and irritating habit of flying off the handle when naughty questions are thrown at him. But even he can sometimes fidget. Constant interactions with the press would show the mettle a principal legislative officer is made of, provide insights into the workings of government, humanise the principal officers, and help the country assess the legislature and even empathise with them. It is time they cut the aloofness.

President Buhari is unlikely to have another media chat before 2019. Neither he nor his aides have the appetite to organise one. It was during his first, and of course last, chat that he came across as an unrepentant dictator. He had made up his mind on Col Sambo Dasuki (retd.), the former National Security Adviser’s incarceration regardless of what the law and the constitution say — in effect indicating the matter was personal. He had also made up his mind on Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the detained Shiite leader who is held unlawfully and unconstitutionally without trial, also indicating that he had contempt for the constitution and the tenets of democracy. Rather than allow too many disconcerting things to come out of the media chats, the president and his minders simply axed the programme. For all their atrocious faults, it is unlikely Dr Saraki and Hon Dogara possess that searing dislike for, or suspicion of, democracy. They should seize upon the option of interacting with the press to cultivate the people, show that despite their own weaknesses and failings, and their inability to adequately ennoble their offices, they still possess a modicum of vision needed to help entrench the principles and practice of democracy. Should they initiate this practice, no future principal officer will be able to abolish it. More importantly, the credit will go to them.