Tag: Senators

It is indisputable that the image of the National Assembly has been so battered in recent years that both chambers never seemed capable of rising to a level of respect worthy of a sophisticated parliament. The image crisis has became more pronounced in the Fourth Republic, from the 1st NASS to the 8th NASS. Though the emblem of that image decline is, sadly, the Senate, with the upper chamber remaining consistently bereft of any ideology, the lower chamber has struggled, sometimes melodramatically, to exude an ideological and radical hue. Under Senate President Bukola Saraki, in particular, the Senate has sunk to unimaginable level.

Senator Saraki may have some problems with his party, the APC, but they are largely self-created. His wife, Toyin, was in late July invited by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to answer questions concerning suspected money laundering. Interpreting it as vicarious punishment  for her husband’s defiance of  the party’s leadership, five senators and 20 House of Representatives members accompanied her to the anti-graft agency office in Abuja, ostensibly in solidarity. How and when legislators become so cheap and so ethically disoriented that they would take the unprecedented step of accompanying the wife of a senator suspected of crime is hard to fathom?

But, alas, the ugly procession was just beginning. In September, Senator Saraki himself was charged in court for false declaration of assets. He also interpreted it as a witch-hunt, and on the day of arraignment, was accompanied by about 30 senators whooping for him. In their opinion, they were defying the party and the presidency, and sending a clear message that nothing could drive a wedge between them and their dear leader. Their ethical compass was so damaged that they ignored the legal and moral import of the arraignment and viewed the whole exercise through the prism of politics and persecution.

If anyone thought  the senators merely suffered a momentary lapse of judgement the first time, well, on Senator Saraki’s second appearance at the CCT, he was again accompanied by about 34 senators, all of them encouraging him to defy the dock. That is what the Nigerian Senate has come to: defying the state, its laws and its constitution, and setting atrocious examples for future generations.

With more than 80 senators twice passing a vote of confidence in him, ostensibly to encourage his rebellion against his party, there is no telling how far the legislators and Senator Saraki would go, or what sorcery he would use next to hoodwink them in the name of legislative independence.

Perhaps one day, when one of Senator Saraki’s burly servants would be charged in court for spitting on the road, a few senators, led by perhaps the beefy dragon slayer Dino Melaye, would accompany him to court on the pretext of resisting another witch-hunt. At the rate of its decline, if the Senate does not find an excuse to sack the Republic, the Republic would muster the courage to sack its 109 members for their obsession with witches and witch-hunts, and for bringing the country to disrepute.

IT is not absolutely certain how many senators accompanied Senate President Bukola Saraki to the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) in Abuja last Monday. A few reports suggested that some 25 or 26 senators escorted him to the tribunal in solidarity. Other newspapers said the number was much higher. But whether 25 or 50, it was a national disgrace that lawmakers of the rank of senators exhibited such woeful judgement that saw them demonstrating solidarity with one of their leaders who was accused of wrongdoing. In the view of the empathising senators, there was no legal merit to the case against Dr Saraki. They think, and have voiced it noisily and remorselessly, that the case is nothing but politics. Dr Saraki himself, in the dock, suggested that the only reason he was being tried was because he was the Senate President. By a curious method of political and legal fractionalisation, Dr Saraki has managed to separate himself as a person, with all his vulnerableness and foibles, from the Senate President, whom he sees as being above the law. It was the latter, he mocked self-righteously, that was charged in court.

For more than one week before his eventual arraignment, Dr Saraki had, in the opinion of the prosecution, engaged in ‘forum shopping’ during which he attempted to get either the Federal High Court or the Appeal Court to thwart his trial before the tribunal. In the process, a bench warrant was issued to enforce his appearance. Neither the police nor the prosecution, it turned out, was eager to see him arrested, perhaps because of his status as Nigeria’s number three citizen. If there had been yet another court to which he could make recourse to escape what he felt was the humiliation of being docked, he would have availed himself. Eventually, both the High Court and the Appeal Court sensibly declined to connive at his judicial subversion. To Dr Saraki, it mattered little that his attitude encouraged either anarchy or disrespect for judicial processes. To him, everything had to be about himself, about his comfort, about his advancement in life. For this young iconoclast, nothing else mattered, not even the likelihood of the whole democratic edifice crashing to the ground.

Dr Saraki is in his early 50s, and is expected to demonstrate a healthy amount of wisdom both in speech and in action. But as advanced in years as he appears to be, and late in his career, too, he has sadly not acquired the depth of understanding required to function seamlessly and nobly in a large and complex society needing both the stabilisation of its political system and the security and progress of its people. Not only was he required to comprehend the intricacies of the system, he was also expected to possess the most intuitively nuanced view of life. But Dr Saraki’s view of himself and life, not to say of the Nigerian political system, is still at the rudimentary level. There is little anyone can say or write to persuade him to appreciate his errors. He is persuaded he is being persecuted. Once so convinced, it was sufficient, in his dangerously messianic worldview, to inspire him to undermine, tear or desecrate the entire societal fabric.

There is only a thin line between ambition and messianism. Dr Saraki is not just ambitious, he engages himself frantically and often unscrupulously in the pursuit of his own happiness, in politics especially. Neither family ties, nor political rules and regulations, nor judicial circumscription, is capable of constraining him to act with the moderation, restraint and wisdom of a stakeholder in Nigerian politics and an important member of the ruling class. Citing what many saw as a fair and democratic approach to Kwara State politics, the younger Saraki fell out spectacularly with his father, Olusola Sraraki, who had wanted the younger Saraki to be succeeded as Kwara governor by his sister, Gbemisola. It was not clear whether what fuelled the younger Saraki’s rebellion was his love for democracy or his obsession for self-preservation. Had Ms Saraki succeeded Dr Bukola Saraki, it was unlikely the latter would continue to retain the influence he believed he needed to master Kwara State should any other person other than his choice take the governorship stool.

In any case, the family patriarch was humiliated in the 2011 elections, and, coupled with his long-running battle with cancer, soon succumbed to death in 2012. It was claimed a rapprochement took place between the Sarakis, and that the family patriarch himself suggested he had forgiven his son. But those close to him thought otherwise. Sometime in 2011, after the state poll in which Ms Gbemi Saraki lost, Dr Saraki the elder said: “What happened to me during the last election was a misfortune. I never expected it but I know that was how the Almighty Allah wanted it, and I have taken it as a human being. Since I never expected that it would be my blood that will change the face of Kwara, which he did to my satisfaction and admiration of everybody, then I have to accept this too as my own fate.”

Having defied his aging and sick dad and defeated, indeed humiliated, him politically, no icon was too sacred for the increasingly irreverent Senate President to fight and, if necessary, demolish. It was no surprise therefore that he took on the All Progressives Congress (APC) elders and also looked the president in the face over the contentious National Assembly leadership and principal officers positions. He thought nothing of attempting to subordinate the judiciary either to himself or, failing that, to his worldview, which he disguised as altruistic and patriotic. Whether he was propelled by ambition or principles is a hard nut for many senators and members of the public to crack. Dr Saraki is congenitally unable to differentiate between personal interest and public good. What is hard to understand is why more than 50 senators, whose cumulative experience and knowledge must be of such quantum and amperage as to be able to impact the country positively, can’t seem to be able to deconstruct Dr Saraki, nor distill his inchoate philosophy from the country’s larger, variegated interests.

In June, when the leadership of the Senate was to be chosen, some 57 or so senators helped him plot a spectacular coup against his colleagues. And they have helped him ever since to sustain the heresy against his party and the country’s constitution. Indeed, there are indications that when the pressure on him to present himself before the tribunal become unbearable, and he finally consented to honour the invitation, dozens of senators visited him two Fridays ago and prevailed on him to dishonour the CCT. Should he go, they counselled, he was unwittingly making the senate, and in particular the office of the Senate President, susceptible to humiliation. The lawmakers didn’t see the point that Dr Saraki’s intransigence undermined the constitution, and his refusal and ‘forum shopping’ an attempt to humiliate the law and the judiciary. They myopically saw no contradiction between their status as lawmakers and their acquired pastime as lawbreakers.

In the dock, Dr Saraki tried vaingloriously to present himself above the law, gravely warning the government and the judiciary against showcasing their anti-democratic and unlawful behaviour before the whole world. The Senate made the law governing the operations of the CCT, he groaned, as if he expected the tribunal chairman to quake at the mere mention of that very fact. Well, last Monday, he was docked properly, and his plea taken. If any humiliation took place, it was certainly not the law that was battered, notwithstanding the more than one-week rigmarole it took to drag Dr Saraki before the tribunal. Was Dr Saraki himself humiliated? In his view, yes, but that that humiliation was not his alone, but that of all of us. Do we however feel the same way? Not at all. The law is no respecter of persons. As far as Nigerians are concerned, even though it took more than a week to get the Senate President to do the right thing, at least his arraignment was finally done to the mirth and relief of the long-suffering and traumatised public.

The real shame belongs to Dr Saraki’s crass supporters, that unthinking band of senators who couldn’t seem to appreciate the weight of the offices they occupy as lawmakers and representatives of the people; lawmakers who deplorably attempted to confuse public interest with Dr Saraki’s private interest, lawmakers who are unable to draw a line between law and politics. Whatever they see in his trial — and there might very well be some politics — does not detract from the unassailable legality and juridical importance of the process unfolding at the tribunal meritoriously before the approving public.