THIS minute, the “First 100 Days in Office” panegyric attains crescendo in the caverns of Nigeria’s State Houses and the Ninth National Assembly.
Government institutions, routinely, churn out statistics and claims celebrating public officers’ “excellent” exploits over the first three months widely considered a probationary period.
The media is seduced to preach the gospel even as the public unfurls and pliantly accepts the Kool-Aid of this engineered temperament. It doesn’t matter if the highlighted achievements are exaggerated or unreal, everybody buys into the farce. Those that couldn’t are too spiritless to protest.
Amid the pageantry, however, a spirit of gloom and depression haunts the 36 states of the federation; the spectre mocks the hyperbolic chants in praise of public officers, on the corridors of power, the pulpit and across multimedia platforms.
This haunting spirit is manifold: a post-recession and wartime gloom afflicts the citizenry; a rising tide of poverty and bigotries aggravate the situation increasing distrust among the citizenry, public office and political institutions.
Nigeria shrivels like a sick rose but the public officer inhales its sick molds, basking in its scent, cradling its diseased stamens as his bower of bliss.
The country’s death wriggle is mistaken for an act of concealment hence the public officer’s approach takes the form of a rape. To this end, he deploys political power as his shaft of conquest, his manic death agent. Nigeria may be a sick rose, but her shrivelled petals become his bed of crimson joy; little wonder he plunders state coffers amid a gloomy economy.
There is no gainsaying elected representatives fleece the country’s meagre reserves; the Ninth National Assembly, for instance, faces litigation for perceived excesses as you read.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), BudgIT, Enough is Enough (EiE) and 6,721 concerned Nigerians recently filed a lawsuit asking the Federal High Court to “restrain, prevent and stop the National Assembly Service Commission from paying or releasing the sum of N5.550 billion budgeted for purchase of luxury cars for principal members of the ninth Senate, and to restrain and stop the Senate from collecting the money until the downward review of the amount proposed by the Senate.”
In suit number FHC/L/CS/1511/2019 filed at the Federal High Court, Ikoyi Lagos, the plaintiffs argued: “Spending a huge sum of N5.550 billion to buy luxury cars for principal members of the ninth Senate is unjust and unfair. It negates the constitutional oath of office made by members to perform their functions in the interest of the well-being and prosperity of Nigeria and its citizens, as contained in the Seventh Schedule of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended).”
The plaintiffs also queried the proposed spending by the National Assembly via the following posers: What is the economic value and contribution of the vehicles sought to be purchased to the grand scheme of Nigeria’s economy? What are the parameters used to arrive at cost efficiency and value for money in the decision to purchase the vehicles? Where are the vehicles purchased by the eighth Senate?
That the National Assembly deems itself worthy of a N5.550 billion vehicle largesse (valued at N50 million per Toyota Land Cruiser SUV) at a time the government finds it difficult to pay the N30, 000 minimum wage further establishes the legislature as a sinister drain on the nation’s dwindling resources.
The proposed expenditure is amoral, despicable and redolent/reflective of all that’s wrong with the country’s ruling class.
It would be recalled that similar exotic cars including Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs and office equipment such as computers, photocopiers, and refrigerators. were reportedly pawned off to senators in previous assemblies.
Some of the lawmakers who are in the current Assembly allegedly profited from the misconduct. Some of the items were reportedly sold to members of the Eighth Senate and House of Representatives at scandalous prices; for instance, a Toyota Land Cruiser SUV acquired at N36 million each was reportedly sold to the departing lawmakers at a paltry N1 million.
All the items handed almost freely to the legislators would apparently be purchased afresh and supplied to members of the Ninth Assembly inaugurated on June 11, 2019; just as the new computers, scanners, photocopying machines, television sets, and refrigerators would be purchased at ridiculous prices, according to a media report.
In the wake of the outrage generated by the lawmakers’ excesses, prominent figures in the National Assembly have argued that no one can deny them their ‘inalienable’ right to the largesse.
Nigeria is no doubt superabundant with politicians who assert legitimacy for their belligerently exploitative actions and redundancies on the grounds that they are acceptable privileges of their high offices.
Still, there’s something unnerving about how brazen and savage this spiel has grown in a time of acute economic depression, social inequality and ideological vacuum. Any public officer or their lackey rationalising the controversial N5.550 billion vehicle largesse is nothing but a glorified political grifter.
Similar fraud subsists in state governments’ frenzied celebration of incumbent governors’ achievements in their first 100 days. Nothing justifies the curious appeal and endurance of the underlying grift here; government agents manipulate statistics and data to foster illusions of growth and prosperity where they are non-existent.
Sadly, the citizenry who should know better, trade invective across multimedia platforms, defending the excesses and redundancies of their favourite public officers goaded by bigotries. Call it political illiteracy.
The cost of their ignorance is not being paid by the government and its agents of illusion. It is being paid on our inner city streets, in barren manufacturing towns and dystopic host communities to multinationals.
The cost is borne by the desolate townships of Ewekoro, living and dying in a thick haze of effluents, cement dust and flying rock fragments billowing from multinational, LafargeWAPCO’s exhaust pipes and limestone quarry.
The cost is borne by the helpless people of Bodo, who are continually tormented and traumatised by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC)’s lethargic approach to ridding the community of its major oil spills.
Although SPDC agreed in 2015, to a clean-up the Niger Delta community, the clean up is expected to cost around $500 million and will take up to 10 years to complete. In a rare victory for such communities, Shell also agreed to pay £55 million ($84 million) in settlements to Bodo community for the devastating effects of the spill. That’s a way forward.
This isn’t the time for Nigeria’s National Assembly, the presidency and state governments to roll out the drums and splurge on ill-conceived jamborees; they haven’t done enough work to merit such.
It is foolhardy for a federal minister or state governor to celebrate giving the approval for rehabilitation of a road project, a derelict school or public health facility in his first 100 days. The performance of such roles, among others, was the reason he or she was elected into public office. He has done no one no favour.
It is about time public officers stopped misappropriating state fund and the historical language of ennoblement to ornament dew as crystal. Its about time we stopped humouring them.
Nigeria is at war on several fronts: from Boko Haram, herdsmen terrorism, kidnap for ransom, to xenophobic attacks against Nigerians in South Africa, our elected representatives have got their work clearly cut out for them.
