Two chambers: one, a putative pointer to a redemptive future; the other, a snarling mirror of a decadent past.
That is the stark choice before a nation at a terrible crossroads — between an executive of rectitude and a parliament of turpitude.
Which would it be?
That is the harsh story behind the trial of Senate President, Bukola Saraki. But Saraki himself, seeming unfazed poster boy of public notoriety, is only a fitting metaphor for the rotten chamber he heads.
If the Saraki bloc wins, it would be back, full gallop, to the cumulative rot that brewed this present mess.
If that bloc loses, Nigeria may well be on to some redemption; for the state would have institutionalised punishing prebendal sleaze, more or less a sickly norm, evidenced by Saraki’s continued resent of his lawful trial for alleged sleaze.
Of course, neither the Buhari Presidency nor Saraki-headed National Assembly is a wholesale chamber of saints and sinners. Indeed, the executive is no more an exclusive chamber of saints any more than the legislature is an exclusive chamber of devils.
Still, between President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, and Senate President Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, it is obvious which side inspires public confidence, when the issue is decent governance.
And, as if to bare their fangs, up has come a so-called Senate G-77, reported junior senators bent on cutting their teeth in infamy, who, even with all the issues on ground, have passionately committed themselves to warring for own share of “juicy” committees — and, of course, defending Saraki!
Who might they be levelling their angry guns at? Ranking senators, whose alleged humongous appetite for “juicy committees” rankle! Some juice!
Between Saraki and this venal brood, therefore, would appear the all-too-common story of senatorial children of perdition — a doomed ensemble finding a ruined leader!
But that is as true of G-77, as it is of the self-destruct 8th National Assembly, that would fully pay for its public service crimes at the fullness of time.
But as much as Saraki (using the Senate to play the Samson, that would rather take everybody down for his personal foibles) kids himself he is the real deal, he is only a tool in the crafty and evil hands of the electorally vanquished, up in their fond game of blocking positive change in the lives of the people.
Indeed, it doesn’t require any especial acuity: Saraki is only a poor puppet in the power game of the defeated PDP. No crime — if the subject is political contestation, where fair would appear foul and vice-versa.
But when the issue transcends petty political rascality, and becomes a vicious war to roll back gains against corruption, corruption that has, for too long, under-developed the people, resulting in mass anguish and pains, then it is nothing but capital crime of political hue: one side must die for the other to prevail.
That is critical juncture Nigeria is right now. Unfortunately, the ever sloppy Nigerian ruling elite, who got a historic second chance with the Goodluck Jonathan defeat of March 2015, are dozing through it all.
They have forgotten, doomed souls: had Jonathan triumphed in 2015, with his spectacular personal incompetence and the monumental rot that had accrued under his watch, it is doubtful if, by now, they won’t all have been buried under its un-mourned rubble! But doomed souls, they have forgotten!
That is why the losing camp would plot, to the death, against the tackling of corruption, corruption whose roaring ocean may yet bury them all!
That is why the winners’ camp would quake with savage growls over undelivered pork: who gets what in electoral war booty, after a thumping victory, resulting from spectacular electoral slaughter!
As for the judiciary, it is the season of playing Pontius Pilate with the soiled hands of a sea pirate. Nigeria’s judicial establishment, under CJN Mahmud Mohammed, make a great show of due process.
But their body language would appear to betray un-due process — or, in any case, if they had their way, illicit process in favour of corruption. The only thing hindering them right now, it appears, is a hostile public opinion, which sits in merciless judgment, daring them to show their true colours.
As for lawyers, the so-called priests in the temple of justice, from the courtroom rookie to the silk, they are the contemporary equivalent of Eli’s wayward sons, Hophni and Phineas, who turned their father’s noble ministry into a heinous swindle. So, no matter the outrage from anywhere, there is no stopping this racketeering, under the guise of due process!
Still, for all his personal failings, Jonathan became presidential flotsam and jetsam, to be thrown overboard for the power vessel to remain afloat, because of cumulative atrocities under previous PDP administrations from 1999.
For all his anti-corruption affectations, President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) erected a stout pillar of corruption, political and governmental, on which subsequent PDP federal administrations built.
Even in trying to find for transparency, Obasanjo’s simple minority impeachment code corrupted and corroded Nigeria’s nascent parliamentary processes. It took the yeoman efforts from the now self-besieged courts to clear Obasanjo’s mess.
But even then, at the apex of his hubris, he suborned the cream of Business Nigeria, extorted “donations” as sitting president and Oil minister, and with the proceeds, built himself a self-indicting temple of corruption, in the so-called Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library!
Umaru Yar’Adua’s fault — goodly soul! — was allowing Obasanjo to talk him into accepting a job his failing health could not cope with. But that fatal error heralded the ascent of Jonathan, whose tragic misreading of the situation, with his merry corruption-as-usual credo, resulted directly into this present mess.
If Saraki, indeed, is the unfazed face of unrepentant sleaze in the public space, it should surprise no one that the alleged gross misdemeanour, for which the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) is trying him, started during Obasanjo’s second term.
Any other proof that Jonathan, despite his personal fecklessness, was only the logical victim of an irredeemable system of corruption and rot fated to collapse, sooner than later?
It is this putative collapse, and the resultant grief to all, that the Buhari Presidency is trying to avert. That is the long and short of the epic war against sleaze, of which Saraki’s CCT case is only a grotesque metaphor.
But it is also this epic but noble battle that Saraki’s Senate — the most diminished in the democratic history of Nigeria since 1960 — is trying to constitute a foolish bastion against. Even then, Saraki and his vile senatorial hosts are only merry puppets in the cynical finger of PDP, which grand survival strategy is stalling on its old evil ways, in its deluded logic that evil would always trump good. Still, that thinking, the last time round, fetched it an electoral bloody nose!
But again, this is crunch time. And there can be no sitting on the fence. It is either you are for light or for darkness.
Ripples casts his lot for light. Where do you and yours stand?