Was Dogara there?

Olakunle Abimbola

Was 8th House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, in the Green Chamber when President Muhammadu Buhari came delivering the budget estimates?

Everyone knew Dino Melaye was there: that loud mouth from the 8th Senate, with much diminished tantrums in the 9th.  A photo, in which Dino the excitable tried to serenade PMB, with a rankadede pose, went viral on the social media.

A few days later, the valedictory symbolism of that photo would become pungent.  The president presented the budget proposals on October 8.  On October 11, the Court of Appeal booted out Dino, from his Kogi West senatorial seat.  Unless Dino won at the ordered re-run, not later than 90 days from verdict time, he would have kissed the Senate a final bye-bye.

Again, that would be a crushing blow for the Bukola Saraki-led powers and principalities that held the 8th National Assembly in thrall; but that somewhat miscarried, in spectacular version, at the 2019 general polls.

Saraki himself was nailed in battle, felled by the fearsome hail, from the  Kwara “O to ge” (Enough is enough) war.  That war utterly consumed Saraki, his entire political dynasty, and his routed O tun ya (Let’s do it again) troops: all penned and swept into electoral Siberia; not unlike Lucifer and his fallen angels — those tragic folks, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, that would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven!

Still, as the Yoruba would say, “Baba ku, Baba ku” — the patriarch is departed; the patriarch is very much alive!

Saraki, the puppeteer, may have fallen in electoral battle.  But Melaye, the unfazed Saraki puppet, in senatorial rascality and allied ribaldry, somehow stole into the 9th Senate — Baba ku, Baba ku!

But with this latest judicial yellow card — to borrow that famous football-speak — even that is turning into a grand illusion, for an ancien regime, with its dying ashen glow, in the new parliamentary order.

Still, where the hell was Dogara, Dino’s twin apparition from the old order, during the budget presentation excitement?

Was he in the chamber?  Was he without?  His quiet presence, if he was, clearly equates a loud absence!  That was a stark departure from the Saraki-Dogara glory days of legislative infamy!  How time changes!

If Saraki was Brutus sans the post-mortem nobility ascribed to him after the anti-Caesar conspiracy had come a sad cropper, Dogara wasn’t exactly the “such men are dangerous” Cassius, with the “lean and hungry look”, who the tragic Caesar himself spotted, before the curtains fell.

Yet, Dogara was no less potent in the 8th National Assembly’s anti-PMB legislative conspiracy, than Cassius was to Caesar’s.

Saraki might have been the unfazed, gargoyle-like scowl of that conspiracy.  But Dogara was its smooth Jerkyll and Hyde — the day-time friend, the night-time fiend, in the anti-people legislative push, even if the primary goal was to cripple the PMB agenda.

Just as well Saraki got “slain” in battle!  But Dogara stole back into Parliament as virtual prisoner of war (POW) — or how else would you describe his present status as ultra-mute floor member, from the zenith of swashbuckling, gavel-banging Speaker?

Would Dogara remember the wild tantrums, the last time he and Saraki perched over the Green Chamber, to receive the budget estimates?  Boos and jars, in a free cascade, from a crude and ill-tempered chamber, fired at the president?

Still, if the president was fazed by it all, he didn’t show it.  He responded instead with that four-plus-four finger signal that instantly went viral!  Talk of icy chutzpah as parliamentary riposte!

Less than one year down the line, with Ahmed Lawan-Femi Gbajabiamila at the saddle, the mood was much changed, with even Dino coveting positive presidential attention!

How did Dogara feel, observing the new temper at close quarters — and with painful anonymity?

How would he squirm at Senate President Lawan’s resolution to pass the budget by December, firmly warning ministers to be prompt at budgetary defences or take whatever comes their way, against the Saraki-Dogara era’s drawn out late passages, to sabotage budgetary goals, because of partisan differences — partisan differences not fired by any noble dissent but by crass perfidy?

Better a gone Saraki, fallen in electoral battle; than a Dogara parliamentary prisoner of war (POW), captured and condemned to witnessing that nightmare, perhaps?  How time changes!

Still, are all these tailored to kick folks who are already down?  Absolutely not!

However, whatever political comeuppance Saraki and Dogara now suffer for a past rotten parliamentary conduct, it can’t still compare to the pains their wilful actions and stealthy inactions have inflicted on voters that voted them.  Because the 8th National Assembly was busy cannibalizing the budget and diverting estimates for core infrastructure, to atomistic personal projects in the so-called constituency projects, vital arteries like the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the 2nd Niger Bridge have had their completion time rolled back by at least two years.

Travellers from the Lagos to the Sagamu interchange segment of that road (easily the busiest in the country) can feel the Saraki-Dogara parliamentary bad faith in real time travel pains; for the reconstruction, which should have be nearing completion, appears dreadfully slow.

Even then, that pales into nothing when you calculate the multiplier effect, of that slow-down, in aggravated poverty — faster road travel, of people and goods, should normally give the economy a jab in the arm.

But the political dangers were even direr.  After Saraki had traded off the APC right of deputy Senate president to PDP, and Dogara had annexed basically PDP votes to become Speaker, the duo attempted to invent a new though satanic realpolitik: the majority having its say but the minority having its way!

So potent was this new “way” that even after the opposition’s National Assembly electoral hiding of 2019, not a few feared the opposition wizards could still conjure the Saraki-Dogara 8th Assembly encore.  But alas!

Still, the win or loss is not personal glory or infamy.  It is rather the voters’ collective loss of four years: the polity badly bled, while Saraki, Dogara and confederates gamed!

Ay, not a few would insist the problem was never one-way; and that the PMB Presidency and the ruling APC had own issues — true.  Still, that is as good as putting Judas in the clear for betraying the Christ, since he only fulfilled a dire divine decree!

The Dogara debacle should be a clear and crystal lesson to the 9th NASS, both as a collective and as individual senators and Reps.  When you have a sacred historic opportunity to make a difference, don’t blow it on crass profanity.

It is to Karma’s glory that Dogara may be stranded in the House, to shamefacedly observe the prompt correction of his Speakership’s deliberate bad faith — the prompt passage of the 2020 budget, for instance.

On this score, Saraki would appear to have claimed the better deal, though he fell, not unlike Absalom, that grand Biblical rebel, in electoral battle.

To return to that John Milton imagery: it is indeed better to be as dead as dodo in political hell, than a Dogara enduring the living dead, in parliamentary heaven.