WHEN last week I was writing on the recent preoccupation of the Senate under Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu, namely the determination of the so-called ‘Like Minds’ senators, all supporters of the troubled duo, to hobble the Muhammadu Buhari presidency for what they consider its hostile attitude to the legislative arm of government.
As I was writing on this latest act of perfidy against the Nigerian people, I had no idea of what was already brewing within a closed-door meeting at the Senate.
There was no way I could have known that less than 24 hours later one of the most outrageous confirmations of my position on our inept Senate would occur and become public a day after. I speak here of the unseemly verbal attack and threat of physical violence by Dino Melaye against his female colleague, Mrs. Remi Tinubu. In the said commentary in this space, I had questioned the wisdom in the threat of the senators to shut down the Senate and all legislative activities as a prelude to their rumoured plan to commence impeachment proceedings against President Buhari.
Their grievance is the ongoing trial for forgery of Senate standing rules of Saraki and Ekweremadu. The threat was the latest in the series of proxy skirmishes being prosecuted by members of the Senate against President Buhari and other leaders of the All Progressives Congress party that the aggrieved senators hold responsible for the trial of their leaders. They choose to see their trial as an attempt to subvert the activities of the Senate and compromise its independence.
The cowardly nature of the proxy battles is too obvious to be denied even when senators in the ‘Like Minds’ group choose to believe the contrary. They keep on speaking from both sides of their mouths making subtle and not-so-subtle attacks on the Presidency and the leadership of the APC while at the same time saying they would accept no change in Senate leadership. In all this, the senators speaking always ensure their names are not put in print. Yet their boasts of an imminent showdown and their readiness to take on the imagined adversaries in their shadow boxing never wanes.
You can see them launching attacks, docking and throwing jabs all around. But all the while they hide, in their press wars, behind the anonymity of being sources who didn’t want their names mentioned. You can then imagine one’s surprise when after one such behind-the-scenes skirmish it emerged that Dino Melaye who is renowned more for his childish display of unearned wealth has advocated for the ostracism of any member of the Senate supporting the ongoing trial of the Senate leaders if they don’t withdraw their support. He was taken on by Mrs. Tinubu and the result of that encounter is the outrageous threat of sexual violence, to wit: instant rape and physical walloping of his female colleague if she didn’t know her limits. This was after calling her ‘stupid’ and wanting to know from her if she took him, Melaye, for one of the party sidekicks that grovel before Senator Remi Tinubu’s husband.
All of this happened during a session chaired by Bukola Saraki himself even if there is no consensus on whether he gave approving nods or not to the antics of Melaye. Melaye has hinged his attack on Mrs. Tinubu on the fact that he is not a coward and had to react to her unflattering comments about him. Of course Melaye cannot be and is not a coward or he wouldn’t threaten to beat up and rape his older female colleague.
But if Melaye is not a coward, then what is he? I need not worry too much as to what Melaye claims to have said in his encounter with Senator Tinubu. What he said and did thereafter says more than he has admitted transpired inside that Senate session. He has denied threatening to impregnate (read rape) Senator Tinubu, wondering how he could have threatened to beat as well as rape her at the same time, as if both activity are mutually exclusive. In Melaye’s brave thinking one of the actions doesn’t imply the other obviously. But then he goes on to say that he couldn’t even have impregnated Senator Tinubu as she was past menopause.
How Melaye knows this fact of Senator Tinubu’s life remains to be explained. But this little bit more than anything else he has said on the matter at hand can tell anyone that Melaye lacks discretion and must have said more than he is prepared to admit to. Which gives the lie to his claim of not being a coward. Melaye is indeed a coward, a bully and a braggart in equal measure.
His blustering outburst is just what it is: a waste of breath from an agbero touting passengers for his bolekaja. He is a squirrel who pretends to be a street toughie. His language both during and after his fight with Mrs. Tinubu betrays him. Even his promptness to deny any plan by him or others to fight President Buhari proves my point last week that the Senate is full of cowards fighting proxy battles. This is not to say that Melaye would be doing anything brave by admitting that he expressed a desire to rape his colleague.
Not at all. But in this man’s warped mind the one is the same as the other. Admitting to saying that he threatened to ‘impregnate’ Senator Tinubu is for him the same as being brave. Which would explain why he would travel to Lagos days after he was reportedly ‘banned’ from the South West by some APC stalwarts in the zone following his attack on Mrs. Tinubu and deciding to post pictures of himself on Lagos streets, including one allegedly on Bourdillon Street where Chief Bola Tinubu lives. What can anybody make of this childish act from a Nigerian senator? An act of bravery? What really is Melaye’s legacy as a legislator? His fighting bouts memorialised by that image of his torn, raggedy clothes after a pummelling in his time at the House of Representatives? This National Assembly where a female member was once slapped by her male colleague is infamous for its disdain of women. It needs rehabilitation and psychiatric test ought to be mandatory for members. Photos: Kogi women say Melaye won’t apologise to Tinubu
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