The great patriotic service that the Presidency and the entire political class can offer Nigeria is to pursue constitutional means to change the National Assembly leadership. Not through war drum tactics that have stagnated us for years.
It speaks ill of the famous discipline and integrity of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration that long after his party failed to have its way in installing its anointed in the leadership of the National Assembly (NASS), the party has refused to leave that past and wouldn’t mind dragging the whole country back, all in lusty pursuit of a will-o the-wisp. Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara were given frosty receptions by the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) after they emerged as Senate president and speaker of the House of Representatives respectively in 2015, contrary to APC’s proposal.
The party described these APC legislators as a ‘treacherous’ duo who must be punished. Lai Mohammed, then national publicity secretary of the party, issued a statement that predicted the stormy and deadly relationship the two camps have given Nigerians. Mohammed said: “…APC leadership is meeting in a bid to reestablish discipline in the party and to mete out the necessary sanctions to all those involved in what is nothing but a monumental indiscipline and betrayal to subject the party to ridicule and create obstacles for the new administration.”
Lai Mohammed saw what happened as “nothing but inordinate ambition and lack of discipline and loyalty” by those who entered “into an unholy alliance with the very same people whom the party and indeed the entire country worked hard to replace…”
The sanctions threatened by the party never came. But there have been several grave backroom skirmishes allegedly sponsored by the Presidency and the ruling party to decapitate the NASS, notably the Senate. One was Saraki’s trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal for alleged breaches in his declaration of asset as a public office holder. Early last month, after a protracted trial that saw the federal government appeal against a judgment favourable to Saraki, the Supreme Court discharged the Senate president from the charges.
When moves to have the lawmaker resign on moral grounds during the trial failed, the cold war got messier. The Police was enlisted to tame Saraki and get him off the coveted seat. He claimed he was under Police once, as some Buhari loyalists sought to impeach him. Somehow he outwitted them and showed up in the chambers to abort the executive’s plan, according to a statement his handlers issued later. Last week, the epic battle to oust Saraki reached a bizarre low: scores of heavily armed masked operatives of the Department of State Services stormed the NASS and took over the premises to prevent lawmakers access to their offices.
With the Senate president now finally renouncing the APC and returning to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it’s an open war of attrition in the land. The truculent APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole is on the loose; on the matter of displacing the Senate president, he is trashing the Constitution his party swore to honour.
More of this forlorn quest will result in the kind of frustration a spent boxer gets when he enters the ring, against wise counsel, to trade punches with a younger pugilist in his prime. Good governance and its end users are the worst hit, because the biggest mishap that befalls democracy is an assault on its legislative component.
He is walking the same route his party has trodden since 2015 when the current leadership of NASS mounted the saddle: Failing to acknowledge a fait accompli and declining to adapt to its reality in the interest of the people they are in office to serve. For nearly four years, it’s been a venomous obsession to throw Saraki off the moving train. Every effort has proved futile, with records of political casualties, and APC being the worst after each battle.
It has been suggested that the main reason Saraki must go is because his headship of the Senate is barren, smeared with corruption, alienating the legislators from the executive, and not allowing the president to move at the supersonic speed needed to drive Nigeria. But others would ask if Saraki is responsible for the graft and forgery scandals that have rocked the Presidency lately. They would ask if Saraki’s Senate is behind the division in APC and the inability of government to deal with the rash of killings and kidnappings across Nigeria.
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Where does all these blame game take us? It is neither here nor there for APC and its ruling government to seek to nail Saraki. More of this forlorn quest will result in the kind of frustration a spent boxer gets when he enters the ring, against wise counsel, to trade punches with a younger pugilist in his prime. Good governance and its end users are the worst hit, because the biggest mishap that befalls democracy is an assault on its legislative component. The legislature is the heartbeat of representative democracy.
The great patriotic service that the Presidency and the entire political class can offer Nigeria is to pursue constitutional means to change the National Assembly leadership. Not through war drum tactics that have stagnated us for years.
Banji Ojewale writes from Ota, Ogun State.
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