“Stealing, stealing, stealing, o stealing,
Stealing in the name of the Lord,
My father’s house of worship has become a den of thieves,
Stealing in the name of the Lord …” — Max Romeo, reggae artiste
There is an ongoing rascality in the hallowed Senate of the Federal Republic. It is nothing but brazen institutional subversion, criminal breach of trust and monumental breach of faith.
It is akin to what doomed Luficer from the brightest son of the morning, the most beautiful of the archangels and beloved of God Almighty, to Satan, the eternally damned prince of darkness.
Dr. Bukola Saraki, the president of the Senate, is all but doomed — no thanks to his free choices. All his present troubles — his trial before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), the Panama Papers where his name isn’t exactly written in gold, et al — stream from conscious and deliberate choices he made in the past.
Even the alleged trigger of his Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) debacle, viz the accusations of dodgy declaration of assets to defraud the state — Saraki’s controversial emergence as Senate president — was a conscious and deliberate choice.
When it was time to duel for the Senate presidency, every fair mind agreed it was Saraki’s constitutional right to run. Besides, if his new-Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) faction warred to gain the presidency for the All Progressives Congress (APC), it was only fair they were duly compensated in the new government.
Now if, among the APC legacy parties, Muhammadu Buhari (Congress for Progressive Change) was occupying the presidency and Yemi Osinbajo (Action Congress of Nigeria) had landed the vice-presidency, it was only fair that nPDP be allowed a share of the victory spoils. If that translated to the Sente presidency, so be it.
All that was still within the confines of democratic equity, decency and fairness. But Saraki’s resort to outright perfidy changed that equation.
You don’t betray your party, sell its due, the Senate deputy presidency, to the PDP, arrogantly shun intra-APC rapprochement to fill the other party positions, and expect not to murder sleep! Remember the tale of Macbeth? Glamis has murdered sleep, so Cawdor shall sleep no more!
That is the long and short of Saraki’s current odyssey.
Even the fuel for his judicial roasting (if you prefer the emotive bleat trending in the embattled senate President’s camp), Saraki merrily provided.
His alleged dodgy declaration of asset, which will form the pillar of evidence against him in court, would appear a clear-eyed decision to cheat.
So, is his newly exposed Panama Papers misadventure, in which he was alleged, as Kwara governor, to have bought a shell company off his wife for £3 million sterling. Now, where did that huge dough come from?
Which patriotic citizen would confect £3 million, from virtual nowhere, to consummate such an ultra-secret deal, as sitting governor? Meanwhile the law was clear: such opaque business was absolutely forbidden.
Did Saraki, in his high conceit, think impunity would last forever? Did he think secrets would stay buried for aye? Again, a clear, conscious and deliberate choice.
But as Saraki made noxious past choices that now blight his present, he and his confederates, are making present choices that may yet blast their future.
These devious Senate manoeuvres are a parliamentary equivalent of the Biblical money changers and other petty criminals turning the temple of the Most High into a filthy mart, from which the venal chief priest made a hefty kill.
That inspired the Max Romeo number quoted above. But so offensive was the original deed that even the meek and gentle Jesus was riled into his most ferocious bout of anger the Bible recorded.
For Saraki’s sake, Senator Peter Nwabuoshi (PDP Delta) — this Peter seems founded on the quicksand of legislative cant not on the rock of fair legislation — is pushing a bogus amendment to the CCB&T Act.
For Saraki’s sake, Senator Isah Misau (APC Bauchi) has launched a most cynical amendment to the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015. Because that law exempts the court martial from its coverage, and CCT is not listed under section 6(6) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, stating the courts under ACJA purview, ACJA, posits Misau’s amendment, should be made not to operate in CCT!
Disingenuous, isn’t it — so that Saraki can continue to dodge and hedge and stall, instead of grabbing legitimate opportunity to prove his innocence?
For Saraki’s sake, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, presides over the provocative defilement of the grandest legislative portal in the land. But who does not know the embattled Ike is also playing a vicious game of self-survival, being also doomed by the Senate rule forgery that catapulted Saraki and Ekweremadu into office?
Help, legislative barbarians and Talibans, on a crude, pre-historic mission, are at Nigeria’s parliamentary gate! But we would be damned if we just laid down to be slaughtered!
But for these legislative dark angels who would, willy-nilly, fall with their Lucifer, Saraki’s comeuppance, based on a grating sense of entitlement, is long overdue.
When Saraki the Father “ported” from the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) in 2003, to teach then sitting Governor Mohammed Lawal (now dead) some harsh lessons in realpolitik, Saraki the Son was the joker.
If I make others governor and they all prove ingrates, Baba Oloye mused, why not my own son? Meanwhile, Kwara, the feudal colony, had no say at all. It merrily acquiesced.
That same sense of ernest and transparent entitlement would spur the Son to unhorse the Father. After brother Bukola’s tenure, it was sister Gbemisola’s turn, in the Saraki Turn-By-Turn Kwara Unlimited!
But he did right — for Baba Oloye’s hubris would probably had laid waste the Saraki dynasty enterprise, particularly in a conservative state with a sizable, if not predominantly, Muslim population. But by handing his father filial humiliation, instead of honour, Saraki the Son doomed himself.
Could that be the cause of the present Saraki troubles? Maybe. Maybe not.
But one thing is clear: the Sarakis are in the second generation of democratic feudalism (never mind the contradiction in terms), where Kwara is only a vassal state.
It is the same sense of feudal lordship that Saraki has brought to the Senate. First, he emerged with a suspect rule the police have found to be pure forgery. Then, he won’t exit until the laws are skewed, in the most bizarre of manners, so he can evade the law, to retain his Senate presidency. What hubris!
From the Evan-Evans tale of the late Evan Enwerem, first Senate president of the 4th Republic, the Senate has had its fair share of charlatans as leaders.
But it is doubtful if the Senate has ever been put through a worse grill of muck, as Saraki and his band of desperadoes are now doing. It is legislative gangsterism writ large!
That is why Nigerians must take note of all the senators involved in this grand outrage. We must scour the law books to make them pay for their heinous rascality — after all, that a cleric enjoys ex-cathedral immunity does not shield him from crime he commits at his job.
NATION
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