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Pray,
how many of us are not in the know that it takes a mugu to
fall for a guyman to wack, just as it takes sheer gullible
Nigerians for our lawmakers to be exactly what they are:
Dishonourables, sorry Honourables? A slip of the hand there!
Now, I must confess that I am so pained by the grim fact
that our mugu side has continuously had the best of us,
thereby letting the guymen of the National Assembly to
sustainedly have their prankish way.
Or else, how on earth could the federal legislature, the
lower House to be specific, whose tenure has barely crossed
one year mark be embroiled in so many a shameful controversy
such that it has and still succeeds in making us swallow it
whole that they are anything close to representing our
interest in the federal legislative house? The following
does not at all posit that there is any exonerating of the
upper House oh! How can that be with all the old-hand (ogbologbo)
state and national ogas that are presently taking refuge in
there? Afterall, what turned on the tap of tears that rolled
down Bello-Obasanjo's royal cheeks like Gurara Falls is
still very fresh.
For now, the memory of how, approximately one month into
this legislature's inception, factual reports of gross
financial impropriety began to trail the then Madam Speaker
Patricia Ette still lingers. Her lofty position in the lower
House of the National Assembly had come on the heels of the
over-flogged political agenda of 30% women inclusion in our
national politics and our subsequent succumbing to that
pressure. But I will make haste to say that even though her
misdemeanor had little or nothing to do with gender issue,
it had a whole lot to do with the beautician in the Madam
Speaker. Would you then blame her for any financial
mismanagement having known her call? No sane man would! The
political king-makers and indeed god-fathers should have
known better, having had an inkling of the unbroken record
of Emelda Marcos, the one-time first lady of the Philippines
who had penchant for excess accumulation of all sorts of
adornments that are women's, enough to float a market-size
boutique. She was not a called beautician like our Patricia
Ette, yet she holds unbroken world record for highest
boutique shopper. So one wonders what would have happened to
the Philippines' coffers if she were anything beautician.
For this reason, while shopping for Madam Ette for the House
of the Reps top job, the king-makers should have known
better, and so should keep all the passed bucks, and not our
dear old Madam Ette o'jare.
But in any case, she did utterly disillusion the women folk,
her true-blue house colleagues and the nation at large in
that renovation rip-off, and the theatrics and loss of life
that ensued.
We should have learnt from this but we have not, sadly. The
mugu side of us always took its toll and we have opted to
push the incident far behind us.
Again, when suddenly our eyes opened to the reality that ten
long years on and with sixteen whooping US Dollars down the
drain, our energy sector only plummeted to zero point, were
we not madly enthused and got mesmerized by those shakara
treats of the guymen of the National Assembly when the
House's energy probe panel commenced public sitting? And
barely had the committee recommended the EFCC's
investigation of OBJ, Segun Agagu and Liyel Imoke, among
many others than the probers were caught in the web of
allegations that they compromised themselves by collecting a
bride of N100m from the probed during their South South tour
in April to inspect the proposed projects. And after much
toing and froing on the matter, all is now calm and quiet.
See who we should trust and believe? Can you see that once
again the naked truth is that we have simply made ourselves
easy prey to be hoodwinked at will by sitting dumb as though
nothing has happened up there?
Only recently too, the much talked about Freedom of
Information bill suffered being bewitched for the seventh
time in about one year now by those House of Reps members we
gullibly mistook for the people's representatives who have
our interest at heart.
The incumbent Speaker, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, methinks started
it all, when in raising the issue of the bill he described
the matter as “controversial”, even though he rested his
case by urging the House to give it consideration for
“overriding public interest”. But if you ask me, it was not
enough ground for the PDP Esan Central, Esan West and
Igueben Federal Constituency representative, Patrick
Ikhariale, to jump up with a shout of “point of order” on
the Speaker; it was not enough reason either for that
staunch underpinner of Patricia Ette, Sada Jibia, to do
everything within his means to stand in the way of the
passage of the bill, if they and many of the anti-FOI bill
henchmen do not have so much skeletons and skulls to conceal
in their carcass-replete closets. And of course other
like-minded guymen like Chuma Nzeribe, Aminu Tambuwal,
Mohammed Ndume and a host of others, they being of great
majority, followed suit. Soon the jeering brought the
rowdiness that almost brought down the high roof of the
House. To us in the information management and merchandizing
sector, the development was anything but funny. It was one
true expression of betrayal of trust of immense dimension.
I mean, what can be more treacherous than that of a people
that much is given to do everything in the course of their
duties to protect the interest of the common man, their
constituents? Absolutely nothing. How else do you expect a
gang to tell you that there are so many ugly realities about
them that they would stop at nothing to shield, even if they
should be the last to do anything that should fall short of
honesty and transparency to their constituency? But is must
be them of all sets of people who are doing this without
mincing words.
At the end of the day, bow the people must to these smart
lawmakers who are virtuosos in the art of buying them over.
And that is why they are politicians, the re-defined ones at
that.
Who does not known by now that politics has been re-defined
to suit our Nigerian, nay African terrain? As for democracy,
its coffin has long been nailed. Ask me and I will readily
tell you that it is all evident in the hideous political
happenings and their consequences around Africa. And what
else do you expect that I tell you on that?
There is a way with this bunch. They don't hide it when they
work assiduously hard to ensure that their already robust
allowances bloat the more. They let it all hang out too as
they are hell-bent to spite the people's interest. But
surprise, in the end they are sure to remain the nobs to be
celebrated. And the people? They must perpetually remain the
suffering-and-smiling and cheering lot. It doesn't matter if
the smile goes beyond plastic to stone, the people smile on.
There is a way the guymen manipulate things that you can't
beat. That is why the inference that until and unless the
people can think for themselves and have full participation
in governance, the mugu of the constituencies will always
fall for the guymen of the federal legislature to wack is a
far-reaching one.  |
