nkem360@googlemail.com
Sunday, July 7, 2013
There
is nowhere in the world were the English proverb "You can't eat your cake
and have it” ought to become a jingle played every second in the public and
private electronic media outlets than in Nigeria. This should be so to remind
top ranking Nigerian officials of the utter folly inherent in some of their
public statements even when they remain a key part of the Nigerian problematic system
they duplicitously attack at their convenience.
Also,
the quoted English proverb needs to be made into a jingle to be played every
second in Nigeria. This should be done to remind the Nigerian populace of the
presence of these politicians already bitten by the bug of rapaciousness, but
now seemingly seeking for a way to embed themselves within the consciousness of
the poverty-stricken Nigerian people to achieve an end. The average Nigerian official
wants to have it both ways. And this is quite shameful.
Last
week, the Nigerian media was awash with news that the Speaker of Nigeria’s
House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, described Nigeria as being
ripe for a revolution. As it is expected of one living in this age where
information is gotten at the touch of a keyboard, upon encountering a statement
as weighty as a revolution, the first thing one did was to read the various
reports of that news from several sources, and to try and locate the Speaker’s
speech. This was necessary to get the kernel of the speech to know the context in
which the word was uttered. Regrettably, the extensive efforts made to locate
the speech before concluding this article on July 4, 2013 did not yield any
result.
However,
several of the sources did quote Hon. Tambuwal as having said that, “The most
compelling reasons for revolution throughout the ages were injustice, crushing
poverty, marginalisation, rampant corruption, lawlessness, joblessness, and
general disaffection with the ruling elite. You will agree with me that these
describe conditions in our nation now, to a very large degree.” He went on, stressing,
“That these conditions exist is well known to all persons in authority but the
results of these successive efforts have failed to yield the desired results.
This therefore is the justification for the radical change from the present
approach to a revolutionary one.”
Hon.
Tambuwal spoke on Tuesday July 2, 2013 at the 2013 Distinguished Management
Lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Management in Lagos, and was represented
by Hon. Opeyemi Bamidele, Chairman, House Committee on Legislative Budget and
Research. The lecture whose theme was “The role of the legislature on the
economic, infrastructural and ethical revolution in Nigeria,” was reported to
have been kick-started with a welcome speech by the President and Chairman of
NIM, Chief Michael Olawale-Cole, in which Chief Olawale-Cole stated that more
than ever before, Nigeria needed an urgent intellectual revolution to tackle
the many leadership challenges besetting her.
As
someone who closely monitored the political process in Nigeria from the time
the so-called cabal held Nigeria hostage - because of the late Nigerian ruler Alhaji
Musa Yar’Adua’s health condition - right through the general elections in 2011
and, as someone who did in fact write commentaries for www.usafricaonline.com
at the critical junctures of that era, I do know that Tambuwal is one of the
beneficiaries of a much better electoral process when compared to the electoral
heist that was superintended by Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime in 2003 and 2007. But
for the current Nigerian ruler Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s mantra of “one man, one
vote”, with Dr. Jonathan’s appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega as the
Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and with Jonathan’s
refusal to deploy security forces to stand guard while already written results
were being declared, as was the case in 2003 and 2007 and, of course, the resolve
of the voters to protect their votes, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP),
Tambuwal’s present party, would have won more than the 260 seats it won in 2007
instead of 205 seats it won in 2011.
In
other words, if conditions that attended the 2003 and 2007 had prevailed in
2011, the PDP would have won an overwhelming majority. Were that to have been
the case, Tambuwal would never have become the Speaker of House of
Representatives, knowing PDP’s antecedent of the party’s hierarchy being the
ultimate decider of who occupies such seats. This is not to say that the PDP is
the only party in Nigeria where the hierarchy undemocratically makes the choice
of who occupies which office as we continue to see daily that in parties like Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN), one man, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, does that freely
in his party.
The
point one is trying to make is that Tambuwal became the Speaker of the House of
Representatives due to the support of the opposition members of the House,
largely members of the ACN, the South West-rooted party, who did not want the
choice of the PDP hierarchy to prevail. Already, the PDP hierarchy had zoned
that office to the South West and had actually chosen Mrs. Mulikat
Adeola-Akande, who is currently the leader of the House of Representatives, as
the person to occupy the position of the Speaker.
Now,
one would have expected Tambuwal, on assumption of office, to have persuaded his
colleagues to forgo the insane emolument they consume annually from the national
budget. If he is the change agent he now implicitly wants us to believe, that’s
what he ought to have done. If the House over which he presides had taken the
lead, the Senate members would have had no option than to slash their own emolument.
If Tambuwal and his colleagues had taken that initiative then, they would have
escaped the scandalous revelation in 2012 by the Governor of Central Bank,
Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that the National Assembly of Nigeria consumes 25%
of overhead cost of running the country. On September 20, 2012, The PUNCH even reported that each member
of the House as at that time was being paid N27m per quarter as
allowances, and the members wanted that sum to be increased to N35m per
quarter.
Today,
what the jobless Nigerian youths see is legislators returning to their
constituencies and handing out motorcycles to the youths to enable the latter
operate as cyclists on rural roads, since commercial motorcyclists are banned
from operating in most cities. House members share just a little of the large
chunk of the national wealth to these youths as though they’re doing the youths
a favour, when such resources could be freed to set up cottage industries to absorb
these army of unemployed people. Does one need to mention how this sort of
action would stem the tide of rural urban migration, provide a less dangerous
and more dignifying work to the youths as well as enhance the Nigerian manufacturing
capacity? Does one need to say such actions would reduce the rising wave of
crimes in Nigeria now, even though the flagrant demonstration of opulence in
the Nigerian society lures some of the youths to crime?
If
Tambuwal wanted to ‘radically’ change the way things are done in Nigeria, he
would have capitalized on the pre-election utterances of many of the opposition
members of the House, particularly those from the South West, and put the issue
of the so-called fiscal federalism on the front burner. One is disappointed
that these ACN members, 69 of them, have never mentioned something supposedly
close to the heart of the “progressive” forces in the course of their
legislative duties. It shows that the bag of the so-called progressives is
filled with nothing but electoral gimmicks. Without doubt, it would have been
more credible if Tambuwal was the person who initiated such a move. For anyone
to be at one of the high positions and failed to do any of the above, which
majority of the Nigerian people desire, makes one wonder what such a person
considers to be more “revolutionary” than those? In my opinion, these are the
sort of revolutionary legislative acts Tambuwal ought to have been executing or
even making attempts to execute to profoundly impact the Nigerian state. My
advice to Hon. Tambuwal and his likes is that the revolution they advocate
should start with them.
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