NIGERIAN NEWS AMINU WAZIRI TAMBUWAL’S DEFECTION AND THE QUESTION OF MORALITY In one of my earlier comments in relation to this whining news of Aminu Waziri Tambawal’s defection, this is how I summarized the development: “His defection is regrettable - because it places him at par with other none ideological and unprincipled politicians - but it also highlights the level of intolerance and anti democratic forces bedevilling PDP. I have always insisted that we do not have political parties in Nigeria which you can ascribe any kind of ideology to. What we have, at best, can be regarded as political groups”. It is unfortunate that some of us in Nigeria have subjected ourselves to what I call self piety on bases of personal selfish parochialism. I’m happy that I have had a very long trail of unbridled and unencumbered position on what is happening in our country. Some people, because of selfish interests, just wake up one morning to begin to sermonize on morality. It is amusing how PDP is accusing Tambuwal of decadence and equally interesting how APC is striving to say Tambuwal did not breach any morals. PDP has, for a very long time, intimidated people with their sheer size without due respect to constitutionalism. You get somebody from high echelon of PDP whose only argument on issues is that “we want it this way”. They do not understand that this country has a constitution even if we deceive ourselves that our problem is our constitution. And I do not agree. Our problem is that somehow, PDP has ravaged the judicial system and have intimidated our courts to use the legal system to rubbish everybody. So when there are problems to be sorted out through the court, PDP takes a grandstanding and begin to say this is what we want and the courts accede to them. Tambuwal’s action and the vibrant young and independent-minded people in the House of Reps have, since the inception of the current seventh national assembly, told PDP that there is need to obey some aspects of the constitution even if they choose that all should not be obeyed. From the way he was enthroned against the grandstanding of PDP that they want Akande to the way we are seeing things now, PDP should begin to rethink of becoming more sensible and responsible to the dictates of the constitution. That is how to be the biggest and most influential party in Africa as they wish us to see them. But, probably, more entertaining is how a couple of “elite” people are reacting to the whole saga, including lawyers. Some people are so enraged that they enthuse that Tambuwal should be impeached even without the two thirds majority and, they equally claim, that stripping of Tambuwals security details was the best thing Police has ever done. My greatest conundrum is that we have left the subject, as usual, to begin to chase the shadow. I have said earlier on that in all the assemblies we have witnessed in this country, the one where Tambuwal is the Speaker is the richest in terms of brevity and reasonable independence. People do not always understand my view point. It is either I am too clean or too complex in my reasoning. We had similar behaviours when the people like Ken Nnamani and Pius Anyim Pius were once in the senate as Presidents. Today, our greatest problem is in the Senate. Most of the people in the Senate seem to be the direct opposite of the more vibrant and independent minded members of the House of Reps. Sluggish, clueless individuals take a greater number in the Senate. From the way I summarized Tabuwal’s defection, I am sure I have not left anybody in doubt as to how I reason. But probably the point is that Nigerians have come to take sides with two or three evils joggling for their bloods. That is where I am different. I have written in the past where I felt that the politicians all over the world, deliberately, want to take the ungodly path of wanting to decimate organized states. Some few Nigerians have two cards. They brandish each as it best suites their best selfish interest. What we see is that people are more interested in their personal wellbeing more than in the interest of the Nigerian State, forgetting that the bases of satisfying personal interest is directly hinged on the success of the Nigerian state. I can say without fear of contradiction that from amongst the politicians and their cronies come over 80% of those who do not care about what happens to the Nigerian state. What should be my take on the whole imbroglio is not that Tambawal defected and should relinquish his seat or that his police security was stripped off him. We are used to all those shenanigans. We know that even the President’s wife wants to – singlehandedly – decide who the governor of Rivers State becomes. The subject, rather than the shadow, we are being made to chase by these smart crooks is to call all of them, irrespective of their political group - because I have never deceived myself that we have political parties – to shade their weight. That is where the morality is stood on its forehead. I do not see any morality with a senator taking home over N15 million monthly and a Professor in our higher institution struggles to take home N1 million in the same economy. I do not see the morality in the House of Reps member going away with over N12 million monthly while resident Doctors are made to operate on humans with cutlasses. I do not see any morality in the fact that Nigerians are impoverished daily while the government runs on stupendous corruption. What is the morality in a President telling the citizenry that we now have electricity all day round and the same President is budgeting N800 million for diesel in Aso Rock in just one year? What is the morality in the fact that Nigerians will wake up and the Universities are shut down for six months uninterrupted? Who is the custodian of this morality self? We have left the subject and begin to chase the shadow as usual. All these noise on how they want to align and suck our blood more comfortably is not very necessary and does not represent any streak of morality in my reckoning. Let the constitution handle that. Let us insist that the constitution should be obeyed. If we are sensible as a people we should not be siding one of two monsters that are holding us on the jugular. But why I like what is happening now is that when we have reasonable force wedging PDP’s bullish and anachronistic momentum and if the constitution becomes the only way to resolve it and if the House of Reps becomes the pivot on which that swings through the action of one young man called Aminu Waziri Tambuwal – and if we pretend that these people represent us and they use the constitutional provision that two thirds in addition to other sections of our constitution count – then the arbitrariness of PDP is gradually coming to an end and we may just be witnessing the beginning of the death of the monster called corruption ravaging our lives for years and which has dwarfed our country since it came to being. This is a case where those who kill us are no more united against us and we want to foolishly take a side with one of them. And it will not look like in EKiti state where politicians share rice and salt to secure temporary support of citizenry. All members of the House of Reps are dastardly rich that it is only the few coursed amongst them that will take money and allow the executive to determine what happens in their chambers. Independence of these institutions in a democracy is what tames each of them to begin to want to listen to us. After the battle, they will go back to their various constituencies to explain why they took their various positions in the saga. That is how democracy evolves. Anybody who wants us to rail along PDP’s narrow, bullish and clueless position in this matter is actually against democracy and against the Nigerian people. I am not surprised that people who benefit from the rot will, as usual, sermonize to us. A few individuals are trying to overpower the state and her citizenry. Let us even detach ourselves from the confusion and say that, for purposes of argument, the so called democracy is now operating in the House of Representative alone. Is anybody who believes in the tenets of true modern democracy not seeing that the people are self accounting? The good thing is that it seems as if most of them are group of very erudite learned gentlemen unlike in the senate where most of them are “jankara” people.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:33:43 +0000
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