OPINION: The Senate, CCT and the politics of Saraki’s trial - By Reuben Abati
The present Senate serving the Nigerian people runs the risk of being remembered as the worst since 1999. Public Relations Consultants and media officials of this particular Senate have done their part flooding both the print and the online media with details of how productive the Bukola Saraki-led Senate has been, and they have been quite aggressive in telling us about 30 important Bills which when passed, will change the face of Nigeria and deliver change.
The Senate according to one report has considered
over 125 bills, debated over 48 motions, and passed three bills. But
nobody is apparently impressed. During the Jonathan administration, the
Senate was the better regarded of the two legislative chambers. While
members of the House of Representatives in the Seventh Assembly behaved
as if they were a band of students’ unionists, the then Red Chamber
projected an image of maturity and temperance, even if it was also
self-serving! With the 8th
Assembly, the House of Representatives, apart from the shameful resort
to physical combat over the distribution of “juicy” committees in
November 2015, has shown itself to be better organized than the present
Senate. The critical difference is that of leadership. It is one of
management. It is a matter of weight and politics.
What is clear is that the
leadership recruitment and selection process in the legislative arm of
government is as critical as it is in any other sphere of government.
During the 7th Assembly, the
politics of the emergence of the then Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, a PDP lawmaker who became an agent and
later, chieftain of the opposition party, ensured that the House
remained almost permanently in a frosty relationship with the Executive.
Likewise, the manner of Bukola Saraki’s emergence as Senate President,
marked again by alleged disloyalty to his own party and collusion with
the opposition for personal gains, has laid the foundation for the
supremacy of intrigues, cabals, and the politics of mischief in a
Chamber that should be devoted strictly to the making of laws for the
good governance of Nigeria.
His colleague in the House of Representatives also
emerged under controversial circumstances, but Yakubu Dogara’s politics
seems to be better managed. Saraki’s politics is made more complex by
the fact that he has strong roots in the two dominant parties in the
National Assembly and has proven to be extremely influential across
party lines, making him a dominant force in Nigeria’s current power
equation, and most certainly, a threat to other power centres.
Online, the Saraki-led
Senate claims that it has done a lot, even if it has spent more time
being on vacation in less than a year, and obsessed daily with the
politics of contradictions. The Senate President once reportedly boasted
that the Senate under his watch has helped to block corruption by
helping Nigeria to save money. He talked about the Senate’s probe of
the Treasury Single Account (TSA). But now, here is the contradiction:
Many Nigerians would find it difficult to see how a Senate whose leader
is on trial for corruption-related matters, and that has chosen to buy
for its members, luxury SUV vehicles at inflated cost can claim to be
helping Nigerians at a time when the economy is on a tragic downward
spiral, and yet the same Senators had allegedly collected vehicle loans.
This has brought the Senate condemnation from both the Nigeria Labour
Congress and a coalition of about 400 Non-Governmental Organizations
(NGOs).
But we know where the problem lies: politicians are
always playing games, and the Senate under Bukola Saraki’s watch has
acted more than once, as if it is against the people. This Senate has
had to reverse itself thrice in the last one month following public
outcry about its lack of moral rectitude. The painful reality is that
the impression has now been created that the Senate as presently
constituted is playing the politics of one man. It has reduced itself to
a Saraki-must-stay-and-the-
Determined to show support for their embattled Senate
President who is on trial before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT),
and whose name has also been mentioned in the Panama Papers scandal,
many of the Senators abandoned the Senate Chambers and started following
their boss to the Tribunal. On one occasion as many as close to 50
Senators abandoned their primary assignment and chose to go and play
politics at the Tribunal. If this seeming relocation of the Senate to
the Code of Conduct Tribunal was meant to intimidate the presiding
judge, His Lordship has refused to be intimidated, either by the crowd
or the convoy of buses or the retinue of 90 defence lawyers. He has now
chosen to attend to the case on a daily basis. The number of Senators
doing follow-follow has since reduced: it will of course, be absurd to
shut down the entire Senate to embark on sycophantic frolic.
Nonetheless, the Saraki case is taking its toll on the Senate. It has
placed it on a collision course with a court of competent jurisdiction,
with the Executive and also divided the ruling All Progressives
Congress.
It has also led to a situation whereby the lawmakers
even attempted to change the Code of Conduct Bureau Act in an obvious
attempt to frustrate the Saraki trial. In less than 48 hours, the
amendment bill went through first and second readings. If there had been
no public outcry, the lawmakers would have passed the bill in less than
72 hours. It would have been the fastest piece of legislation ever,
and yet it was meant to be self-serving: making a law to sabotage due
process, even when they know that a law cannot have retroactive effect.
When that failed, our Senators came up with the ingenious idea that the
Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal must appear before the Senate
Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions. An indignant crowd
of civil society agitators also shut that down. The Chairman of the
CCT has also been a target of campaigns of calumny. Saraki’s supporters
are throwing everything possible into this matter, where the legal
process fails, the legislative process is deployed; when that also
fails, an internet war, rallies, protests, all designed to win the
public mind is launched.
Senate President Bukola Saraki may not have read Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, for he seems to have broken too many of those laws already; perhaps he has read The Art of War
by Sun Tzu. He should have been told that to rush headlong into war
without mastering the dynamics of power is costly. This is one bitter
political lesson about the strategy of war that Senator Saraki is
currently learning. But now that he has gone so deep into the
battlefield, he may no longer be allowed to surrender or retreat, even
as his troops are gradually fleeing. Saraki has stepped on the
proverbial Banana peel; as he struggles for survival, our Senate, the
people’s Senate, must not be allowed to fail as a public institution.
Senator Saraki should step aside, for now, as Senate President. If he
emerges victorious from his travails, his colleagues should do him the
honour of reinstating him to that office of honour, without question.
But if he loses, he should remember that war only offers two
possibilities, and even when a warrior wins, there may still be dangers
on the way back home. In all, the politics of Saraki’s trial should not
consume the Senate, and indeed the 8th Assembly.
“So far, so good”, Saka Olawale wrote assessing the present Senate. I don’t think so. If anything, this Senate needs to be rescued. Whatever explanations our present set of Senators offers would be difficult to believe given the manner in which they have exposed their own limitations. The Senate cannot even keep documents. Copies of the 2016 Budget vanished from its custody. The copies when eventually found mutated into versions unknown to the Executive arm that presented the same Budget at an open ceremony.For five months, the Senate is embroiled in a needless controversy over the content of the Budget. What is worse: In almost one year, no Senator can be quoted as having said anything engaging or profound. The only Senator who makes a serious effort to display some common sense is far more active on Twitter than on the floor of the Senate. The more prominent Senators are known for their rabid politicking or their wardrobe or exotic cars or the comedy that they provide. One of them even came up with a bill to gag free speech. It was in this same Senate that some male chauvinists declared that women cannot have any equal rights with men, and so a Gender Equality Bill is unacceptable.
They failed to realize that in the United States,
whose Constitutional democracy we are copying, a woman is only a short
distance away from emerging as Presidential candidate of the Democratic
Party and as 45th President
of the United States. I imagine many of them struggling to be
photographed with the same woman if they are so privileged. Was it also
not in this same Senate that a member argued that Nigerian lawmakers
should only patronize Made-in-Nigeria-women? This was meant to be a
“brilliant” contribution to a debate on the need to promote
Made-in-Nigeria goods. How dumb! And this kindergarten level statement
actually generated some debate!
Challenging as the
democratic process may have been, Nigerians can still remember a few
Senators of old who sat in that same Assembly and made impact with their
interventions and insightful speeches. To now have a group of Senators
who crack jokes, borrow their imageries from road side bars, embark on a
frolic, or spend time on sycophantic exertions, and when called upon,
prove annoyingly incapable of analyzing and interrogating policies and
making solid contributions is sad. We expect this to change.
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