It is a truism that the legislative arm of government is the symbol of democracy anywhere in the world where that system of government is practiced. That institution is what makes the difference between a representative government and a dictatorship. Nigerians do not expect to be educated on that because they experienced it in those years of military rule with the suspension of that arm of government.
Instead, what they expect to see happen is a legislature that makes laws for good governance within the polity. Lawmakers who stand as a buffer between them and an overbearing executive arm as we have it in this clime. Lawmakers that put national interest first before all else.
Unfortunately, in our view, Nigerians cannot, in all good conscience, aver that what they have now is a group of ladies and gentlemen, distinguished and honourable, committed to their welfare and interest. From the outset, the lawmakers have created an impression that their welfare comes first. They bought bullet-proof cars at humongous sums to shield themselves from the bullets of bandits that ordinary Nigerians are exposed to on a daily basis. It must be foreign made four-wheel drive, Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), sturdy enough to withstand the horror that Nigerian roads are.
They go on generously paid holidays, abroad of course, to avoid being disturbed by their hungry and harassed constituents. Actually, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, described such wasteful expenditure as ‘change’.
Presently, Nigerians are on edge because of the reinvigorated menace of terrorists, kidnappers and bandits. Children are snatched from the breasts of their mothers, subjected to horrendous treatment and kept in captivity until ransom is paid. School children are herded into oblivion, robbed of their innocence and fed with an unusual emotional torture that questions the relevance of education in their lives. The scare haunts them, that is if they survive it and, worse, their parents who, traumatized, see no viable explanation for the decision to expose their wards to such dehumanizing tendency that is becoming a norm as if there are no security apparatus in the society.
The harassment is on all fronts – youth unemployment, food insecurity, energy crisis. The list is endless. In the midst of all these, we have legislators who are playing the modern-day Nero, that Roman emperor who fiddled while his empire burnt. When the whole nation is mourning with the parents of the 280 pupils that were kidnapped in Kaduna, among other recent criminalities, the lawmakers are busy reveling in conviviality, stage-managing an image laundering episode on television, totally oblivious of the embarrassment that incident is inflicting on the nation.
We are disturbed by the reports, mostly sordid, oozing out of that putrid chamber. When it is not budget padding, it is bribery of gargantuan proportions, sleaze designed to encourage them to turn a blind eye to bureaucratic malfeasance. As a cover-up, they have sacrificed one of them who dared to squeal on the conspiracy against the polity.
We recall that the Edo state governor, Godwin Obaseki, under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, warned that the Central Bank was printing Naira notes to finance the gluttony that was the ways and means facility. He was shut down by officialdom. Finally, he has been vindicated and the 9th Senate and the 10th Senate are in a contrived shadow-boxing over what the actual figure is and who played what role in that shame of a nation. Already, a probe is ongoing, by the same Senate that approved the not-too- responsible government indulgence that wasted N30 trillion.
It is lamentable that these lawmakers humour themselves with the feeling that they are on their own in those hallowed chambers; that they have no reason to care about the pain the citizens go through in the public space that is beginning to make the Hobbesian description of life as nasty, brutish and short seem an understatement.
We are persuaded by the unacceptable goings on in the lawmaking arm of government to urge the members to show some decency and respect the feelings of Nigerians who are beginning to ask themselves questions about the relevance of democracy in their lives. The leadership of the National Assembly, in our opinion, must wake up to the consciousness their position is meant to instill. The cavalier disposition must stop. It is time for it to apply itself seriously to the demands of the job it was elected to execute.
The sad reality, in our opinion, is that the citizens themselves, do not appreciate the fact that they are holding the wrong end of the stick in their relationship with those they queued up, under rain and sunshine, to hand over their destiny to in the guise of exercising their franchise in a democratic dispensation.
They are still bound by the petrifying grip of religion and ethnicity, not aware that they have been sold a dummy by a conniving political class. A tragedy indeed.
