Opinion
Bisi Akande: Beatifying Buhari in a season of the butcherbird
As former governor of Osun State and pioneer Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, got ready to launch his autobiography in Lagos last Friday, a day before the launch, one very unAfrican event occurred in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso.
Christophe Joseph-Marie Dabiré, the West African country’s Prime Minister, presented his letter of resignation to the country’s president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. It was accepted. Dabiré threw in the towel on the heels of persistent demonstrations against his government’s inability to stop the bloodletting Burkinabe faced from ceaseless jihadist attacks. With the PM’s resignation, according to Burkinabe law, an end had ipso facto come to his administration.
There is nothing bad happening in Burkina Faso that is not happening a hundred fold to Nigeria. But at the launch of the 559-page autobiography entitled My Participations, Akande had no word of comfort for the afflicted. He instead chose to make a Pope of the sleepy incumbent. He beatified President Muhammadu Buhari while demonizing former President Olusegun Obasanjo and some unnamed northern elites, including “an aristocratic leader” who he said fought strenuously to ensure that Buhari never became the Nigerian president. Every political enemy of Tinubu was a villain in the book, from Chiefs Ayo Adebanjo, Olu Falae to Sir Olaniwun Ajayi.
For Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to whom his being a sidekick is a notorious fact, Akande chose to do a sleaze, slimy job of whitewashing. This is against expectations that, as the Yoruba say, agba kii wa l’oja k’ori omo tuntun wo – an elder does not watch things go awry – the book and its launch would provide Akande an opportunity to be a genuine elder and reconcile the factitious leadership in the Southwest. He however chose to deliberately miss this opportunity, electing instead to grovel – do oraisa – to both Buhari and Tinubu, in a book that will be available for decades, availing remembrancers an opportunity to point accusing fingers at him for his jaundiced opportunism. In My Participations, Akande did his oraisa the perfect Oshodi way, both hands raised in praise and worship of his gods, for whatever measure of a mess of pottage.
Like Nigeria, since 2015, rising insecurity had gripped Burkina Faso’s Sahel region as it faces increasing and frequent, yet lethal attacks. Though an extension of the seemingly interminable Malian conflict, local dynamics fuel the Burkina insecurity. Spearheaded by the Ansarul Islam group, founded by Malam Ibrahim Dicko, a preacher from its Soum province, the crisis has religious, social and security dimensions. Dicko’s jihadist armed group, like Nigeria’s Boko Haram, is said to be affiliated with Al-Qaida, as well as the Islamic State organization. Targeting civilians and soldiers, Ansarul has thus far killed 2,000 persons, with 1.4 million displaced. On November 14, the Inata Northern Province came under an attack said to be Burkina’s deadliest ever. Jihadists mercilessly shelled Burkina security forces of gendarmerie detachment, which led to the deaths of about 57 people, 53 of them gendarmes. Till date, military offensives against Burkina insurgency have not been able to stem its tide.
Like Burkina Faso, the butcherbird stalks the Nigeria for which Akande believes Buhari was God-sent. Butcherbirds, in description, are similar to birds called ravens. They are meat-loving birds with a unique audacity of spirit. The butcherbird’s name is got from its gruesome mode of feeding. With its mean-looking hooked beak, the moment it catches its prey, it hangs it on a branch or fork of a tree and hacks the meat clinically as butchers do at the abattoir. It then hangs the leftovers on tree forks, to be eaten afterwards. It walks up to home frontages, gardens and backyards with a magisterial confidence that is uncommon. Endowed with beautiful, rollicking voices of a sonorous orchestra, butcherbirds often perform a duet. While it scavenges on the road to kill, this isn’t strictly the butcherbird’s dark side. Small birds tremble at its sight. This is because these small birds, chicks and eggs, constitute the menu of the butcherbird.
South African novelist, Alex La Guma, in his 1979 novel entitled, Time of the Butcherbird, popularized the renown of this flesh-eating, flesh-hacking bird. The book was La Guma’s last novel before his passage in 1985. Does Bisi Akande know that, whether on issues of security, economy, social or political, butcherbirds have taken over Nigeria? Does he know that under Buhari, Nigerians groan daily? If he knew, why shower butcherbirds with eulogies if you are not one?
On the security side, as it has become commonplace, in the last one week, as Yoruba say in elegy to the dead, the ground has opened its irreverent mouth to swallow the blood of another set of innocent Nigerians. Not to worry, our government-by-obsequies wasn’t watching helplessly. As is its wont, it commiserated with the families of the deceased. In Sokoto State last Tuesday, recently legally- transmuted-from-bandits-to-terrorists butcherbirds set a passenger bus ablaze, killing over 40 people, including a pregnant woman, in the process. Seven of the passengers escaped with sustained grievous injuries. Earlier in October, same bandits stormed the Goronyo market in Sokoto, killing 43 people on a Sunday morning.
Two days before Akande’s attempt to make the Buhari stone talk, specifically last Wednesday, in Ba’are, Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State, 16 worshippers were killed and 12 others injured by suspected armed bandits. Official figure claimed nine died. Add this to the calamity that occurred at the Lagos’ Ojodu area on Tuesday where about 12 pupils were run on by a truck that must have lost its reins, and yet the eight children found dead in a locked car in Badagry and the murder of a 7-year old child in Ekiti, plus sundry other unreported killings, death stalks the land like an apparition. If you are to conduct a proper clinical autopsy on those deaths, as you disembowel each of the blood spillages, hidden inside a corner of the carcasses is the Nigerian State and leadership failure.
Earlier, in the first six weeks of 2021, according to Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) a project of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa programme, 1, 525 persons got wasted all over the country by the insecurity in Nigeria. Same week, as the world mourns with Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari was on a binge to the United Arab Emirates, with ten of his ministers and undisclosed cache of aides. It will seem as if shedding blood of innocent has become such a thriving but ghoulish national industry under Buhari. It is so bad that if you are homophobic, Nigeria may not be the right place for you to live now. Under Buhari, Nigeria has assumed a couple of unflattering nomenclatures. Nigeria is either a failed, failing or fallen state.
There is a consensus among Nigerians and stakeholders on Nigeria that gloom is Nigeria’s second name. Economists, financial analysts, political scientists and even the common man on the streets, give unimpeachable statistical data to back up their claim that Nigeria is at the precipice. Their conclusion is teased out from the excruciating pain and agony on Nigerian streets and the hopelessness that has become a daily example in the country. Excluding government and its apologists and a coterie of systemic leeches who say the pains are fuelled by intolerance of the Nigerian political opposition, the agony is visible for the blind to see.
The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, which began 12 years ago, with a group of men trying to impose an extreme version of Islamic extremism in some parts of North-eastern Nigeria, under Buhari, has opened a greater Pandora’s Box about Nigeria. Inside it is an exposure of a deep-seated crisis that incriminates, implicates and questions the competence of the Nigerian military and civilian leadership. Banditry and war against Nigeria then followed. These were followed in tow by separatist violence in some parts of the country, economic crises, acute food shortages and the collapse of the Nigerian Naira.
Under Buhari, Boko Haram, now an affiliate of the Islamic State, has killed multiple of thousands of people in Nigeria, more than in previous regimes added together. The North-East is by far the most affected, with Borno State harvesting the largest chunk of the statistics. Over 34,000 deaths are said to have been recorded in this state.
Bandits kill, maim, rape, murder and kidnap and are said to collect taxes from farmers when they are planting and harvesting their farm inputs. In some parts of Niger State, there is an allegation that Boko Haram controls a part of the country. An Economist magazine report said that more people were kidnapped in the first four months of this year than all of last year in Nigeria.
The South is not immune from the butcherbirds. In the Southeast, life answers to Thomas Hobbes’ description of nasty, brutish and short. Recently, two policemen were reported beheaded. Since some brigands shot and killed the husband of former NAFDAC boss, Dora, Chike Akunyili, others have been hacked to death, especially in Imo State, deaths that didn’t have the honour of gracing the media. Indeed, fighting between government forces and Igbo separatists in the south-east has recorded so many deaths, figures that may embarrass the Federal Government if the actual statistics are made public. Southwest is also a recipient of this insecurity trauma. Kidnapping for ransom, spontaneous criminal activities and the uncertainty of life rule the airwave.
In May this year, Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation, in conjunction with John Campbell, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, gave a very damming report on Nigeria’s democracy and government under Buhari and concluded that Nigeria is a failed state. Some other scholars disagree with them and say that Nigeria under Buhari hasn’t failed completely but is a failing state. To yet another group of scholars, from their prognosis of what the sickly Nigerian child in Buhari’s hands is, she is a fragile state. Whatever it is, it is apparent that Nigeria is hemorrhaging. And badly too. Yet Akande’s autobiography didn’t see this gloom.
On the economic front, as alluded to by Rotberg and Campbell, the Nigerian economy is in throes. Recently, Simon Harry, Statistician-General of the Federation and Head of National Bureau of Statistics, said that the country’s economy grew by 4.03 per cent in the Third Quarter of 2021. When we go to the market, reality there boos Harry.
Nigerian social crises are no less mind-boggling. The society is at the receiving end of all these crises. Social relations are at their lowest and life is almost at a standstill in Nigeria. Nigerians are suspicious of one another and even other nations have utter disrespect for us. Night life is almost dead as a result of the huge insecurity in the country. Inter and intra-state travels are at their basest, not to talk of inter-regional relationship which is almost totally absent. No time in the history of the country have mutual suspicions been at this lamentable level. Nigerians face trauma of all kinds daily. If you add the above to the acute hunger, unprecedented in the history of the country, which the people face, to say that Nigeria is in a period of crises may be an understatement.
The critical question to then ask is, is Bisi Akande aware of all these? Or does he live in Saturn? How many of those who voted Buhari in 2015 in the north are alive today? Why didn’t Akande summon the courage to tell Buhari to resign like Burkina Faso’s gallant leader, Dabiré? It is instructive that in the entire book, Akande never had a word for the people of Ibarapa, Oyo State, who were killed by identified Fulani herdsmen and the gale of kidnaps that gripped the Southwest, yet a leader is a leader when he shows empathy for his people. Not to worry. Even from Tinubu, mum is the word for the people of Ibarapa and Nigerians dying under the butcherbirds in government.
Rather than reply Akande, Obasanjo and all those mentioned by him as having attempted to deflect the arrow of the Buhari calamity in 2015 should thank Akande for doing them a big PR job. What Akande invariably accused them of was that they were not guilty of feeding Nigeria with this Buhari poison. They should all take a bow for their resistance to the selfish, fatal and ill-conceived job of making Buhari president in 2015. They were patriots and Nostradamus,, men who saw and warned against the bleak tomorrow of Nigeria that is today under Buhari.
The Akande book, in its apparent lick-spittle job of whitewashing Tinubu, is laced with ignoble falsifications of facts. While he claimed that Buhari betrayed Tinubu, having hitherto promised to make him a Vice Presidential candidate, in December 2014, Tinubu himself issued a statement claiming that he turned down Buhari’s offer to him to be the party’s vice presidential candidate so that he could maintain his position as leader of the party, as well as act as bridge builder across all divides. Tinubu wrote in the 2014 release: “My contribution to the party was never based on the expectation of a later political handout. Nigeria is in trouble and we are well past the moment for such narrow, selfish games. There came a time during the course of the events when our Presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari offered the Vice Presidential slot to me. Being a normal human being, I was deeply moved and honoured that he would consider me for the position. Being a patriot, I had to weigh my potential candidacy in all of its dimensions.”
One of Akande and Tinubu then must be lying. Or the two of them lied desperately. And Buhari knows this, being the recipient of their tissues of incongruities. Knowing this, when Buhari, in his speech at the book launch, now said he could go to the jungle with Akande due to his ‘inflexible integrity,” he himself became an accessory after the untruth being peddled for cheap political gains.
Insinuating that General Mai Gaskiya was treacherous, Akande wrote in the book, “General, this was not what we agreed upon. You are changing our agreement? He knew I was getting angry. He said he was under pressure from some governors from the north, including those who were Muslims. I told him the slot belonged to the South-West and among the Yoruba, religion is not a factor in leadership.”
All in all, it is evident that Akande’s My Participations is another of the Tinubu group’s plan to deodorize him preparatory to the 2023 elections, stomping on sacred facts with scant regards in the process. If Akande wanted to lick Tinubu’s spittle as he has always done, he should have done it with more respect for the people of Nigeria. Calling the Buhari butcherbird years a blessing to Nigeria and whitewashing Tinubu this mendaciously are terrible affronts on the people. One of the ways he could address the Tinubu debacle is to advise Tinubu himself to write his own autobiography – so that we all could know everything about the man who desperately wants to be our president, and so that we all could benefit from his uncommon grass-to-grace story. This is a challenge for the Lion of Lagos to take in the new year. We are waiting.
Celebrated Columnist, Dr. Festus Adedayo writes from Ibadan, Oyo state
In a world that is increasingly dependent on sound financial expertise and innovative management practices, illuminating figures are crucial for the academic and professional growth of a nation. One such figure is Dr. Akinde Mukail Aremu, the esteemed Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro in Ogun State. With an impressive academic background and a commitment to excellence in education, Dr. Akinde is not just shaping the minds of future financial leaders; he is also positioning the institution at the forefront of Nigeria’s educational landscape.
A Legacy of Academic Excellence
Dr. Akinde’s academic journey is nothing short of remarkable. With multiple degrees—a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Economics, a Master’s in Finance, and a PhD in Finance—his expertise spans across vital fields like Financial Management, Business Finance, and Financial Accounting. His position as the Chief Lecturer in the School of Management Studies at the Federal Polytechnic is a testament to his commitment and passion for education. Dr. Akinde’s rich academic fabric is woven with numerous publications in reputable journals, exploring key issues from stock market performance to the complexities of financial reporting standards in Nigeria.
His research interests primarily lie in finance and financial analyses, where he tirelessly seeks to address pertinent economic questions, providing insights that resonate deeply within the Nigerian financial landscape. His studies not only contribute to academic discourse but also guide policy-making in the financial realm, fostering a better understanding of economic development in Nigeria.
Championing Innovative Pedagogy
As a dedicated educator, Dr. Akinde has consistently advocated for modern pedagogical methods that inspire creativity and critical thinking among students. His teaching areas encompass crucial subjects that equip students with the financial acumen needed in today’s dynamic economic environment. By incorporating practical examples and real-life scenarios into his curriculum, he ensures that students are not just passive recipients of knowledge but active participants in their learning journey. His hands-on approach is fostering a generation of finance professionals ready to tackle the challenges of the industry head-on.
Elevating the Institution to New Heights
Under Dr. Akinde’s leadership, the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, is experiencing a renaissance. His vision for the institution is clear: to provide quality education that meets the benchmark of global standards. His strategic initiatives have led to the establishment of innovative programs that align with market needs, ensuring that graduates are not only employable but also ready to lead. His emphasis on human capital investment and sustainable economic strategies positions the institution as a beacon of hope for Nigeria’s future.
Furthermore, Dr. Akinde’s efforts extend beyond the classroom. His participation in international conferences and collaboration with academic institutions worldwide has spotlighted the Federal Polytechnic on a global stage. By fostering partnerships and exchanging knowledge with global thought leaders, he is silencing the cynics and proving that Nigerian institutions can compete on an international level.
A Voice for Change and Development
Beyond academia, Dr. Akinde is a vocal advocate for fiscal responsibility and policy reform in Nigeria. His extensive research publications reflect a commitment to dissecting the intricacies of Nigeria’s financial landscape, addressing critical issues ranging from foreign direct investment to the implications of tourism development on economic growth. His work sheds light on the pivotal role that education and informed fiscal practices play in Nigeria’s quest for economic revival.
Dr. Akinde understands that his role transcends academia; he is a mentor, an innovator, and a change-maker. His unwavering dedication to equipping the next generation of leaders with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive in an increasingly complex world is evident in every initiative he undertakes.
In conclusion, Dr. Akinde Mukail Aremu’s leadership at the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro is redefining the educational landscape of Nigeria. His commitment to academic excellence, innovative pedagogy, and social responsibility serves as an inspiration for students and educators alike. As he continues to shape the future of financial education in Nigeria, there is little doubt that Dr. Akinde is not just preparing students for jobs—he is preparing them to become the architects of the nation’s economic future. In a rapidly evolving global economy, his vision and leadership will undoubtedly leave an indelible mark on the educational sector and beyond.
Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, is a restless and courageous politician. However, he ought to have learned political patience from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who spent years building a viable political alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when its stalwarts boasted that they would rule Nigeria for 64 years.
Cleverly, Tinubu abandoned the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to establish another political platform, the Action Congress (AC), which later metamorphosed into the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
In collaboration with other political groups—including the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and some elements of the PDP—the All Progressives Congress (APC) was born, with El-Rufai as one of its foundation members. Ultimately, the APC wrestled power from the PDP, truncating its 64-year dominance plan.
For El-Rufai to abandon the APC now is nothing short of political suicide, as Tinubu is strategically positioned to secure a second term with an array of both seen and unseen political foot soldiers.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP), as a political entity, effectively died with the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola. Any attempt to resurrect it is an exercise in futility.
For the sake of argument, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario: Suppose another southern politician is fielded in 2027 and wins the election. Even if he signs an agreement to serve only one term, political realities could shift, and he may seek another four years.
If anyone doubts this, they should ask former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. The simple implication of this is that President Tinubu remains the best candidate for northern politicians seeking a power shift back to the North in 2031—at which point El-Rufai could have been one of the credible northern contenders for the presidency.
When Ebenezer Babatope (Ebino Topsy), a staunch Awoist, chose to serve in General Sani Abacha’s regime, he later reflected on his decision, saying: “I have eaten the forbidden fruit, and it will haunt me till the end of my life.”
By abandoning the APC for another political party, El-Rufai has also eaten the forbidden fruit. Only time will tell if it will haunt him or not.
However, for some of the political leaders already contacted from the South West, supporting any party against President Tinubu would be akin to Judas Iscariot’s betrayal—a reputation no serious South West politician would want to bear.
El-Rufai’s departure from the APC to SDP is nothing short of a suicidal political move, reminiscent of Harakiri.
Prof. Adeniyi Olowofela, a former Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology and the Commissioner representing Oyo State at the Federal Character Commission (FCC), sent this piece from Abuja, the nation’s capital.
For most of last week, Senate President Godswill Akpabio was in the eye of the storm as his traducer, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who represents Kogi Central, was relentless in getting her voice hear loud and clear.
Though the matter eventually culminated in the suspension of the Kogi senator for six months on Thursday, it is clear that the drama has not ended yet. The whole saga, as we have seen in the last few weeks, smacks many wrongs and few rights. The Senate scored some rights and some wrongs, the same for the Kogi senator. But in apportioning the rights and the wrongs, we have to distinguish between emotions and the rules.
Recall that in July of 2024, Senator Akpabio had compared the conduct of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan to that of someone in a nightclub. That statement incensed the Kogi Central senator, the womenfolk, and a number of other senators. Days later, Akpabio, having sensed the mood of the Senate, spoke from his chair and said: “I will not intentionally denigrate any woman and always pray the God will uplift women, Distinguished Senator Natasha, I want to apologise to you.” That was expected of him and by that statement, Akpabio brought some calm into the relationship between him and the Kogi senator, but as we are to discover in the last two weeks, still waters do run fast under the surface.
The latest scene of the drama started with what looked like an innocuous development on the Senate floor. The Senate president, in exercise of the power conferred on him by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the Senate Rule book, made adjustments to the seats in the minority wing of the chamber and relocated Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan. The excuse was that following the defection of some senators from the minority side, seat adjustments had to be effected. That was within Akpabio’s power. Remember that the Senate Rule book does not only empower the Senate president to allocate seats, but he can also change the seats occasionally. So, Akpabio was right with that action. But perhaps Akpoti-Uduaghan, based on family relationships with the Akpabios, expected that she would have been alerted of the impending seat change. And on getting to the floor of the Senate to discover the seat switch, she got alarmed. Was she right to flare up? No, that is the answer. Apart from the powers of the Senate president to change seats allocated to senators, the rule book also says that every senator must speak from the seat allocated. The implication is that anything a senator says outside the allocated seat will not go into the Senate records. The Senate, or any parliament for that matter, is a regulated environment. The Hansards take records of every word and action made on the floor of the chamber. And so, it is incumbent on every senator to follow the rules.
So, on Thursday, February 20, when Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell over her seat relocation and engaged Senator Akpabio in a shouting match, she was on the wrong side of the Senate Rule book. No Senator is expected to be unruly. In fact, unruly conduct can be summarily punished by the presiding officer. It is important to note that the rules of the Senate treat the occupier of the chair of Senate President like a golden egg. The President of the Senate is the number three citizen in the country, even though he was elected to represent a constituency like his colleagues. He is first among equals, but the numero uno position comes with a lot of difference.
A legislative expert once told me that the Chair of the President of the Senate must be revered at all times and that infractions to the rules are heavily punished unless the offender shows penitence. The rule says the President of the Senate must be heard in silence; Senators must avoid naming (being called out for unruly conduct); and that any situation that compels the President of the Senate to rise up to hit the gavel in trying to restore order could earn the culprit (any named senator) summary dismissal. Those are the powers of the President of the Senate, which Madam Natasha was trying for size. I think it is important that Senators are taken through inductions on the rules and regulations, whether they got in mid-term or at the beginning of the session.
Rules are very key to operations in a big club like the Senate or the House of Representatives. But as we will later discover on this page, the number of years spent on the floor does not necessarily guarantee a clear understanding of the rules.
Well, as we saw it, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell by protesting the decision of the Senate to relocate her seat. She was out of order, and her colleagues noted the same. With another presiding officer, she could have been suspended right there. But Akpabio didn’t do that. Then, the Kogi Central senator opened another flank, this time, outside of the Senate chamber. She granted an interview to Arise television, claiming that she had been sexually harassed by Akpabio. Here, too, Senator Natasha was on the wrong side of the Senate rules. Yes, she has a right of freedom of speech, but if the right must be meaningfully exercised, she must do so in compliance with the rules of the club she belongs-the Senate. This is expressly so because she is covered by Order 10 of the Senate Rule Book, which permits her to raise issues of privilege without previously notifying the President of the Senate or the presiding officer. The elders and the holy books also say that when you remove the log from the eyes, you show it to the eyes. As a club, the senate detests the washing of its dirty linen in the public. Such conduct led to the suspension of the late Senators Arthur Nzeribe and Joseph Waku, as well as Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, Senator Ali Ndume and even Senator Abdul Ningi in recent past.
Rather than go to the court of public opinion to accuse Akpabio of sexual harassment, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan should have quietly assumed the seat allocated to her, raise her complaints through Order 10 and at the same time tender details of her sexual harassment allegation against Akpabio and seek Senate’s intervention. If she had done that, she would have been on the right side of Senate Rules and had Akpabio by the balls. As much as the Senate rules forbid a senator from submitting a petition he or she personally signed, the Senate does not forbid any lawmaker from raising allegations that affect either their rights or privileges on the floor. Several newspaper editors have been summoned before the Ethics Committee to answer questions of alleged breach of the privilege of senators. I recall that as correspondents in the chamber, senators were always unhappy each time we scooped a story or blow open a report they were about to submit. Such senators didn’t need to write a petition. They would only come to the floor and raise points of order on privilege. Senator Akpoti- Uduaghan failed to do that.
But the conduct of the Senate President and some of the principal officers on Wednesday, March 5, left so much to be desired of the Senate. I was shocked to see Senator Akpabio rule Senator Natasha in order; he also ruled Senator Mohammed Monguno in order as well as Senator Opeyemi Bamidele. How do you have three right rulings on one issue? First, he allowed Senator Natasha to lay a defective petition on the Senate table. That’s expressly out of order. In the days of Senate Presidents David Mark, Bukola Saraki, and Ahmad Lawan, we saw how such scenes were handled. A David Mark would simply ask the senator, ‘Distinguished Senator, please open to Order 40(4) and read’. By the time the senator finished reading the order and seeing the order had negatived his or her motion, he would only be begging to withdraw that motion. That was not the case with Akpabio. And to make matters worse, the clerks at the table were also looking lost. They could not guide the presiding officer in any way. That tells a bit about human resource capacity in the assembly. But then the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele and the Chief Whip, Mohammed Monguno, who have spent quite a long time in the National Assembly, should know better. Their interventions did more damage to Akpabio’s Senate. Once the President of the Senate had ruled Senator Natasha in order to submit a petition she personally signed, (against the rules of the Senate which forbids such), and the Kogi Central senator had approached the chair and laid the petition on the table, the matter in a way becomes sub judice, to borrow the language of the law. The Senate Rule Book classifies such an action as “Matters Not open to Debate.” So at that point, the matter was no longer open to debate. Since the gavel has been hit and the action has been taken, no senator has the right to reopen the case. It was wrong of Senator Bamidele and Monguno to immediately start to revisit a closed matter, and that’s illegal. It is wrong for Akpabio to allow it.
I recall an incident in the 6th Senate when President Umaru Yar’Adua was bedridden in Saudi Arabia. Some senators moved a motion, seeking the Senate to constitute a panel to visit Saudi and ascertain the health status of the president. Somehow, when the motion was finally passed on a day, Senator Ike Ekweremadu presided, it turned out that the motion only mandated the Federal Executive Council to do the assignment. The original proponents of the motion were enraged, but they were not allowed to reopen the matter. They had to go into lobbying and eventually secured signatures of two-thirds of the Senate to re-table the matter and that paved the way for the adoption of the famous “Doctrine of Necessity.” That’s how serious the matter should be handled, but it was trivialized by Akpabio, the Senate Leader and Senate Whip. That’s on the wrong side of the rule.
Now that Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan has been suspended, many would say she was being silenced. That is far from the truth. Her suspension was on the basis of what the senate perceived as unruly behavior on the floor. We are yet to hear the details of her sexual harassment allegations, and I believe that she has avenues to ventilate that. Nigerians earnestly await these details, which should be salacious enough to help us cool off some heat.
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