The Nigerian House of depravity that could not manufacture solution to our problem of insecurity was caught last week speaking with an overtone of arrogance, conquest and dominance against Festus Keyamo, the Minister of State for Labour. The furore is commanding polarisation among Nigerians and generating heat in the commentariat community. The disagreement was clogged with legislative arrogance, rascality and intimidation.
They were out to hide behind the fictional power of law as lawmakers to subdue and humiliate Keyamo who himself is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). But thank goodness, Keyamo prized open the hidden shenanigans that daily occurs in the house for the public to see. And that for free!!!
What is my beef? Mr. Festus Keyamo was given a grassroots assignment to employ 1,000 Nigerians from each of the 774 local government areas in the country for an initiative that will start from October 1. Each lucky beneficiary will be paid N20,000 monthly to carry out public works. Mr Keyamo then provided more details of the intervention programme with a promise that each state will have a committee to choose those to be employed for the job. The committee set up was real grassroots in motion: CAN, NSCIA, NURTW, Market Women, CSOS, Youth organisations, traditional rulers, etc.
Keyamo was satisfied with the recommendations of Inter-ministerial committee and strongly believed that the selection of the beneficiaries and projects should be local affair and not directed from a room in Abuja. That is, a real grassroots ownership and implementation. What the public does not know is that before the commencement of the project, 15% of the allocation (116,100) had already being shared by the hyenas we called lawmakers. Unsatisfied with the 15%, the lawmakers, falling back on their hyena instinct, wanted to hijack the entire programme and in the process, usurp the presidential power that gave it mandate. Hyenas are such greedy, stubborn, and merciless animals. Legislative powers under section 88 of the 1999 Constitution is only limited to investigations but not to give any directive to the executive. In this case they have overstepped their bounds!
What happened to Festus Keyamo was a pragmatic lesson in jealousy. First, the legislators were unhappy and reluctant to support his project because they were aware that if successful it would further raise the reputation of Keyamo. Secondly, the legislators were tribally inflamed, and we could see the North/South animosity among the ranks of Keyamo’s inquisitors. Thirdly, we could see the dominant/submissive paradigm that had been guiding the relationship between Fulani and the rest of Nigerians. Fourthly, the inquisitors on the high table clearly wanted their own cut from the perceived largesse the contract will generate. And lastly, they wanted to break the boundless courage of Keyamo and put him under their arm lock.
The incident was a public relation calamity and Keyamo duly exposed it. He exposed the inbred aversion of our lawmakers to changing the pathology of poverty among the Nigerian masses. In their prolong fit of temper, catfight and finger pointing, one could see political blindness, triumphant insolence and that sense of control and authority.
The wild ravings and hubris of the legislative conquistadors have clearly demonstrated that Nigeria is the amphitheatre of a failed democracy. Now you could see how crude, vile, iniquitous, corrupt, wicked, scandalous, sacrilegious, inhuman, dirty, and evil these people are. Our elected lawmakers’ rule in a hollow place of resource extraction. Many of our legislooters are lazy, thieves, ritualists, coven kings and queens, heartless, greedy, selfish, cantankerous, arrogant, and unpatriotic. They are devil incarnate!!!
I must confess a private aversion for most members of our National Assembly and House of Representatives. Both are dissembling institutions. Both houses have the greatest collection of corrupt, unpatriotic, selfish, cantankerous, arrogant, deceitful, scheming, money-minded and unrepentant set of revisionists you could imagine in our crude form of political backwardness. Their body language, comments, deliberations, decisions, and laws are firmly against the progress of Nigerians. If morality and high standards have always guided our politics and public service, many of them will not be on those seats. They are squarely in their morals.
They have little interest in the unbundling of Nigerians from insecurity, unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, and social inequality. They are more voracious and vicious when it comes to swallowing money just like the celebrated WAEC snake that we were told swallowed millions of naira. We have karate experts, wrestlers, and hooligans in both houses. We have jokers. We have ritualists. We have drug barons. We have gun runners. We have looters. We have sexual predators. We have unpatriotic and haters of the people among them. The most rigidly anti-progressive Nigerians and our unrepentant adversaries are in both hollow chambers.
Till date the public has been kept in the dark as to how much an average Nigerian lawmaker earns for a three days job? These shameless toads are there not to alleviate the social, political, economic and security challenges humiliating Nigerians, but to tighten the noose further and suffocate the Nigerian masses with laws that neither provide bread nor butter on our dining tables. Conservative estimate places their average salary at a whopping N20 million per month per person.
Allowances for furniture, gardeners, masseurs, driver, cook, shoe shiner, barber, mechanic, laundry, clothing, newspaper, medical check-up, entertainment, travel, petrol and constituency payment brings an average senator’s pay packet to N3 billion in one solid year!!! This kind of greed is peculiar to Nigerians. Money that is meant to heal the ills of our infrastructure is being pocketed by few people with criminal records of all sorts – from certificate forgery, embezzlement of public fund to drug dealing. Ours is an unusual and embarrassing form of democracy.
Ours is a democracy that promotes the carnal comforts of its actors – the politicians. The inability of our politicians to see that they are a bunch of embarrassment to Nigerians is not surprising. In a nation where democracy has been monetized and standard lowered, the stage is set to turn the legislative chamber into a colony of hyenas that tear everything in their path without leaving anything for the morning.
All these aberrations are symptomatic of a deep sickness. Our materialistic democracy that is obsessed with money sharing but opposed to any form of accountability, integrity and public morality has created a nation of wicked, selfish, greedy, money-minded and heartless lechers from the market woman to the university professor who must have sex with a female student for a better grade. When we have immoral, corrupt, dishonest, fraudulent, dishonest, and completely shameless people as leaders and senators, Nigeria is set to turn into a land of Sodom and Gomorrah where everybody drinks iniquity like water.
Bruised but unbowed, the Lion in Festus Keyamo still fights on. He has refused to surrender the programme to raving hyenas who wanted to have a deal in a closed-door session which was rejected. “He could only respond to their position before the press since their own position was also made public.” Keyamo later pulled off an adroit feat of patriotism by insisting: “Nigerian people deserve to know the details of the execution of this all-important programme.” Deservedly contemptuous rather than contrite, Keyamo refused to apologise and took a bow and walked away. Caught in the deadly fork of a ruthless and courageous SAN, the lawmakers have returned to their usual murky meanness and have suspended the programme. Great nation, little mind you might say.
. tajutijani@hotmail.com.
