Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is back in the news, but not for good reasons. Last week, he stunned Nigerians with his revelation that there are rogues and criminals in the National Assembly. UCHENNA AWOM, in this analysis, traces the timeline of Obasanjo’s aversion of the parliament and the avid response of the Senate.
Observers say he is back to his old ways, blunt and rapacious as ever, but in what state of mind was former President Olusegun Obasanjo when he was reported to have descended on the nation’s Legislature, Judiciary and the police last Tuesday by describing them as corrupt and handed out what sounded like a prevaricated judgment that “the institutions held no hope for the country”? Perhaps, this is the most scathing remark made against those institutions of government in recent times. Not that his was novel, but coming from a major political player like him leaves a sour taste in the mouth of followers of Nigeria’s democratic development since 1999.
The former President was also quoted to have described majority of lawmakers in the national and state assemblies as “rogues and armed robbers” and the judiciary as corrupt.
Obasanjo, who was reported to have spoken at the fourth Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies Nigeria annual conference in Lagos, was said to have rated the lawmakers as better than the police in crime and corruption.
In his words, “Integrity is necessary for systems and institutions to be strong. Today rogues, armed robbers are in the State Houses of Assembly and the National Assembly. What sort of laws will they make?
“The judiciary is also corrupt. During my tenure, many of the corrupt judges were removed, some are still there.
“If the judiciary becomes corrupt, where is the hope for the nation? Justice, no doubt, will go to the highest bidder. The judiciary did not see anything wrong with a former governor but the same set of evidence was used to sentence him in the United Kingdom.
“The police are even worse. Well I will not lament. I will only say let us understand our problems and emphasize the good ones”.
Who are the rogues and criminals that infest the National Assembly that former President Olusegun knows about? What are the essences of Obasanjo’s grouse against the national parliament? This is because he has a history of atrocious battles with the National Assembly beginning from the time he made a fun fare of the lawmakers in 1999 of collecting N2.5million furniture allowance even when his ministers that time were paid as much as N55million for the same furniture allowance.
Therefore, is it trite and in good faith for a statesman to make such a sweeping allusion against an institution that gave his eight years tenure as President an image of democracy?
Again, would it be fair to say that the former President is still sour over the role of the National Assembly played in thwarting his ambition to enjoy an unprecedented third term aside his statutory two-term mandate as renewed? Then at what point did the former president discover that the laws being churned out by the parliament could not be wholly good because they were legislations enacted by “rogues and criminals”?
The questions may be endless, but the point remains that with the benefit of hindsight, Obasanjo has never recognized the inevitability of the parliament as the bastion of representative democracy. Here was a man who by conduct and carriage is more at home with leviathan-style government. That is to say that he would have loved a situation where the entire Nigerian citizens could have totally surrendered their inalienable rights to him as the leviathan. Too bad, it was not so and can never be after all, Obasanjo is out there relishing the privilege and the goodness of Nigeria to him, though could be also unhappy having missed to achieve an ambition that was wholly driven by greed akin to roguery and criminality against the Nigerian people.?
He may be right and he may be wrong too, but the ball has been thrown back to him and could sound like a mythical query: did Obasanjo exhibit statesmanlike patriotism for not exposing these “rogues and criminals” before they were presented to the electorate for endorsement? This question becomes plausible against the backdrop that he was Chairman, Board of Trustees of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), besides he was President, which means he had all the security information that could be available to any mortal. So why didn’t he expose these “rogues and criminals” even discretely? Who knows whether if he done that, maybe Nigeria would have been saved from the pains of having “rogues and criminals” as lawmakers??
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Name the rogues and criminals among US-Senate responded
The Senate swiftly responded to Obasanjo’s claims last Wednesday, a day after he made the sweeping characterization. They urged Obasanjo to move a step further and name the “rogues and robbers” that are members of the National Assembly.
Soliciting for his support in the circumstance would help to sanitize the institution, they said.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, made the request at a press conference in Abuja.
Abaribe said that the request has become imperative following the negative implication of such characterization and the caliber of personality that made it.
The Senate Spokesman specifically noted that “in the new spirit of transparency and openness Obasanjo should assist the National Assembly by naming those that he knows in the National Assembly as either rogues or criminals”.
However, Abaribe said that the Senate had been inundated with inquiries relating to the statement credited to Obasanjo that the National Assembly is full of rogues and criminal elements.
The National Assembly he said has great respect for the person of the former President and “the National Assembly can never engage in any talk back to the president”.
“But we actually feel that the former President would help the National Assembly and indeed also help Nigeria in the new spirit of transparency and openness by assisting the National Assembly to name those he knows in the National Assembly as either rogues or criminals.
“That would help us to be able to sanitize the polity and we sincerely thank him for his role in Nigeria, someone who cares very deeply about the Nigerian State and how it is at the moment,” he said.
The senate was careful and measured in its response, but behind the façade is the message. All in all, what is needed at this point is deep introspection. Doing so would be good at least not to prove Obasanjo right.
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