On faltering steps

The average Nigerian’s heart has been broken so many times that the legendary Humpty Dumpty has a better chance at being remoulded than piecing together the broken china of hope in our country. With the ingenuity of the ruling party the four year election call makes the electorate less informed than it was at the […]

The average Nigerian’s heart has been broken so many times that the legendary Humpty Dumpty has a better chance at being remoulded than piecing together the broken china of hope in our country. With the ingenuity of the ruling party the four year election call makes the electorate less informed than it was at the previous one. This paves way for the people to be hoodwinked with promises or none at all and for the electoral system to deliver verdicts built on pure robbery and for the looting to continue unabated.

For the love of our constitution or whatever is left of it, cabinets are conventionally dissolved prior to the inauguration of a new government. The same goes for parliaments. This is as conventional as it is for a returning government to be sworn in. President Jonathan casually broke the convention and the constitution by retaining his cabinet until it pleased him and the National Assembly returned to Abuja only Thursday to conclude the epilogue to a long, tiring, boring and particularly unimpactful tenure. In its valedictory session, the National Assembly exhibited its penchant for shamelessness and it’s out of touch with the people it claims to represent.

The House of Reps, last headed by the scummiest of youth, exhibited the act of brazenness with the canonisation of Patricia Etteh. Compared to the House that Dimeji Bankole led, Etteh’s leadership was exemplary. She could go home claiming to be the unlucky victim of a misogynists plot or vilified for nothing more than what lawyers would call mens rea, that is, criminal intent. Bankole, her successor constantly, serially and impudently insulted the psyche of Nigerians while elevating theft and kleptocracy to the level of official parliamentary policy. Ironically, Bankole is retiring with full benefits and there are talks that the lowest he could get in the new Jonathan administration is an ambassadorial appointment. It shows the level of rot within the system.

The Senate claims to have passed just a little over a dozen bills in eight years. We are not sure how many of those are appropriation bills or their equally juicy supplementary bills. It is now embroiled in a succession plot which is a replica of the seniority system in post-independent secondary school days. In a normal system that works, nothing would have been wrong with the amendment of the rules to favour experience, if such know-how were based on performance. In this instance, there is nothing about the so-called ranking senators except seniority of non-performance. Good luck to David Mark’s bid to remain senator for life.

With events like this, it would have been benign for individual sanity not to have had to watch both the awfully boring presidential inauguration with its dull and dour speeches or the equally odious valedictory session of the outgone National Assembly. For those who must know, speeches such as the one read at both occasions are not the handicrafts of the readers; (which explains the bumps and stutters in delivery) and therefore are merely crafted to create news headlines.  As far as I see the presidential speech, the speech is all bones and no flesh.

Unity of a country is never decreed or spoken into existence. It is guaranteed when a government is able to drive into those who threaten it, the fear of punishment. In the case of the Jonathan administration, it inherited trouble on all sides and promised to tackle each of them, but has fallen short of delivery. From his home region of the Delta to the north-central and now the religious crisis in the north-east, the country is engulfed in crisis but the president is happy to shut down communication for his elaborate inauguration. He was not pro-active enough to stop the violence from happening in other parts of the country. And now, his best shot at tackling national security is to re-appoint the man whose last position as National Security Adviser solved none of the security riddles.

As far as delivering on the dividends of democracy is concerned, it would be stupid to expect miracles because we as a nation prepared for none. The majority simply rubberstamped the status quo and the rest of us would have to live with the problems associated with such decision. This president definitely promised nothing – in all his campaigns, he made Nigerians understand that he would not base his campaign on promises. It was a wise decision, because electricity has long been removed from the social things expected of a government, so are other social amenities like pipe borne water, security, education, health and shelter.

But at least, somebody drummed it into the gumption of this president to endorse the 12-year old Freedom of Information Bill just before it lapsed. Even for a bill as important as this, government could not manage its passage well because obviously, this government has no communication strategy. People have to read between the lines to decipher the true intents of actions. From all indications, we are stuck with this lacklustre way of doing things for the next eight years. This is because Mr. President has told the Igbo high council that four years is not enough for government to make meaningful impact. With David Mark in the saddle, who knows if the constitution will be amended again to extend the president’s term? If it had unimpeded access to the divine, the PDP would have argued that nine months is too little a time for a child to be fully formed in its mother’s womb! Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.