Tambuwal on the threshold of history

The most interesting or intriguing right now is the travails of Speaker Aminu Tambuwal. What we are witnessing regarding this young man who has dazzled this nation with his performance in the last over three years at the head of the National Lower House re-echoes the experience of his immediate past predecessor on the seat […]

The most interesting or intriguing right now is the travails of Speaker Aminu Tambuwal. What we are witnessing regarding this young man who has dazzled this nation with his performance in the last over three years at the head of the National Lower House re-echoes the experience of his immediate past predecessor on the seat of the  fourth  highest in the pinnacle of and hierarchy of power in this nation. On June 6, 2011, I had published in this same newspaper and in my Thursday back page column what I called ‘The Travails of Dimeji Bankole’. I had recalled the tricks of greatness, especially with those who may have allowed distractions and the transient matters of life make them come short of a place they stood to gain in the hall of the heroes of history. I shall re-issue a part of that column this week and contextualize it within the present travails of his successor, with whom he shares lots of attributes, next week.  I do this because, both Bankole and Tambuwal are still before their golden age, and the world still lies ahead of them to triumph… if it is their place to make history and go the way of heroes. Here goes then;
‘What is unfolding in our political landscape-with specific regard to Dimeji Bankole and his bed-fellows in the out-gone Lower House– calls upon some deep reflection, especially among those who find themselves in the position of power.  Sophocles, the Greek classic tragedian, had warned, long ago, that we must not ascribe greatness to a man while he is still alive. And in a turn of phrase, far more modern and less final, Shakespeare admonishes that ‘to be thus is nothing but to be safely thus.’ In other words, those who stand must watch their backs, lest they fall-even just at the thin edge of time-service time.
You may not have liked his youthful cocksureness or writ large panache, when he was at the helms of affairs in the Lower House of the national legislature. You indeed may be uncomfortable with his seemingly all-knowing visage, displaced in his laughter- readiness, even at moments of legislative uncertainties. But I am not sure anyone is in serious doubt, since Dimeji Bankole took over from madam Etteh, whose name has now been cleared by her colleagues at the House of Representatives, on the eve of their departure from the sixth Assembly, that here is a clear-minded, polished, dynamic and committed young man on a hot seat, branding the Maze of Law as he presided over the Lower House. He talked big and fluently. Toward the end of his reins, he passed a series of critical Bills in the life of the Assembly and our nation-the Electoral Act and the Freedom of Information Bill, among numerous others. Even when seriously challenged by my aburo, Dino Melaye and his group over certain alleged fraudulent acts, Bankole was simply unruffled-with a bemusing, even dis-arming monarch-of-all-I survey carriage.  It is difficult to anticipate that Dimeji Bankole was possibly on his way down the irredeemable cliff and precipice.  Somehow, one was hoping that it was not true after all-even when he engaged in the unbelievable and untenable ‘battle’ against the state, against the EFCC agents who wanted to arrest him before their allegation that he planned to bolt through unorthodox routes, one was still in the belief that he was acting from a position of outrage at a scandalous and impossible allegation of impropriety. The feeling was that his usual youthful self-righteousness had led him to take brash actions against his false assailants, represented by the anti-corruption agency…
  Right now, it would seem that Dimeji’s army of supporters, not those fair-weather followers, but his war-like supporters from within the National Assembly who appeared willing and ready always to die for him when the going was rosy and sweet are still in the House and are more pre-occupied with mopping up available power from the fallout of the election of Tambuwal as the new Speaker. It would appear that Bankole Dimeji is on his own and it is always more tragic and painful when one fails alone; when in the moment of hardship and tribulation, you look back and the followers have beaten a shameless retreat.   
It is still a case in court and Bankole may yet be free, but he may also be guilty and he may go to jail. But there are critical lessons to learn from the travails of the former Speaker, at a time when he should be basking in the sunlight of heroism-or even lining up from fresh appointments from Jonathan whom he loudly and wholesomely supported at the Presidential polls-especially when he himself had lost to someone who could be taken as a political dark horse. One lesson is that those in power should exercise it with caution and with humility. Secondly, it is important to stand above board, especially with regard to the temptation and corruptibility of office. The time may be around the corner when it may not be business as usual for those who take the route of impropriety in power. In the end, it will be great if people like Bankole and -and their ilk in power-make it possible for history to tell their story in melodious lyrics, not in the inky tears of blood and elegy.’
End of Quote
All is now history. Dimeji has gone away from the hooks of the law, with a clean bill of breadth. But the lessons remain for Aminu Tambuwal, the current battling and embattled Speaker who has, on the near-eve of his term in office, deflected from the party that brought him to power (to be more precise, the party under whose aegis and panoply he sought for and gained office) as the Speaker of the Seventh Lower Assembly, into a new party, the All Progressive Congress. He has done so with a broom in his hand to symbolically sweep away his old party and its perceived fifth and obsolescence. He has joined  the alleged progressives to usher in change, rapid national transformation, which the nation direly needs, which, in his conviction and those of his fellow travelers in the APC, can only be attained through their Party.  Now, there are a lot of controversies surrounding the manner of his departure from the party that brought him to power, so to speak, for we know that I took more than the will and number of the PDP for him to become Speaker. Indeed, we can say that he may have got there in spite of the designs of his party. But what is true is that he came to power as a stalwart of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). This and the power manipulation that is taking place in determining the role he would and should play in the new party, especially with regards to ascendancy to a new power structure, will preoccupy Reflections next week.
Let us just restate that the copious references to Bankole above is more on the lessons that would- be heroes like Tambuwal must learn as they make their choices on their near-mono-myth-their journeys through the maze of options that lie before them. Obviously, the circumstances surrounding the ‘demise’, so to speak, of Dimeji Bankole are different from what Tambuwal is going to through right now. He has not committed, nor is he being accused of, any form of material impropriety or charges of corruption like his predecessor had been. Indeed, one of the strong points of his triumphal exploits is his attested incorruptibility in material terms. He also shares certain positive attributes with Dimeji Bankole-Dynamism, commitment, popularity and populism among his colleagues and a chunk of the national electorate. But there are still lessons for him to learn from the experiences of his predecessor as the current history of his choices and non-choices unfold.
To be continued.