The Senate should not be made a retirement home for governors

By Martin Iorsamber There is a growing trend in  Nigerian politics that needs urgent rescue and the trend if left unchecked, will have dire consequences on Nigeria’s nascent democracy. The governors of the Nigerian states have made leadership to be all about them. They are bent on destroying everything that does not have a direct […]

By Martin Iorsamber

There is a growing trend in  Nigerian politics that needs urgent rescue and the trend if left unchecked, will have dire consequences on Nigeria’s nascent democracy.

The governors of the Nigerian states have made leadership to be all about them. They are bent on destroying everything that does not have a direct benefit to them. For instance, the governors have killed the local government system in Nigeria. The introduction of joint accounts between the local governments and the states has made the local government allocations from the federation account to end up as the governors’ teller machines. Talk of the States’ Houses of Assembly, the governors have turned them to the proverbial toothless bulldogs.

Everything about good governance in Nigeria seems to be resisted by the governors through the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, (NGF). 

Every day, the governors are heard either taking the federal government to court to resist local government autonomy or visiting the president to stop him from signing electoral acts or refusing to repay loans they collected from the federal government or talking tough about pensioners.

Then comes the biggest nightmare. The governors are gradually regrouping at the senate when they retire. The questions Nigerians need to ask are; why must a governor retire to the senate? Are former governors better senators? Why are the governors making the senate to look like it’s their right?

Recently, because of the ‘I must go to the senate syndrome’, former Governor Henry Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State threw caution to the wind to make Senator Diri Douye who is from the same senatorial zone with him the candidate of the PDP in the November 16, 2019 Bayelsa State governorship election against the wishes of all other stakeholders

The senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a powerful legislative house. Most of the governors after spending several years in office, stepping on several toes and being conscious of their ‘sins’ desire to seek for ‘protection’. Some, having been in power and tasted the affluence of power, don’t ever wish to let it go. The powerful senate chamber becomes the most appropriate home of retirement.

But have the people benefited from this? The answer is a capital NO. Most of the former governors in the senate are just there playing politics with every national issue and using all means available to evade prosecution from security agencies against money laundering, misappropriation, embezzlement and other fraudulent actions they took while in office. If Nigeria must progress, there must be a stop to this new normal. 

It will be difficult to legislate against former governors going to the senate but the electorate needs to be well educated not to vote their ex-governors to the senate because doing so will be extending the reign of the gang of governors who have stood on the head of development.

 If the same people who have used all means available to destroy the local government system, send retirees to their early graves by refusing to pay their entitlements, frustrated the deepening of democracy by calling on the president not to sign electoral amendments among several other anti-people actions end up to form the nucleus of the senate, the hope of the common man in Nigeria’s democracy will be completely killed.

Martin Iorsamber is the Convener, Movement for Advancement and Peaceful Nigeria