The price we pay when legislators die

We met last on April 21. I went to Asaba from Lagos to promote my new book, Writing for Media and Monetising It, at Delta State University, which, according to JAMB statistics, is one of the country’s highest subscribers to Mass Communications in 2021.

Senator Ifeanyi Ubah was on the flight to Asaba that morning. I didn’t see him until we entered the arrival hall. He seemed to have added some weight for a man his height. I teased him about his robustly prosperous looks. He replied that journalists like me tend not to add weight because we’re too busy causing trouble, to which I replied that he should not go there.

We laughed and parted ways outside the terminal building. And then, on July 26, news broke that he had died only days after arriving in London. A few days earlier, he shared a video of himself looking slimmer than when I saw him in Asaba in April. He videoed himself singing on a London street with his family, and everyone looked happy.

Gone too soon

He was 52 and only reelected to the senate last year under the Young Progressives Party (YPP) platform before he defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Ubah was the fourth member of the current National Assembly to die this year, bringing to 29 Federal lawmakers who have died in office from 2015 to date. 

The others who died this year were Isa Dongoyaro, APC member of the House of Representatives representing Garki/Babura Federal Constituency, Jigawa State, who died on May 10; Ekene Adams of the Labour Party, representing Chikun/Kajuru, Kaduna State, who died on July 16; and APC member Musiliudeen Akinremi, representing Ibadan North Federal Constituency, Oyo state, who died on July 10.

It’s not just the number of deaths that is striking. None of all four legislators who died in office this year was up to 55. The outlier was the Federal legislator Abdulkadir Jelani Danbuga, an APC member from Isa/Sabon Birni, Sokoto state, who passed away in October at 64. He died three months after he was sworn in, bringing the total dead in one year to five. 

At 52, Ubah was the oldest federal lawmaker who died in office this year. Dongoyaro was 47; Adams 39; Akinremi 51. 

By life expectancy projection, you could argue that for a country with a life expectancy of 52 years, the average age of the deceased legislators shouldn’t be too unusual. Yet, if a company specialises in life policies for lawmakers, the recent events may force it to review its premium. 

Beyond the numbers

There are 469 lawmakers in both chambers of the national assembly, with the states proportionally represented in the Senate. Representation in the house of representatives is based on population (favouring the North), among other factors.

However, the constitutionally provided numerical advantage for the North only partially explains the higher proportion of legislators who died in office from the region since 2015. 

When I raised the trend of sitting legislators dying at relatively your age, one immediate response was that it’s the prayers of discontented, ordinary citizens at work. Divine recompense, if you like. Why wouldn’t the discontents come out to vote or hold their representatives to account instead? 

I have only anecdotal evidence to support my theory, but the trend elsewhere does not support the view that the deaths of our lawmakers in office are the outcome of spiritual warfare. If religion or culture plays any role at all, it reinforces conditions that not only potentially increase the chances of early deaths but also increase the casualties among the affected population.

Different elsewhere?

What do the statistics elsewhere show? According to the Congressional Research Service, 84 U.S. Congress members – 69 Representatives and 15 Senators – died in 39 years between 1973 and 2012. The average life expectancy was 72, similar to that of white males in the larger population. 

In 2015, relevant data about members of the British House of Commons between 1945 and 2011 showed that mortality among the 650 members was 28 percent lower compared to the general UK population. The figure in South Africa showed that in its Fourth Parliament 2009-2014, out of 103 members of parliament replaced, 18 passed away, four of them in car accidents.  

The common causes of death in these countries range from coronary artery disease to cancer, especially in the U.S. and the UK, to complications from HIV/AIDS in South Africa to diabetes, kidney-related diseases and accidents. 

Because of the availability of data in these countries, it is possible to determine the cause of death and take steps to enhance safety, well-being, and longevity. It’s different in Nigeria, where disclosing the cause of death is treated as taboo. 

Cost of taboo

The norm, not just in the legislature but in the broader population, is not to discuss it – an attitude more prevalent in the predominantly Muslim North, where deaths are accepted as “the will of God”, and any discussion of a post-mortem is out of the question.

Such cultural attitudes, reinforced by religion, tend to encourage poor record keeping and further nudge the population to ignore pre-existing health conditions in the fatalistic belief that “something must kill a man” when early detection or greater care could have prevented fatality. A cultural taboo that is useless to the dead and increasingly expensive for the living needs to be reviewed.

It’s bad enough that sometimes bereaved families have to bear the avoidable losses of loved ones. In the case of legislators, the death of sitting members also has consequences for the constituents and the electoral management body. The constituents are deprived of representation, and the electoral management body has to conduct by-elections.

In the last election cycle in 2023 alone, N335 billion was budgeted for elections. Still, that sum, later supplemented with N18 billion due to inflation, was not entirely for the general election but also for by-elections that have become a norm. 

Court-determined results, political appointments, and, increasingly, deaths have increased legislative turnover and turned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into one of the world’s most overworked and undervalued election management bodies. It’s a thankless job.

New approach

We can’t continue this way. Small changes could start with journalists understanding that it is vital to get and include the cause of death in their reports instead of allowing prevailing taboos to take them hostage. Of all five deaths, including Ubah’s, there was not a single case in which the press reported the possible cause of death.

The data of consequential deaths for Nigerian lawmakers cited earlier do not include deaths of sitting members in state houses of assembly, seven of which occurred in the last nine years, bringing the total recorded in that time to 36. 

Knowing the cause might not raise the dead; it might help the living take greater care.

The process for replacing dead legislators also needs to be reviewed. We have a system that makes everything expensive and unnecessarily complicated. The Constitution stipulates a by-election on top of other by-elections to fill vacancies for political appointees and court-ordered reruns. Three senatorial by-elections in any state are equivalent to the cost of a governorship election. 

Beyond the tears

One way to reduce such unnecessary costs is to use the example of Germany, New Zealand or South Africa, where the next candidate on the party’s list takes the deceased’s place. Or to allow the party to nominate the replacement for the deceased since a candidate holds the seat at the party’s pleasure. 

Beyond the tears of this mourning period, we should find a sustainable way to fill parliamentary vacancies. That’s one way to honour the memory of Ubah and the other dead members of the National Assembly. 

Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and the author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.