The siege of the Nigerian senate

BY MUSA ABDULLAHI

While President Muhammadu Buhari was away on medical vacation in London and his vice, Yemi Osibanjo, was holding the fort in Abuja, Nigerians whose quality of life was tremendously impacted by the shibboleth of the stand-in leader in the state house felt that the government was working. In the little space of time Osibanjo functioned as acting president, he applied himself exclusively to the challenge of governance. He managed his trust so unobtrusively and responsibly that optimism returned to the homeland, the economy received a magic tonic, and Nigerians started to wish aloud that the interlude of Osibanjo’s helmsmanship lingered.

Today, they see a reversal. Since President Buhari returned to Nigeria, the characters that dominate his orbit have done little to show that they utilised the opportunity of his sick leave for soul searching and course correction. Rather than use his return as a chance to launch a reset for an administration that has become a veritable metaphor for the democratisation of misery, they resumed their trademark campaign of calumny which is part of their bid to force a hostile takeover of the key institutions currently being headed by independent-minded individuals.

To be specific, the senate of the federal republic of Nigeria is the crown jewel that the president’s people are manifestly desperate to debase and capture. The propaganda wing of Aso Rock is working overtime to discredit the senate in the eyes of Nigerians in the hopes that a shift in the public perception of the legitimacy of the upper chambers would mean a real emasculation of the august body. Their plan is to damage the credibility of the senate and to leave in its wake a puny puppet.

The president’s men are the inspiration behind the ludicrous media crusade that casts every single legislative action taken by the senate that happens to diverge from their private interest as ‘’corruption fighting back’’. Their agenda behind the coordinated operation to impugn the right of the senate to act with agency as the highest law-making body created by the law of the land is to blackmail the senate into redundancy. The aim is to impose a crushing reputational burden on the senate so that the red chambers is reduced to stooping in a posture of surrender and appeasement…for the sake of ‘peace’.

This senate has clearly refused to be harassed into shrinking to the handy toy of indulgence the executive may play with. And this is the reason why it has become a literal magnet for fictional scandals.

The other day, the senate, for the second time, rejected Ibrahim Magu as nominee for chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It was within the frame of the powers of the senate to approve or reject the nominee as provided in the act establishing the anti-graft agency. As in the first instance, the senate dismissed Magu based on a character report authored by the Department of State Security.

The report, which is in the public domain, stated in clear language that the Nigerian secret police investigated Magu and found him to be too ethically deficient and prone to compromise that he could not be considered as a suitable or decent choice to head the EFCC.

When Magu appeared on the floor of the senate for confirmation hearing, senators interrogated him based on the findings of the DSS report. He was also asked to state the amount of the illicit money the EFCC has recovered so far, to explain the rationale behind the organisation’s culture of disrespect for human rights, and to clarify his personal relationship with one notorious man who is known to act as his go-to proxy and conduit for bribes.

Magu proffered no cogent answers. Instead of satisfactorily proving his fitness, he took to name-calling. He claimed that the DSS was lacking in credibility.

The senate voted to reject his nomination. But the presidency which would rather have a rubberstamp than an assertive senate brushed aside the weighty indictment of the anti-corruption czar by the DSS, an organisation under the president’s control, and turned around to malign the senate and to insinuate that senators rejected Magu because they didn’t like his face and his guts.

And then, the story of the senate president’s alleged involvement in the Paris Club refund scandal curiously resurfaced. Magu’s EFCC had moved speedily to absolve the senate president of complicity when the ‘scandal’ broke two weeks ago. But soon after Magu was rejected by the senate, a ‘born again’ EFCC report materialised that sought to affirm that Saraki became guilty after being innocent.

Hameed Ali, the retired colonel Buhari appointed controller-general of the Nigerian Customs Service, thought up the obnoxious idea of forcing Nigerians to pay import duty on decade-old cars in a time of recession. The Nigerian senate naturally intervened and stopped the implementation of the silly policy.

The very ventilation of that proposition reflected negatively on this administration’s capacity for positive ideation. Its pronouncement alone taunted the psyche of the Nigerian people. More so, the enforcement of that anti-people policy would have aggravated public anger, instigated an epidemic of confusion and further diminished the already eroded support base of the president.

The presidency should have been grateful that the senate interposed to foreclose the adventure in foolishness. But the villa didn’t appreciate the favor. Instead, it counted the senate’s patriotic act of peremptory rescue as an offence. Hence, the presidency blessed the pathetic and unimaginative plot to encumber the person of the senate president with a fake scandal relating to the underpayment of customs duty on a certain SUV.

The hoax purported to claim that Bukola Saraki parlayed the glory of the office of the president of the senate into a clearance that shaved some money off the standard customs duty applicable in the case. But that ruse was exposed for what it was during the appearance of the ‘accused’ persons before the senate committee on ethics and public petitions.

The chairman of an automobile marketing company responsible for the importation of the vehicle testified that his firm imported the car for an oil concern and subsequently sold it to the national assembly. The office or the person of the senate president was not directly or remotely involved in the transaction.

These fake scandals unleashed on the polity attests to the fact the powers that be are pushing a well-resourced scheme to keep the senate permanently preoccupied with the business of defending its image. They throw every conceivable falsehood at the senate and at Saraki, in particular, to keep him on the defensive, always embattled. They know that mud sticks so they slander him to incommode his image with all sorts of toxic and smelly baggage.

Saraki is apparently the pet peeve of Buhari’s inner circle. They view Saraki as an existential threat to their own survival. So, they declared an open season on him. In an all-is-fair-in-love-and-war scorched earth attack, they pronounced him the bush animal everyone is welcome to hunt with any deadly weapon.

Every new day in the life of the Buhari administration furnishes evidence of the hyperactivity of a paranoid cabal in Aso Rock that hates Saraki and is sworn to go to any length to destroy him even at the risk of destabilising the institution of the senate and imploding the body politic.

Even the wife of the president herself, Aisha Buhari, has publicly identified the configuration of the president’s inner circle as the bane of the administration. In a BBC interview, she expressed frustration that her husband has become the literal hostage of hawks who are strangers to the original vision that informed Buhari’s fourth presidential quest. She said Buhari’s closest aides were working to make his presidency a monumental failure.

Few weeks ago, Nigerians got to read a leaked memo written by Kaduna state governor, Nasir el-Rufai, and addressed to President Buhari. El-Rufai’s memo expressed the same sentiments vented by Mrs. Buhari: This presidency has lost the plot because President Buhari lent power to the wrong men.

The senate pulled the mask off the face of ‘the executive grass cutter’, Babachir Lawal. The president inexplicably rose to Lawal’s defense. Though the secretary to the government of the federation has proven to be a harmful liability, Buhari retains him till this day. And the man, who is all about self-preservation, has been doing his vengeful best to ‘pay back’ the senate for exposing his dark underbelly.

This unwarranted war on the senate is costing the administration focus, energy and time. The government is midway into its term. Yet, Nigerians have more to say about the torture of hunger than the achievement of the many deliverables candidate Buhari promised them.

The siege on the senate must stop. The Buhari presidency should respect the separation of powers and let the senate be. The most urgent tasks facing the government is lifting Nigeria from recession and pulling Nigerians from the brink of suicide. The presidency ought to focus on governance and stop playing politics at the expense of human lives.