TheCable

I always campaign and fight for a healthy and vigorous synergy between the Executive and Legislative arms of government. When this happens, the people benefit immensely for it, but what I detest is the legislative arm of government being filled with marionettes, being controlled by a marionette in the Federal Capital territory. When the Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria become mere puppets in the hand of a puppeteer, who makes his abode in Abuja, the entire nation becomes marooned—as we are experiencing right now.

For the umpteenth time, Senator Lawan, let there be a healthy and robust synergy between the Senate and Aso Rock, but do not become Buhari’s puppet. On the condition that you become Buhari’s puppet, you would become history and never make history. Also, Senator Lawan, you were never voted to become baba’s after dinner speaker. Baba already has those who are being paid to speak for him.

The 9^th Assembly’s ministerial charade and make-believe christened screening calls for an urgent attention. A few days ago, Buhari complained that pressure was being mounted on him to appoint his cabinet Ministers. He said he was waiting, so he could be able to appoint those he knows. He said he did not know those he worked with during his first tenure in office. In other words, he did not know folks like Kemi Adeosun, Audu Ogbe, Solomon Dalung… No wonder they couldn’t perform as baba would have wanted. He had to drop them because they underperformed.

Those cabinet Ministers that baba retained are well known by him. Good to know that Baba knows Chris Ngige, Babatunde Fashola, Ogbonaya Onu, Lai Muhammed…No wonder they all performed so well during Baba’s first tenure in office, especially Chris Ngige and Ogbonaya Onu. Every major road in Nigeria has been tarred and our electric power supply is now very stable and we are now exporting pencils to the nations of the earth, because folks who occupied those offices were well known by baba. Baba had to retain them, because they exceeded his expectations. Let us keep fooling ourselves!

On the first day of what they called Ministerial screening, I wasted about an hour of my precious time, watching the charade that ended up lasting for some days. I thought it would be a departure from what we used to know, but I never knew that Buhari and his people have only come to maintain the status-quo, lying to Nigerians that they have come to bring change that even the founding fathers of Nigeria could not achieve.

The first man who was ‘screened’ by our ‘revered’ Senators was supposed to be screened out, but after a while, he was told to “bow and go” all because baba sent him. I do not care how moot and questionable the person’s character is, once baba sends him, he becomes clean. And once baba is interested in you, the EFCC looks the other way while the Senators communally scream: “Bow and go.” If the way politicians ‘screen’ themselves (treating themselves as one big family) is the way employers of labor screen the poor man when looking for a job, he would have come out of the pit of slavery (poverty). It was so awful, shameful and shocking, seeing the highest paid Senators on earth rising in defense of those they were screening, and yesterday, President Buhari said they did a good job!

I expected those women who say they are fighting for gender-equality to lampoon and skit the 9^th Senate for not allowing those would be female Ministers to sell themselves to Nigerians and the whole world, because of a thoughtless, tactless and injudicious tradition. Lawan and his people have misconstrued what it means to truly be gender-sensitive. This is what you get when we play shallow-politics with every area of our national life. And as far as I am concerned, those would be female Ministers are more intelligent than those men—who are part of the numberless problems of Nigeria. How can those who are causing problems be the ones to solve them? This question is for baba to answer.

During the charade that they called screening, Babatunde Fashola said Nigeria is broke. How are we not going to be “broke” as a nation, when a few politicians are feeding fat on what God has blessed Nigeria and Nigerians with? Does Fashola know how much Nigeria is spending to feed, house and cloth ineffective politicians like him? Our politicians are not leaders, they are locusts. And locusts do not build. They only destroy.

While I do not endorse the discreditable-relationship that existed between Bukola Saraki and Muhammadu Buhari, I wish to openly and unequivocally state that we cannot afford to have the 9^th Assembly in the pocket of one man—who sits on a rock in the Federal Capital Territory. In every nation where Senators are turned to mere puppets, nothing meaningful happens in those nations. If Lawan continues to allow himself to be used, baba and the ruling party would praise him, but in the long run, history would not be kind to him.