“Ordinarily, I would have considered this bill, but my people, oh my people, have asked me to vote against it,” Wabara quipped.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
In the twilight of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, a drama played out in the Red Chamber of the National Assembly as Senators squared up in a crunch tenure elongation debate.
The day was May 16, 2006, one year before the end of Obasanjo’s constitutionally guaranteed maximum eight years of two terms.
But Obasanjo didn’t want to leave, hence the need to amend the constitution with an open ended-tenure.
As pro-tenure elongation senators plotted their third term agenda, anti-Obasanjo forces also arranged their cards. On the day of the Second Reading of the Amendment Bill, the Senate President, Ken Nnamani, called out his colleagues one after the other to make their contributions in the full glare of the media.
Nnamani’s predecessor, Adolphus Wabara seized the moment as he had never done before, not even in the two years he was Senate President before he was forced to resign following a contrived budget scandal. He became, instantly, the starboy of the Red Chamber.
Many had expected Wabara, who, fortuitously, was the last to speak before the vote was taken, to kowtow to Obasanjo because the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was on his case at the time. But, perhaps, sure of his innocence in the matter, he rose to the occasion with his “my people speech,” without caring that he was goring Obasanjo’s ox.
“Ordinarily, I would have considered this bill, but my people, oh my people, have asked me to vote against it,” Wabara quipped.
It is doubtful if he truly conferred with his constituents before that dramatic wisecrack that buried the “Third Term Bill.” But that invocation of the wish of his people, which is at the heart of representative democracy, was instructive.
Thus Obasanjo’s inordinate ambition was sequestered on the altar of Wabara’s entreaty. It was a cold revenge. As Wabara, who represented Abia South Senatorial District spoke on that fateful day, his colleagues cheered, Nigerians watching on live television shouted approval and shortly after, the Senate voted to reject the amendment.
He returned to his constituency a hero and subsequently his “oh my people” jibe began to trend, comparable to this era’s “Balablu-blu blu-bulaba” chant.
I don’t know how many Nigerians still remember Wabara’s famous speech, but this piece is not about the man who is now the chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees.
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But the upcoming elections and the way politicians are trying to wheedle the unwary with their “oh my people” sloganeering, as sickening as it is, brings back to mind the Wabara speech.
But there is a huge difference. While Wabara invoked the name of his people for the common good, the present-day invocators are only mocking the people. It is unconscionable and immoral.
In the wake of the Naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), politicians who are known not to care a hoot about the suffering masses now profess from the rooftops their undying love for the same people they treat contemptibly.
Influential members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who are opposed to the monetary policy of the Federal Government headed by President Muhammadu Buhari, elected on the platform of the APC, claim they are doing so because it has inflicted untold hardship on the hoi polloi.
While it is true that ordinary Nigerians are in hell, literally, in APC’s Nigeria, the same people responsible for the mess are profiteering from the misery of the poor. Consequently, there is complete bedlam and at no time in the country’s post-independence history have the people been subjected to such wretchedness as they are today.
Sadly, the very people responsible for the anomie are the ones pointing fingers of blame. They are not only busy deflecting all criticisms, the Naira redesign, a monetary policy of the APC-led Federal Government, has become for them, disingenuously, a dog-whistle issue, on which back they hope to retain power by flying a pro-masses kite.
A visitor from the moon will be forgiven if he thinks that this is 2015 and the APC is in the opposition. Yet, the party has been in power now for almost eight years controlling absolutely the three arms of government, including the judiciary that became a mere appendage of the Presidency after Buhari engineered the sack of Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen in early 2019.
Onnoghen’s successor, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, who, for all intents and purposes, became the errand boy of the Presidency was foisted on Nigerians willy-nilly for self-serving, sinister purposes. He left the Supreme Court in its worst state since that hallowed institution was founded on October 1, 1963.
The implication of the three to two split judgment on Tuesday with which the Supreme Court nailed the fate of Bashir Sheriff Machina 18 days to the election by purloining his Yobe North Senatorial District ticket and handing same over to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, a man who never contested the primaries contrary to the dictates of the Electoral Act, is that even with Justice Tanko’s exit, nothing has changed at the apex court. It will take eons, if ever, to clean up the mess he left behind.
That is the legacy of the APC. The party in eight years has destroyed not only the judiciary, National Assembly and other institutions of the Nigerian state, but also all the values that sustain civility, decency and national growth. Nothing is sacred to the party and its chieftains.
In any other clime where a ruling party has inflicted as much harm on the citizenry as the APC has done in the last eight years, such a political party would become a pariah, severely punished at the polls for the atrocities.
But the APC demagogues want Nigerians to believe it is not their fault. It is the fault of a cabal in Aso Rock Villa, which members belong to the self-same APC. They claim the cabal does not want the party’s presidential candidate to succeed the current president produced from their ranks.
As I write, Nigeria has descended into absolute chaos because of the sabotage of the APC-led Federal Government’s monetary policy by chieftains of the party who are busy inciting anarchy on the streets in a desperate bid to ensure that the policy doesn’t work.
While stoking the embers of chaos on the streets in the name of a revolution against the Buhari-led APC government, three governors elected on the platform of the ruling APC rushed to the Supreme Court seeking a halt to the full implementation of the policy. Barely one week later, they had their way.
Now, they want Nigerians to blame the CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, who by the way is one of their own, a card carrying member of the party, who made history last year as the first Central Bank Governor globally to ever want to run for the presidency while still in office, contrary to the clear provisions of the CBN Act.
They want Emefiele roasted and he has been called names. Yet, Buhari signed off on the policy and his brother-in-law, Ahmed Halilu, is the Managing Director of Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC) Plc., the very government parastatal responsible for printing the new Naira notes.
Nigeria right now is experiencing the worst fuel crisis in recent times with people paying as much as N500 for a litre in some parts of Nigeria, including Lagos, and the APC demagogues are blaming an imaginary cabal for the mess. Yet, Buhari has been the de facto Petroleum Minister since 2015 and is still paying trillions of Naira as subsidy for a product that Nigerians cannot see to buy.
Assuming, without conceding that there is, indeed, a faceless cabal that runs the government as alleged by the tub-thumpers, isn’t that a confirmation of the opinion held by many that Buhari is not in charge? How could the claim that power has been hijacked by devious unelected, non-state actors be a credit to the APC? In any sane clime, that admittance alone is enough reason to throw out a ruling political party.
If the government’s defining monetary policy is driven by ghosts and the President who is at the same time the Minister of Petroleum does not know anything about the lingering petrol scarcity and attendant energy crisis in the country, then, what are we talking about?
The Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) was on strike for eight months, and no APC governor went to see Buhari, seeking for a resolution. The country has been grounded, literally, for months and the APC chieftains were inured to the sufferings of the people.
They only remembered that the people are suffering because the Naira redesign policy threatens to deny them slush funds for their nefarious political activities.
All of a sudden, shouts of “my people, oh my people” are coming out from the conspiratorial mouths of the architects of the people’s unmitigated misery. Yet the same people, instead of being sufficiently angry and expressing same at the ballot box, seem not to be aware of what is at stake.
Maybe there is wisdom in what someone told me recently: Nigerians have not suffered enough!