“By doubting we come to question, and by questioning, we perceive the truth.” (Peter Abelard, 1079-1142)-Three Questions on ... the National Assembly It has been unkindly suggested for a long time that they are expensive, lazy and unproductive. Definitely when Baba Go-Slow himself accuses them of , er, going slow, Perceptor’s first reaction was that being an expert, he would recognise going slow when he saw it, but Perceptor’s second reaction was that they must be going REALLY slow. Then Senate President David Mark followed his House of Representatives counterpart in blaming poorly performing committees for the unproductiveness. There was even some suggestion that some committees were not intellectually up to the job (though no reconstitution of the committees to make them more productive). Then one of them actually used the platform offered by his membership of the House of Representatives to suggest that it is OK to kill 20 million Nigerians so that 120 million can benefit, Perceptor thinks that a few questions about the role being played by our elected legislators may be in order. But there is one question that has to be asked first, because Perceptor is sure, after the scandal that erupted in the British Parliament about the expenses claimed by the Honourable Members over there, that nobody will want to see our own Honourable Members here going short ...
1. What possible justification can there be for the double cuts in salary that the Honourables have been subjected to over the last few months?
Perceptor was as distressed as the Honourable Members of the House of Representatives must have been to learn that their salaries had been cut – first from N900,000 to N700,000 and then to a measly N450,000. Per month. Plus allowances. Er, moving swiftly on, Perceptor shares their OUTRAGE at the cheeky arbitrariness of those people who imagine that just because the President or the Senate decides that they’ve had enough money, the Honourables must necessarily follow suit! They’re not all millionaires you know! And not all of them want to be millionaires either.
But er, what are the Honourables going to do about it? Reverse the cuts? Allow the cuts to remain? Or will they insist on making an even greater sacrifice? Will they insist on not just the 50% or whatever it is that the Senate has squeezed out, but go one better and DEMAND that they be allowed to give up 90% of their salaries? (Plus allowances of course.)
There’s another but ... But, er ... if, according to Alhaji Farouk Adamu Aliyu, the Honourables now take away N20 million every three months (as opposed to the modest N9 million that applied in his day – that’s 2003-2007 by the way), even at a 50% cut that still seems to work out at N10 million each quarter, or about N3.3 million each month. Perceptor is finding it a bit difficult to do the maths. Unless ... allowances?
2. Are we really sure that our legislators know what they have been ‘elected’ to do?
Perceptor does not wish to complain too much about the cost of our legislators. After all, if they are doing a good job ... if they are doing a job at all ...
But Perceptor is disturbed to find some Honourables claiming that other Honourables don’t know the difference between a Bill and a Motion! Perceptor charitably remembers that although it’s 10 years since the first legislatures were inaugurated, the ‘family affair’ long knives events of 2006/7 (a.k.a. PDP primaries) means that 80% of them have only been legislators for two months. Only 20% of them are old hands, so they can’t be expected to know everything. Or in some cases, anything! And when even a whole Speaker of the House of Representatives continues to style himself ‘Rt. Hon’ (as he did in an advertisement congratulating Nigerians on ten years of ‘democracy’ recently) Perceptor can hardly blame legislators lower down the food chain for not knowing everything they ought to know. Or has Speaker Bankole become a member of the British Queen’s Privy Council? Perceptor will continue to celebrate the memory of Ken Nnamani’s time as Senate President. Maybe because he is a member of an ethnic group of which it is said “The Igbos have no king”, or just because he knew his onions, but whenever he was addressed as ‘Right Honourable’, Nnamani would take time to correct the would-be ... well, Perceptor was going to say ‘would-be sycophant’, but Perceptor would be being very unfair in doing so. Perceptor can remember attending a function where a lady who was just the WIFE of a former Senate President was a Special Guest. Strict warnings that she must be addressed as “Your Excellency” had preceded her arrival, which came complete with an entourage, including a uniformed policemen to stand guard (and hold handbag) as the ultimate fashion accessory ...
3. What are the various ‘public sittings’ held by the various committees of the House of Representatives supposed to actually achieve?
Perceptor casts Perceptor’s mind back to those halcyon days of the immediate post-Ette period when the House of Representatives in particular, looked as though it was really going to take up issues that were of concern to ordinary people. Well, we are all older and wiser now. Ordinary publication of the report of the House Committee on Power’s public sittings on NEPA is beyond this House of Reps, and frankly, when Perceptor read that another House Committee was planning to hold public hearings into expatriate quotas, Perceptor tried not to yawn a big cynical yawn. What an interesting and lucrative field to explore! Perceptor waits with interest to see which companies are summoned for public humiliation, and which are not. And how those who ARE summoned are treated. Perceptor would like to believe that something concrete will come out of the public hearing. But going by previous experiences, Perceptor isn’t holding Perceptor’s breath.
The Treacherous Calendar
Perceptor is OUTRAGED! Imagine! The Calendar MUST be PUNISHED. It knew perfectly well that the tenure of Central Bank Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo would expire on the 29th of May 2009, and that President Yar’Adua would need to announce whether Soludo was to have a second term and continue or whether a new man (no, there was never any suggestion that the new man at the helm of the CBN might be a WOMAN) was being appointed. Perceptor is convinced that the President intended to make the announcement on the 29th of May 2009 if for no other reason than that if he didn’t, Nigeria would be left WITHOUT a Central Bank Governor, and the rest of the world might re-congratulate itself all over again over our exclusion from the G20 of countries that are serious about their economies.
But see what the Calendar did! Without any warning whatsoever, after the 28th of May 2009, it suddenly changed to 29th of May 2009! Of course the President was taken by surprise! Perceptor refuses to believe all this suggestion that no announcement was made because he not only forgot to ask himself the ‘Where are the Women’ question, but also the ‘Where are the Other Ethnic Groups’ question. After all, it hasn’t been a huge great concern for him before, has it?
No, Perceptor insists that the reason why Mr. President was not able to announce the name of the CBN Governor was because of the unexpected behaviour of the CALENDAR, in treacherously moving from the 28th of May to the 29th of May.
The Treacherous Calendar (2)
That Calendar! Having deceived President Yar’Adua by treacherously making May 29th follow May 28th, it is now trying to pretend that May 29th is in fact June 3rd! That is (Perceptor is struggling to understand this) that because Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s letter of appointment as Governor of the Central Bank is DATED 3rd of June 2004, Mr. President didn’t need to bother to send any name for his replacement to the Senate until the 1st of June. At which point he got his people to say that he was going to “formally” send Lamido Sanusi’s name to the Senate for confirmation.
Perceptor would like to spare Mr. President’s blushes and so will not spend a lot of time wondering what is the actual effective date of appointment on this June 3rd letter (a matter on which the people leaking this ex post facto* justification to ThisDay newspaper are screamingly silent), but Perceptor wonders why Mr. President has had to cut it so fine. Suppose, for example, the Senate doesn’t immediately confirm Lamido Sanusi? Perceptor is very uncomfortable with the implication that we have a lazy rubber-stamp Senate, whose only question when Mr. President says ‘Jump’ they only ask ‘How High?’ And anyway, even a rubber-stamp Senate has an awkward squad, and they may come out in full force over the ‘federal character’ issue, even if the only result is to slow matters down!
*Ex Post Facto: Perceptor also wonders why, even IF Mr. Soludo’s letter of appointment was dated 3rd June 2004 and even IF it didn’t appoint him with effect from 29th June 2004, Mr. President’s people didn’t let it be known well in advance that Mr. Soludo’s term didn’t expire until the 2nd of June 2009. Or the 3rd of June 2009. See how everybody (including Perceptor) is blaming Mr. President for dithering and being unable to take even ordinary decisions. OK, Mr. President may not be bothered about what Perceptor thinks, but what about those overseas banks and foreign partners who are developing cold feet towards doing business with Nigeria because of INDECISION at Aso Rock?
*Ex Post Facto (2): Mr. Soludo knew that he was going to be Governor of the Central Bank as from April 29th 2004. Perceptor imagines that this gave him time to meet his outgoing predecessor, Joseph Sanusi, clear up any points in the hand over notes and generally prepare for the job. Perceptor is as convinced as anybody else that Mr. Sanusi (not to be confused with Mr. Soludo’s predecessor, who was CHIEF Sanusi) is brilliant, incisive, earth-shaking etc., but Perceptor hopes that Mr. President isn’t sending his name in so LATE in order to force Mr. Sanusi to spend time ‘studying the situation’ and ‘planning’, and thereby make Nigerians forget how many days, weeks, months, years Baba Go-Slow himself has taken to get going on tackling Nigeria’s problems ...
The Meaning of Words ... Crime-Free
While some reports have it that 18 cars were snatched in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, over the weekend ending 31st May 2009, the Police Public Relations Officer says that only two cars were stolen. Well, the PPRO figures don’t seem to have counted the Redeemed Pastor who got shot in the leg while his car was being stolen, but what concerns Perceptor is the suggestion by the PPRO that because of the two cars that she admits were stolen, two were recovered, Oyo state is ‘crime-free’.
The Blame Game
Perceptor notices that this game is becoming more and more popular amongst Nigeria’s political rulers. The main objective of the game is to pretend that you really want to convince people that It’s Somebody Else’s Fault. Points are scored when anybody believes that you really believe that it isn’t your fault. Some recent honourable mentions:
*President Umaru Yar’Adua – blamed an as yet unnamed cartel for the shortage of fuel (See previous blog)
*Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State – blamed civil servants for not paying salaries on time; blamed doctors for not attending to patients in the State. Actually, Governor Alao-Akala went further than blaming the doctors (who he said were more interested in their private clinics), he actually cursed them. He didn’t explain whether there was anything like staff, equipment, electricity, running water etc. to encourage them to remain on duty in the Oyo State-run hospitals.
*Bellview Airline blamed “technical reasons” for leaving its passengers stranded in Lagos and London, but insisted that the “technical reasons” were not safety reasons ...
Appeasement Rules OK
Having turned a resolute blind eye to the behaviour of senior officers accused of embezzling the pay of Nigerian soldiers on overseas assignment (for protesting about which twelve of them were sent to the slammer for life), Perceptor wonders why President Yar’Adua found it necessary to heap quite so much praise on Nigeria’s armed forces when he was opening the military barracks named after his brother. Surely, not locking the senior officer thieves ought to have been enough to satisfy the military? Coming in the middle of the onslaught in Niger Delta, Perceptor wonders whether the undue adulation could be a way of saying “Well done!”, and perhaps encouraging them to redouble their efforts to reach ‘Honourable’ Ibn Na’Allah’s 20 million sacrifice target.
But since Mr. President laid particular emphasis on praising the institutionalisation of military subordination to civilian oversight, Perceptor is rather afraid that it smacks just a little bit of desperation. It suggests that Mr. President knows that the people are very dissatisfied with him and his government, and is worried that now that the people can see – after the Ekiti re-run selection – that they may not be able to get rid of him even in 2011, they may think of turning to other means of turning him out.
Perceptor would like to reassure Mr. President, because it looks as though Naija people are getting ready to organise things for themselves. Iwu or no Iwu, the people may have their own plans for turfing Baba Go-Slow out of Aso Rock. So Perceptor would LIKE to reassure Mr. President to sleep easy – there’s no need to keep on grovelling about military excellence when in fact you’re bribing them to behave. But Perceptor finds that the best that can be said is that ... well, nobody is encouraging them ...
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