Nigeria’s Senate is at once the highest paid Senate anywhere in the world as well as the least productive. They give new meaning to being ‘kept’. A senator’s pay package includes newspaper allowance, clothing allowance, furniture allowance, vacation allowance, kitchen/cooking allowance, housing allowance, car allowance, travel allowance, and health allowance. 
That is in addition to their base pay, which is a hefty sum that dwarfs the base pay of senators and lawmakers even in developed democracies. Add to this already outrageous package the almighty “constituency project” monies baked into the budget! When summed up, it is safe to conclude that the Nigerian senator is an enormously ‘kept’ fat-cat. In return for the stupendous pay package the senators corral, the Nigerian people expect a Senate that is vibrant; one that conducts robust debates about the best ways to secure the country, address youth unemployment and underemployment, enact laws to revive Nigeria’s collapsed education system, and put in place well thought-out and lasting legislation that combats the seeming intractable issues bedeviling the oil industry and power/electricity sector. Instead, this Nigerian Senate has evolved into a secret society where opacity is its operational watchword. It has become a colony of leeches feeding fat on the commonweal without a second’s thought to the promise it made to the people. A house of demons determined to inflict maximum pain on Nigerians through its secretive and opaque ways.
The framers of the Constitution intended for the Senate to be a place where the robustness, correctness, and validity of ideas are discovered through vigorous debates. Inherent in that intendment is the belief that debates are adversarial - a senator is either for or against an idea, policy, or bill, which can contrast the principled view of even that senator’s closest ally. A senator’s position on any issue is then vented through the arguments that the senator makes in public on the floor of the people’s Senate, and cemented through the publicly recorded vote of such a senator. The importance of the public dimension of both the debate and the recorded vote of senators is enormous. It is what provides insight into the activities of these senators, and ensures they can be held accountable when it is time for re-election. Transparency is the major ingredient in ensuring that the system works as intended.
Enter Nigeria’s Senate - A house of demons. Nothing is transparent. Its budget and operations are opaque, shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Nigerians, however, have counted the opacity of the senate’s budget as the cost of doing business with this set of demons. What Nigerians did not bargain for is the lack of transparency in the reason for having a Senate. Nigerian senators do not debate any meaningful bills, put no rigorous thought into the contributions they make on the floor, and the odd time that a bill such as the “poverty alleviation bill” makes it to the floor of the Senate, “the ayes have it” is all Nigerians get to hear. Built into that “the ayes have it” is the almighty plausible deniability. A senator who is not compelled to take a public position either through debate or vote can deny voting against a bill to empower women, or claim to have voted to “alleviate poverty.” That denial is plausible because such a senator’s vote is lost in the cacophony of “the ayes” or “the nays” for that matter.
The other evil plank upon which the demons in Nigeria’s Senate operate is “executive session”. Rather than debate contentious issues on the floor of the Senate as intended by the framers of the constitution, the demons in Nigeria’s house retreat into their conclaves and trade away Nigerians’ aspirations. The 2016 budget is a reference case of how “executive session” allowed less than ten National Assembly members usurp the votes of the other four hundred and fifty-nine national assembly members. These ten folks gathered in some backroom, chopped up the budget proposal the various committees sent to it, disbursed patronage through the use of “constituency projects” mafioso-style then sent that document that they (less than ten people) created to the president for him to sign into law. Nigerians were told that the budget had been “passed” and now waiting for the president’s assent. It took the refusal of the president to blow open the usurpation scandal that occurred in the Senate.
With the revelation that key aspects of the budget had been removed and monies earmarked for those projects diverted elsewhere, several senators began to speak out against what seems like an emasculation of a great number of senators! Many of them began to shout that they were not given an opportunity to review the final draft of the budget that was sent as “passed” to the president! Yes, Nigerians began to wonder how a budget was “passed” if ninety-percent of those constitutionally charged with approving it did not get an opportunity to review and debate it. What kind of operational process permits ten people to pass a budget on behalf of one hundred other persons without their consent? Nigerians are now wondering why there is a one hundred and nine-member Senate when only ten people are sufficient to make laws for her. Why have an assortment of beaks nibbling on the succulent nectar that secretes from her?
With guile, and under the misnomer of a “unified” Senate, the chief demons in the Senate have emasculated and conscripted the ordinary-member demons into a war against Nigerians. Together -one set deliberately, the other gullibly- they are wreaking on Nigeria the kind of psychological trauma and physical pain only advanced-level demons are capable of effecting. It is incredulous to hear it repeated by these demons that a Senate made up of disparate and adversarial political parties is “unified.” Unified in what? It is only in Nigeria that a senator is unable to disagree openly with other senators or even the leadership of the Senate without being threatened with suspension. And to compound the absurdity of a “unified” Senate, there is ostensibly a Senate committee for information, which is the only entity "allowed" to speak on behalf of senators even when a number of senators disagree with what it is the information committee is saying. Muzzled only by their own greed and self-preservation.
Nigerians must demand a change in the operations of the Senate. Nigerians must insist that the 2016 budget be revisited, publicly debated and votes individually recorded. The era of the “ayes have it” and “executive session” must be done away with. Senators must be compelled to debate issues openly on the floor of the Senate with their votes recorded and published so that interested constituents can review their performance when considering them for re-election.
#OccupyNASS presents Nigerians with an opportunity to start making these demands of these senators. It is a first step to exorcising the demons in the house called Senate.