Mrs. Etteh’s Tears

By

Tochukwu Ezukanma

maciln18@yahoo.com

 

 

The political storm generated by the N628m house renovation contract scandal has subsided, but some powerful images from it continue to linger. One of such images is a newspaper picture that showed Mrs. Patricia Etteh crying. She looked overwhelmed, devastated and inconsolable. She was every inch her usual self, elegant and impeccably attired, except that this time, instead of holding her head high up, with her usual air of defiance, she was heartbroken, cast-down and weeping.

 

Earlier TV footages of her showed a stylish, fashionable, and for her age, beautiful woman. She may not have been overly qualified for the job of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. A professional hair dresser most unlikely has the required academic credentials for the office. Intellectual attainment is not always a function of academic qualification, but she does not in any way come across as erudite or scholarly. However, she has the grace and the stateliness that the job demanded. Throughout the scandal, she carried herself with an unflagging aura of dignity. She literally strutted in and out of the House chamber. She watched the N628m contract controversy and the imbroglio that periodically spun off from it with an air of detachment.  

 

For a seemingly dispassionate woman to completely lose it and weep was poignant. What really struck her and completely stripped her of her composure? Definitely, hers were not tears of joy because she had just been forced to resign from her coveted position, the Speaker of the House. It was a position she, in line with her mentor’s (Olusegun Obasanjo) do or die politics, tried to cling on to with terrifying tenacity. She clutched to it, in defiance of political decorum and the national good. It was not tears of remorse, because she was unrepentant, insisting till the last minute that she did nothing wrong. It could not have been tears of apology. In the distorted mindset of most Nigerian politicians, she could not have seen anything wrong in her betrayal of the public trust reposed in her office or in her protracted grating on the sensibilities of Nigerians by refusing to resign even after her indictment by the Idoko panel.

 

It must be tears of defeat. She finally lost her struggle to remain in power. She was lamenting the inability of her sponsors and political godfathers to prop her up any further. Evidently, they exhausted their resource of political intrigues. She wept because she will sorely miss the power and perks of the office. She was agonizing over her loss of all that goes with the office, especially the opportunity to fraudulently amass wealth.

 

Power is morally neutral. Ordinarily, politicians seek power to serve. To serve, power is sought out of moral conviction, political thought, ideological belief, and unwavering commitment to a cause. Then, power can be subordinated to the public will, and made accountable to the electorate. The problem with Nigerian politicians is that they want power for their own selfish ends. They seek power not because of any commitment to public service or to the furtherance of any political or philosophical creed, but to advance some self-seeking agenda. And as such, power degenerates into an overbearing instrument of a self-absorbed power elite, deployed in repudiation of the collective good, as a ruthless enemy of the people. 

 

Power arrayed as an enemy of the people is not concerned with the needs and longing of the people. It does not respect the law. It undermines the public good. It subverts the opportunity for a more equitable distribution of the national wealth. It concentrates inordinate wealth in the hands of a privileged few, and relegates the citizenry to poverty and misery. Essentially, it is an oppressive tool designed and tailored to exploit and repress the people in furtherance of the narrow interests of a power elite.  

 

Then, the objects of power will invariably be to enjoy the fame, pomp and other trappings of power, enrich self, friends and relatives, and entrench the privileges of the political class. This is an attitude so pervasive and deeply rooted among Nigeria politicians. It blurs their perception and guides their every move. It festers amongst them a culture of impunity, thus they believe they can do anything and get away with it, because they are neither subject to the law nor beholden to the people.  

 

Mrs Etteh’s stint as the Speaker of the House was an epitome of this culture of self-gratification, greed and lawlessness. One of her first acts in office was to celebrate her birthday bash in the USA. Present at this event were some other members of the House of Representatives. These are not multi-millionaire businessmen or aristocrats born into enormous wealth and consequently can afford to jet-set around the world in class at personal or family expense. These are public officials, supposedly elected to serve the people, but who in their cruelty and cold-heartedness took instead to wasting public funds, just to uphold a luxurious lifestyle that will flabbergast even the rich and the famous of the wealthiest countries in the world. 

 

Then was the award of the N628m contract. That was an exercise in financial impropriety, invariably, intended to indulge her greed. It was designed to enrich a number of bank accounts. After her indictment by Idoko panel, common sense demanded her resignation. Disregarding the law, political etiquette and public opinion, she refused to resign. She expected to be the accused, the defendant and the judge. Even primary school jurisprudence will disavow such sensational nonsense. But the Speaker of the House, the fourth most powerful person in the country, failed to see the absurdity of such a stance.

 

She was blinded by avarice and buoyed by the support of her political godfathers and their vast repertoire of political stratagem. Finally, they exhausted their arsenal of political gimmickry. And the rug was pulled from under feet, the prop gave way under her, and she tumbled down from that pinnacle of power. Crestfallen, deflated and disconsolate, she wept.  

 

To the optimists, her resignation is an exhilarating indication that Nigeria politics is changing. That the Nigerian society is becoming more politically sophisticated, and therefore less tolerant of corruption. To the cynics, it has nothing to do with improved societal standards of probity, but just a corollary of the power tussle between the pro-Obasanjo and anti-Obasanjo groups within the House of Representatives. Either way, it is wonderful that Mrs. Etteh was dethroned. She was a carry-over from Obasanjoism. Obasanjoism represented the worst of all that is wrong with Nigerian. The vices of the Nigerian society can be broadly categorized as corruption and disrespect for the law. A genuine and determined assault on these two inextricably interwoven evils will nudge Nigeria towards a renaissance that will herald her joining the ranks of civilized and prosperous nations.

 

Yar’Adua has promised that his will be a new kind of leadership, that the central canons of his administration are respect for the rule of law and zero tolerance for corruption. Nigerians are agog, eagerly expecting that he makes good on this promise.   

 

Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria