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SLS and the National Assembly: A Post-mortem By Maikudi Abubakar Zukog
By every standard, members of the national assembly or congress men of any nation are senior citizens of their country and are privileged as such. Nigeria, though still grappling with a seemingly recalcitrant nascent democracy, should not be an exception. We respect and admire our congress men, both duly elected and those not but who all the same got a seat reserved for them in the red and green hallowed chambers. In the same vein, the governor of a country’s central bank, who is equivalent to Britain’s director of the exchequer and America’s head of the treasury, equally occupies a privileged position in the country’s public service. And so when these two set of people speak, we trust that what they say is necessary and of importance to their audience at any given time, and do not merely speak for speaking sake, or as those of us in English studies would argue, speaking or writing within the ambience of art for art’s sake. Tendency is that, because of their vocation as politicians, congress men can sometimes, if not most times, veer into overspeak, with less or no implications at all, at least in our clime here. The governor of a central bank cannot afford that luxury. The governor of a central bank is expected to speak from the position of authority; either he is an authority himself, or must surround himself with people who are verse in first the economy and finance, and then the political economy of the country. And Sanusi may not have the imposing stature of and a chair in economics as had Soludo, he sure knows some great ideas about philosophy, economics and the financial architecture of the Nigerian nation. And only recently we joined in celebrating the commendation he received from the U.S. congress. The Nigerian legislature should have devoted at least thirty minutes of televised session to celebrate a remarkable feat by one of its own; a feat which helped us to survive the aftershocks and the whirlwind of the economic melt-down sweeping countries such as Greece and Ireland off its feet. Instead, Sanusi was to be taken up over an issue that even some of us down below are never likely to take for granted-statistical accuracy. Sanusi comes from a background of sound scholarship and cannot underestimate the import of statistics, as far as economic and financial analysis is concerned. As governor of central bank, and speaking to enlightened gathering, it will be suicidal that his main interest is to elicit a resounding applause from his audience, whether what he says is correct or not. But that innocent statistical revelation by Sanusi ( a reality which is known but down played) was to draw the ire of our respected members of congress. Of late, I have never seen our distinguishes and honourables spew out so much venom over an issue, not even over the October bombings whose victims are yet to be adequately compensated, or the inexplicable delay in the implementation of a paltry 18,000 naira minimum wage to the Nigerian civil servants. Or even to pause awhile and ask what is happening to the welfare of their legislative aids, or the staff and personnel of NASCOM. And when they took Sanusi up, they are not so much bothered about the accuracy of his revelation; instead they are furious how he got the audacity to reveal something that has been kept away from public knowledge and consumption. And so Sanusi was invited to come and denounce the statistics he quoted at the Igbinedion University convocation, and to go back and sin no more. Unfortunately, even at gun point as the session turned out to be ( AK 47 democracy, as Idang is won’t to argue) Sanusi proved a hard nut to crack. He stood by his words, even at the cost of his plum job. Truth is, the senate could have used superior logic to down play the wild interest generated by the staggering statistics, and there are quite a few individuals in that upper chamber that could play this role with some measure of success. Instead, it lined up its best squad who turned out to further deplete the image of the national assembly in the eyes of the public they claim to represent. The junior chamber was wiser and quickly deployed the time tested traditional wisdom of wetting one’s beard with water as soon as you sight your brother’s being consumed by fire. The lessons that we learnt from this episode is that one: knowledge is power. Knowledge empowers us; it liberates us from all shackles, including the fear to tell the truth to power. Two, it opens our eyes to the fact that we can’t continue like this, where the national legislature alone commandeered 25% of national budget. Otherwise, not only would we not be able to reach the fangled 20:20:20, we will never wake up from slumber to even begin the journey. Lastly, that silent revolution is in the making in Nigeria; that is that only those who can truly represent us, and not themselves, can be elected to occupy a seat in our legislature.
Maikudi Abubakar Zukogi, a staff of the Faculty of Arts and Islamic Studies, Bayero University, kano.
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