Yet if the dead Orwell could, from the Great Yonder, behold the Nigerian politician strut his linguistic stuff in the political arena it would be a great surprise if he did not rank him among the grandmasters of double speak.

Those inclined to underestimate the power of language often ask the rhetorical question ‘What’s in a name’, by which they mean there is not much in it. The truth, indeed, is quite the contrary. As Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, once reportedly explained to a companion who thought little about how words were used, there is everything in a name.

His explanation went thus: ‘when the names of things are incorrect, speech does not sound reasonable; when speech does not sound reasonable, things are not done properly; when things are not done properly, the structure of society is harmed; when the structure of society is harmed, punishments do not fit the crimes; and when punishments do not fit the crimes, the people don’t know what to do’ Confucius’s chain of reasoning certainly offers a sensible explanation for the fact that, in spite of Nigeria’s huge human and material resources, life for the vast majority of its citizens since independence 47 years ago has been “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, to use the words of another philosopher, this time the English Thomas Hobbes. Such, indeed, has been the huge gap between what the Nigerian politician has always said and what he has invariably done.

Take for example the latest episode in his long history of saying one thing and doing something else while at the same time posing as the great champion of the public good. I am, of course, talking about the on-going scandal surrounding the award of multi-million Naira contracts for the renovation of the official quarters of the speaker, Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Ette, and that of her deputy, as well as for the purchase of 12 official and utility vehicles.

When I wrote about it on these pages last week little did I imagine that the principal actors in the saga would treat Nigerians, once again, to a drama of splitting hairs over terminologies in order to confuse issues.

When the Idoko Committee submitted its report to the House all the media reported, quite rightly in my opinion, that it has “indicted” the speaker. Not surprisingly her opponents agreed. Again not surprisingly the speaker and her supporters disagreed. Surprisingly, however, the committee chairman, Honourable David Idoko, seemed to agree with the speaker, albeit in not so many words.

According to the chairman, his committee did not indict the speaker since, he said, it had no power to do so. All it could do was to find out the facts and then leave it to the whole House to go to equity.

The most casual reference to any dictionary or Thesaurus would show that the chairman’s quibbling over the meaning of indictment is the stuff cover-ups are made of. According to the ENCANTA WORLD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, indict, among other things, mean “to charge somebody with the commission of a crime,” or “to accuse somebody of wrongdoing.” Similarly indictment means “a statement or indication that something is wrong or somebody is to blame.” The Collins Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms and the Roget’s International Thesaurus variously define indictment as charge, accusation, allegation, prosecution, impeachment and arraignment.

Consequently any which way you look at it, it is hard, if not impossible, to deny that the Idoko committee has found the speaker guilty of wrongdoing.

As yet she may not have been charged before any court for any wrongdoing and, as her spokesperson said, the House is yet to take a stand on the report, but anyone who has read it and still says she has not been indicted either has his head buried in sand, or the word indict and its noun form do not exist in his dictionary.

Section 88 of our Constitution empowers each of the two chambers of the National Assembly to investigate anyone over any issue that it can legislate upon for the purpose of making laws or correcting defects in existing laws. The section also empowers the two chambers to investigate matters for the purpose of exposing corruption, inefficiency or waste.

The Idoko committee investigated the award of contracts for renovating the official quarters of the speaker and her deputy and for the purchase of 12 vehicles. It arrived at 10 conclusions each and every one of which accused the speaker of wrongdoing. For example, she had said in her testimony that her official quarters had not been renovated since 1999. Subsequently the committee established that they were renovated barely two years ago. Again she had testified that there was budgetary provision for the renovations and purchases. The committee later established the contrary. Yet again she had said the contracts were advertised, albeit on the notice boards of the National Assembly. It turned out that not even this defective advertisement was ever carried out. And so on and so on.

Now, if this is not an indictment, I do not know what is. And most readers, I suspect, would agree with me. I can understand the speaker splitting hairs over the use of words and hiding behind the fact that Section 88 of the Constitution does not give the legislature the power to punish any wrongdoing by a member who offends not just the House but the entire State. Rare is the human being, least of all a politician, who would admit to a wrongdoing when there is the slightest chance that he can bamboozle his way out of trouble.

Arguably, the late American President Richard Nixon’s most famous quote was “I am not a crook”, words that turned out as a most classic case of living a lie; he spoke them even as evidence that he abused his office to intimidate the opposition piled up thick and fast.

Mrs. Etteh’s denial that she has been indicted was merely keeping true to the universal tradition of politicians defending the indefensible.

Now, even though Section 88 of our Constitution does not give the House the power to punish any offence against the State as a whole - this power belongs to the courts which adjudicate and the Executive which, well, executes – the section does give it the power to recommend punishment.

This was why in the somewhat similar case early this year of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) scandal in which both President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar were involved, both the Edoma-Egba Committee that first investigated the scandal and the subsequent Tsauri Committee that reviewed Edoma-Egba’s report recommended certain punishments for both the president and his vice. The only difference between the two was that whereas the first committee recommended different punishments for the same wrongdoing by both president and his vice, the second committee insisted on the same punishment for the same wrongdoing.

It was one of the many acts of whitewash by the Senate that in the end it adopted the Edoma-Egba report which said the president was guilty of wrongdoing but should only be warned not to repeat it.

Compared to the Senate whitewash over the PTDF scandal, the position of the Idoko committee, certainly that of Idoko himself, is even worse.

Whereas the two senate committees made recommendations based on their findings, the Idoko committee, for some inexplicable reason, stopped only with its findings. This, obviously, is rather unhelpful, to say the least.

Idoko may deny that his committee has indicted the speaker but that is precisely the inescapable meaning of each and every one of its 10 conclusions. It is, after all, common sense that a doctor cannot diagnose malaria parasites in his patient and proceed to recommend antibiotics as cure.

The Idoko committee concluded that the speaker was guilty of wrongdoing on each and every one of 10 counts. It therefore had no excuse for avoiding the inevitable recommendation that she simply must go.

Obviously this inexcusable cop-out is equally no reason for the House not to ask the speaker to go when it resumes work in a fortnight. Her departure is the least price she should pay for approving the spending of hundreds of millions of Naira essentially for her creature comfort.

On no account should this matter be swept under the carpet. As the ranking member of the House, Hon. Faruk Lawal, said in an interview in this week’s Weekly Trust, “I don’t think that there is any carpet big any enough to cover this matter.” Of course, in the past wrongdoings worse than the speaker’s have been swept under even smaller carpets than Lawal apparently had in mind. But if President Umaru Yar’adua is to do his own bit for the restoration of accountability and integrity in governance, then he must ensure that this first big scandal confronting his administration is not swept under any carpet.