by Bayo Oluwasanmi
At 55, Nigeria is without leaders. How can we function without leaders? Where have all the leaders gone? All the leaders we once respected are dead. Every generation can boast of gifted true leaders who meet every mark – authenticity, originality, integrity, credibility, service to the people, and sacrifice for leadership. At present, Nigeria cannot boast of genuine leaders. The senators of the 8th senate are so insane that they’re hard to satirize. They lack both vision and character.
At independence in 1960, who could have ever thought that liars, thieves, criminals, crooks, and charlatans like Saraki and his 83 inmates would preside over the affairs of Nigeria. As we celebrate the 55th independence anniversary of our nation, Nigerians are faced with a hostile, anti-people and do-nothing senate run by asylum inmates. Nigerians remain in an abusive and unequal relationship with the elected lunatics. We have never in our history been so abused and neglected by a group of sick people.
We’re now entering a truly remarkable silly season of interacting absurdities in the senate led by Bukola Saraki the Senate President and his 83 fellow inmates. Returning from recess, Saraki in his opening speech fired up the inmates. He sounds like: “We’re not going to let anyone intimidate us. No one can make us feel internally like there’s something wrong with us, and we’re not going to let our voices be shut down. We’re going to change the way things are done. We’re going to change how people view lunatics in the Senate. Eighty-three inmates and I are running the asylum!”
Saraki who has been dogged by shameful mountain of accusations from fraud to forgery and with the collaboration of other 83 inmates turned the senate into a rotting old bedlam of lunatics. There is no better word to describe the 8th senate: lunatics in flowing Agbada and Babariga and other fashionable native attire plotting the destruction of our nation. Go back to the dailies and look at the names of the 83 inmates who passed vote of confidence in Saraki for his political skills and tactics in fraud and forgery. The names read like the Mental Patients Association of Nigeria (MPAN). Indeed, it’s a senate run by and for mental patients.
The vote of confidence passed by 83 inmates has produced national revulsion and left poor Nigerians scrambling for answer as to who the hell are these bunch of lunatics? The unspoken tension and disappointments of Nigerians scraping around in the arid opulence of a nation ravaged by these lunatics is an indication that all is not well with a nation born 55 years ago still groping in the dark.
These lunatics have gone bananas. They have cross-fertilized their collective insanity with shared delusions and are divorced from reality of the Nigerian situation. They behave with all symptoms of mental illness: confused thinking, detachment from reality, paranoia, hallucinations, inability to cope with the nation’s problems, trouble understanding and relating to Nigerian problems and to the people. Despite the fact that Saraki is on trial, eighty-three lunatics from the monster raving looting party PDP, and their co-conspirators from the ruling APC believe Saraki is the best they could offer to lead the senate. Indeed, the lunatics have taken over the asylum!
Listen to one of the inmates Senator Ighoyota Amori (PDP – Delta): “The allegations raised against Senate Bukola President Saraki by the CCT, to me, are politically motivated.” On the vote of confidence passed, Amori says “There is nothing wrong with it; it is just to let Nigerians know that we are satisfied with the composition of the senate leadership and their performances so far… the entire Senate is behind our leadership.” Are Nigerians in support of the vote of confidence passed in Saraki? Are Nigerians in support of Saraki as the Senate President? Heck NO!
The drama of the action of the lunatics is a sad commentary on what Nigeria has become in 55 years – a desert – a place that does not cultivate anything save thirst and thirst and insanity. The trial of Saraki serves as a mirror that reflects the true image of inmates in charge of Nigeria. Last week’s vote of confidence passed by the inmates in Saraki was the second in three months. “To me, another vote of confidence in three months,” says Senator Kabir Marafa spokesman for the Senate Unity Forum, “is a clear evidence of lack of confidence on the part of the leadership.”
The vote of confidence in Saraki is a reactionary response from the inmates with corruption cases hanging on their necks like the sword of Damocles. They were inflamed by fear and with the possibility of being prosecuted for corruption. It’s no surprise that they’ve become most unruly, undisciplined, and hysterical.
Judging by the crescendo of insanity of the 83 inmates, it is evident that they inhabit a different planet from the rest of Nigeria. They have no interest or understanding of the needs of our people. They have no respect for public opinion that is overwhelmingly against Saraki. They’re lost as it were, in their psychopathic obsessions and delusions.
Agreed, our politicians were always thieves, traitors, and scoundrels for the most part. However, they were not insane. But the senators are. We’re in the hands of a mentally unstable lunatics and it is time to send for the psychiatrist.
What’s so special in Saraki that the 83 lunatics keep following and protecting him? For 40 years, the Sarakis have shaped the way some Nigerians think and play politics. The Sarakis have done so from an unrivaled pulpit of corruption. They have the sheer ability to drive the national political conversation. They fostered some of the most unbelievable political narratives of modern Nigeria.
The Sarakis have proven time and time again that they are corrupt, deluded, incompetent, second-rate, and hypocritical. Yet, Saraki is worshiped, revered, feared, and loved by the inmates. Here is why: Senator Marafa was asked by Sunday Aborisade of the Punch his impression of the inmates who accompanied Saraki to the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). Marafa said: “… most people you see around the senate president today are following him because of some personal benefits especially to get the chairmanship of “juicy” committees. They don’t have his interest at heart. It is all about them and their family. Their sycophantic embarrassing behavior, is a means of getting posting to the “juiciest.”
Nigeria is a classic example of the widespread belief that Black people cannot manage anything. For fifty-five years we cannot fashion a country that meets the basic necessities of our people. A report card of Nigeria at 55 blogged on APC Worldwide Platform Group on Facebook by one Paschal Obikwelu captures the true feelings of majority of Nigerians. Take a hard look at his report card on Nigeria:
NEPA E8, Bombing A1, Killing A1, Accident A1, Kidnapping A1,Thieving A1, Bad Road A1, Security C7, Employment F9, Good Road F9, 419 A1, Development F9, Embezzlement A1, Fraud A1, Crisis A1, Poverty A1, Discrimination A1, Corruption A1, Terrorist A1. Can anyone dispute Obikwelu’s assessment of Nigeria? Only Saraki and the 83 lunatics will argue otherwise. In fact, I believe Obikwelu is more generous in his grading.
More than half century, Nigeria still cannot boast of a credible criminal justice system that can dispatch and dispense justice with speed and fairness. For 55 years, we’re still begging for water to drink, for road to travel, for hospitals to treat the sick, for electricity to light our homes and power our industries, for workers to get paid for their labor, for retirees to receive their monthly pension, for professional police to maintain law and order, for rule of law to prevent the strong from terrorizing the weak and the powerful from oppressing the powerless, for quality, affordable, and accessible education, for manufacturing industries that could employ thousands of able-bodied jobless Nigerians, for a nation where no one will be judged by the accent of his or her ethnicity.
The 83 lunatics may have temporarily propped up Saraki like a two-legged stool. They are playing a dangerous game of backing Saraki who is despised by majority of Nigerians. These lunatics now salivating in seeing Saraki as the senate head are inadvertently writing their political obituary for the history books. If they will, let them build a firewall around Saraki, it won’t shield Saraki from facing the wrath of the people. The arrest of the corruption Diva of the Jonathan regime, Diezani Alison-Madueke in London England last Friday tells us the thermostat on corruption is climbing up slowly but surely. Inmates watch out!
It is harmful and dangerous that the senate of a 55-year old nation is led by a leadership without values, morals, commitment, vision,and conviction. It’s an asylum run by Saraki and 83 inmates.
Bayo Oluwasanmi
byolu@aol.com