REACTIONS comment by , posted on SaharaReporters
To be honest I don’t know what Sahara Reporters means by “opposition in APC ranks”
without giving us further hints on how the opposers are arrayed. But I will assume that
Sahara Reporters know more than it lets on. For where was the same principle when
similarly situated Raji Fashola was cleared by a nearly senseless Senate which gave him
one hour campaign platform on the Senate floor and without any cross-examination at all
on all the false and meaningless statements Raji Fashola bleated on the Senate floor?
For sure, there are ex-Governors in the Senate who, if not drunk or tipsy, should know
that Raji Fashola lied on the Senate floor throughout his mostly desultory speech. He lied
that so long as he did not personally sign cheques in payment of the several billion Naira
inflated contracts during his dubious tenure, he will not be personally liable for the theft.
But that is a lie. General Sani Abacha did not sign any cheque either. By Raji Fashola’s
illogic, General Sani Abacha should be beatified as a saint for not signing the cheques
for public contracts he approved on the recommendation of Tenders Board he appointed.
Raji Fashola lied again on the Senate floor, desecrating the meaning of SENATE, but was
not called to order for saying that a recognized limit to Freedom of Movement is nuisance,
which entitles a state Governor to effect the prompt deportation of a Nigerian citizen from
Lagos to the state of origin of the person adjudged as constituting the nuisance. That was
brazen lies-telling. No constitutional law in the world supports such an illiterate proposition,
besides that as a matter of fact, the 1999 Constitution forbids it.
Raji Fashola then gave a supposed apology but apology on the back of (false) justification
is tantamount to nonsense and only as good as silence. The supposed Senate of Nigeria
should have grasped that elemental thought if it were not steeped in folly or such-like.
Altogether, seeing that Raji Fashola made no sense, the Senate members in session did
something more heinous by quickly prompting the presiding officer, Bukola Saraki, to put
the matter of approval to voice vote without any deliberation whatsoever on the low quality
thinking exhibited on the Senate floor by Raji Fashola.
To further muddle up the issue, the voice vote was to be in lump sum across 17 other nominees
given the floor a day earlier. In that mumbo-jumbo, every Senator was more or less robotized. In fact,
no Senator was allowed to make the case for Raji Fashola’s approval or otherwise with reasons added.
That way Raji Fashola’s impliedly admitted contract inflation corruption was swept under the carpet.