A weird bill, a dumb motion

This year alone, two things have come out of the National Assembly. One weird. The other simply dumb. The weird is a bill to make voting compulsory. Sponsored by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Abbas Tajudeen, of all persons.

He has a partner in Rep Daniel Asama Ago. Both House members want Nigerians jailed anytime they fail to vote in an election. Authority speaking (Stealing), apologies to a genuine legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

The second thing which deserves the award for the Dumbest Legislative Act, was a motion by Senator Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, representing Ebonyi North Senatorial District. A man of high drama. He moved a motion for the relocation of Nigerians inhabiting the shanties surrounding the Abuja International Airport. He wants those poor inhabitants removed from their abode because the sight of them from his exalted position inside the aircraft assaults his sense of beauty and idea of city life. Nwaebonyi is now an Abuja ‘Big Boy’ and the indigents must find another abode just so he would have enough clean air and ample space to satiate his appetite for pleasure and serenade his soul with all the luxuries of modernity. Grand idea.

Remember that this Nwaebonyi is the Deputy Senate Chief Whip. A man in authority and of authority in the Senate. Remember also that his state, Ebonyi, is ranked the poorest state in the south east zone. Yet, rather than rally to empower his people and get them out of the poverty trap, he is in Abuja smelling the soot from the shanties in Abuja airport neighbourhood.

Just hear him argue his case: “I want the FCT Minister to extend his development of the FCT within the surroundings of Abuja Airport. If you are descending into the airport, the type of infrastructure within the environs does not represent a good image of Nigeria, and I think that the FCT minister should capture that in his next budget to either relocate the habitants or renew the area, because the buildings in the community are the mirror of the country.

“As you descend into the Abuja airport, if you consider the view, you will agree with me that it is an eyesore and doesn’t give a good image of the nation. I urge all my colleagues to support this important bill that will transform the country.” Is there logic in this? Nwaebonyi does no consider that the abject poverty of those living in this airport neighbourhood is linked to his refusal and that of his colleagues to reject made-in-Nigeria SUVs at a base cost of N40m for foreign SUVs at unit cost of N160 million. He does not link the harrowing poverty among Nigerians to the bribery, extortion and general corruption that barb the conduct of NASS members. Bribe-for-budget approval or enhancement (since you people don’t like the word, padding), bribe to remove some names from a list of defaulters (Hon. Farouk Lawan, please, take a bow); even bribe for ministerial confirmation and sundry affirmations and approvals have consistently defined the NASS since 1999. This did not bother Nwaebonyi. His worry is that the Abuja airport environs do not glitter like the skylines of Dubai or Tokyo.

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But thank God that reason prevailed over unreason. President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, a man better exposed, more widely travelled and by far of superior intellect than Nwaebonyi dismissed him and his provincial and utterly primitive motion. I’m sure Nwaebonyi did not read the revulsion on the faces of his colleagues in the Red chamber at that moment that he was on his futile flight of fantasy.

This senator thing is obviously getting into the head of Nwaebonyi. The same man who raged at Oby Ezekwesili at the Senate room over Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and told Madam Ezekwesili she “can never be a senator.” But the Ebonyi senator was lucky that he was under the leadership of a calmer Akpabio. If he had argued like this in the days of Senator Okadigbo as President of the Senate, he would have earned a rebuke for his low thinking and pedestrian logic. Enough said of this.

Let’s return to the now dead bill. Speaker Tajudeen’s bill of compulsion which suffered convulsion early in the womb. What would make any Nigerian politician, much more a lawmaker, believe that the best way to advance democracy via the ballot is to make voting compulsory for every eligible citizen. Our 25 or so years of. unbroken democracy has shown certain disturbing patterns. Votes don’t count; some of those who dared the odds to vote are sometimes harassed, beaten or brutally redlined from voting by thugs in the full glare of security personnel; results counted and tallied at polling units up to local government levels are mutilated, cancelled, reworked and in some cases jumbled. With all the known and reported cases of vote-buying and bribery of INEC officials by politicians, no political bigwig has been convicted even when it’s obvious that the foot soldiers bearing baits for voters on the day of voting are all working for a big masquerade sitting somewhere. These are the issues that should bother Speaker Tajudeen and his colleagues. Make it possible for willing voters to cast their votes without hindrance, make votes count, and make mutilation of result sheets a criminal offence; let your legislation compel security agents to discharge their duties without bias; legislate against bad behaviour of politicians including those in the National Assembly rather than descend on the hapless masses at every opportunity.

The good thing is that both ‘bills’ are dead, at least for now. They came with storm. And all too soon, were consumed in their own storm and lost in the ocean of stillborn bills and motions. But wait a minute! Does it not strike you that our politicians could be into something we do not know, or something is into them that they do not know. Just wondering as I wonder away from here.