Legislative rascality has a long, chequered history. Perhaps one of the most dramatic in the Senate in the last 18 years happened on the watch of Chuba Okadigbo, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo tried by means fair and foul to remove Okadigbo as president of the Senate.

After several attempts to remove him, including the executive offering bribes to senators, the Oyi of Oyi, as Okadigbo was fondly called, took matters into his own hands. He removed the mace, the symbol of authority, and took it to his residence in Abuja.

A large detachment of the police, led by senior officers, paid him an early morning visit at home – as early as 6 a.m., by some accounts. Okadigbo promptly called the BBC and reported the incident live.

He promised listeners that the police would only retrieve the mace from his residence “over his dead body,” a challenge that the police were obviously not keen to take up.

Yet Obasanjo did not relent. Since the executive child had said the mother legislature would not sleep, Okadigbo geared up for a long night of mutual wakefulness.

He took the mace all the way to his hometown in Ogbunike, Anambra State, and reportedly left it at the foot of a seven-foot python, for safekeeping.

Several weeks later, the “pythons of Abuja” struck. They swallowed up the python of Ogbunike, the mace and the shrine: Okadigbo was impeached and removed as Senate president; and the rest is history.

I’m not so sure where Senator Ovie Omo-Agege wanted to take the mace of the Senate that he allegedly removed with the help of thugs who invaded the Senate chambers last week. But the distinguished senator must be feeling like a fool now, especially after Femi Falana and other leading lawyers said it’s a quorum and not a mace that is required for legislative business.

Of course he has denied recruiting the invaders, the sort of denial that washes the hands clean but leaves the heart stained. Omo-Agege (pronounced Omo-Agheghe), whose name in Urhobo language means “the


http://gimmehear.com/olusegun-obanjo-takes-senate-mace-home/
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