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Saraki: Time To Step Down by KWD99(m): 8:49am On Sep 22, 2015 |
When you find yourself in a hole, stop
digging.
This is the time-tested piece of advice I
would have passed on to the beleaguered
Senate President Bukola Saraki if he was
not too far gone in his self- absorption,
his overweening sense of entitlement, his
predilection for cutting corners, and his
Raskolnikov Complex, the delusion
named for the central character in
Dostoyevsky great novel, Crime and
Punishment, that the rules do not apply
to him.
Summoned to appear before the Code of
Conduct Tribunal(CCT) in the
investigation of some baffling
inconsistencies in his declaration of
assets, he spurns the order, dismisses
the charges as false and frivolous,
awards himself an acquittal, and seeks a
court to block the Tribunal’sproceedings.
In response to this contumacy, the CCT
issued a Bench warrant for his arrest.
Saraki petitioned another court in a bid to
void the warrant. Based on that petition,
he again failed to show up before the
CCT.
The CCT, Saraki charged, was being used
to fight political opponents “to achieve
through the back door what some people
cannot get through democratic process.”
It is almost as if it was through the front
door, and in a process emblematic of the
best democratic practice, that he had
emerged Senate president. I use the
word “emerged” deliberately. By his own
account, he had been in hiding until it was
safe to join his fellow plotters on the
floor of the National Assembly where he
was canonised in a proceeding that
seemed like the parliamentary equivalent
of a street mugging.
His spokesperson warns that “we should
not destroy our political institutions and
heat up the polity for selfish reasons” in
a desperate bid to settle political scores
and nail imaginary enemies, adding
gravely: “Let us all learn from history.”
Again, it is almost as if the process
through which Saraki became Senate
president was the quintessence of
altruism and selflessness, and that it had,
withal, brought down the nation’s political
temperature from dangerously high to
super normal.
The Tribunal’s summons, his
spokesperson further said, amounted to
an abuse of the rule of law which
portends danger to the judicial system.
Saraki affects the language of
democracy but readily employs the
tactics of a backroom fixer. He is ever
so ready to remind everyone that he
ranks third in the nation’s constitutional
order. Yet his conduct is sometimes
almost indistinguishable from that of a
political tout.
Where is the noblesse oblige that should
always inform the conduct of the holder
of his exalted office?
Within hours of the CCT’s order enjoining
Saraki to appear before it, a shadowy
organisation calling itself Nigerians of
Conscience Against Impunity rushed a
full-page advertisement to the major
newspapers, demanding that officials of
the Code of Conduct Bureau resign
immediately and face prosecution for
“gross violations” of their office.
It was all so reminiscent of the shabby
tactics Saraki’s surrogates in the Senate
employed when his wife was invited for
questioning by the EFCC in connection
with some mysterious lodgments in her
banking transactions. In what was
clearly an act of petulant vindictiveness,
they announced that the National
Assembly was set to launch an
investigation into reports that EFCC
officials had corruptly enriched
themselves with funds recovered from
fraudsters.
In the wake of all this drama, another –or
perhaps the same set — set of Saraki’s
surrogates recruited a huge delegation to
travel from Ilorin to Abuja for the express
purpose of conferring on him a traditional
title of dubious worth. The real purpose
of the visitation, I suspect, was to create
for the embattled Senate president the
illusion of mass popularity and
acceptability.
One of his proxies even has it that Saraki
is being pursued because of his zero
tolerance for corruption, in keeping with
the notorious fact that if you fight
corruption, corruption will fight you back.
No comment.
Thus has Saraki continued to dig and dig
with increasing fury since finding himself
in a hole last June, in the hope that he
can spend or bluff or bully or lawyer his
way out of it. He deepened that hole
yesterday when he failed to appear
before the CCT which had issued a Bench
warrant for his arrest.
One of his former comrades in the old
PDP and one-time Minister of Works,
Adeseye Ogunlewe, has warned that a
situation in which the Senate president
keeps making trips to the courts
would not only “put Nigeria in bad light”
but slow down activities in the National
Assembly, which would in turn affect the
nation.
Ogunlewe said if Saraki appeared before
the Tribunal and was found guilty, Saraki
would appeal the verdict to the High
Court (sic). If his guilt was affirmed
there, Saraki would take his case to the
Court of Appeal. And if found guilty there,
Saraki would head to the Supreme Court.
Prosecuting Saraki was therefore not a
good move, according to
Ogunlewe.”Imagine the amount of time
that would be wasted and the effect it
will have on the legislative work within
that period.
If this intervention was designed to help
Saraki keep the post of Senate president,
it achieved the precise opposite. It
makes a powerful case for Saraki’s
immediate and unconditional resignation,
regardless of his guilt or innocence.
A Senate president traipsing from one
court to another would be a pathetic sight
indeed, even if it is to answer traffic
charges. But we are dealing with
investigations into allegations of serious
fraud. That the president of the Senate
could figure in these allegations, however
tangentially, should be cause for his
resignation
Noblesse oblige enjoins such an official
to resign at the merest intimation of
sleaze, real or merely perceived, in his
conduct.
In Saraki’s case, these intimations can no
longer be ignored. There is the matter of
the forged House Rules with which he
procured the post of Senate president.
There are the ongoing investigations into
his wife’s finances. There is the charge
that he made false entries in declaring
his assets. And there is festering matter
of how hundreds of depositors lost small
fortunes in the family-owned bank that
he ran aground, with nary a dent on his
personal fortune.
Each of these issues should move a
public official in a country that sets a
high store by probity to step down.
Together, they make a compelling case
for Saraki’s resignation.
Saraki cannot be the public face of the
Senate of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria. He does not have the gravitas to
steer through the legislature the agenda
on which President Muhammadu Buhari
ran and won. He lacks the moral standing
to preside over the hearings at which
Buhari’s nominees for important
positions are confirmed or rejected.
Saraki, being Saraki, will most likely hang
in there and hang tough.
That might serve him well if he can pull it
off. But it cannot serve the larger
national interest that he now claims to be
espousing. Everyday that Saraki
continues to wield the gavel diminishes
the office of the Senate president and the
stature of the Senate.
If he will not step down voluntarily, the
Senate should, even if only from a sound
instinct for self –preservation, ask him to
go or face impeachment. |
Re: Saraki: Time To Step Down by adioolayi(m): 8:53am On Sep 22, 2015 |
Simply put...Saraki should toe the honorable path |
Re: Saraki: Time To Step Down by podosci(m): 8:54am On Sep 22, 2015 |
adioolayi: |
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