Ahmed Lawan: The man who killed Nigeria to death

Unless a miracle happens, when Nigeria’s obituary is written, the name of Ahmed Lawan will be at the top of the list of the undertakers.

RUDOLF OKONKWO • MAY 16, 2021

President of the Nigerian Senate, Ahmad Lawan
What if tomorrow, the Senate President initiates the impeachment of President Muhammadu Buhari on the floor of the National Assembly for failing to uphold the terms of his oath of office and fulfil his constitutional responsibilities to Nigerians? How would that change Buhari’s lackadaisical attitude to leadership and the overall topography of Nigeria’s political scene?

Most politicians use the first part of their lives to destroy the last. For Ahmed Lawan, the president of the Nigerian Senate, nothing in the first part of his life showed that he has anything to offer a desperate nation in search of heroes to save it. Mr Lawan’s manner of ascension to the position of the Senate President ultimately sealed his fate – and the fate of a nation on the verge of death.

To begin with, if you show Nigerians on the street the picture of Mr Lawan, most of them will not be able to identify him. Though he is third in the line of succession, his national profile is low in the eyes of the public and abysmal in the views of those who understand the importance of the constitutional role that he should be playing in an endangered democracy like ours. From his first beginning, Mr Lawan chose the role of a self-confessed lapdog of the president that he is making all past senate presidents since 1999 look like heroes of democracy who deserve the “profile in courage” award.

For those who have not forgotten, Ahmed Lawan’s emergence as Senate President was deeply soaked in corruption. The compromise that brought Lawan in was a critical indication that President Buhari’s anti-corruption stance was mere lip service.

After being out-manoeuvred in 2015 by Bukola Saraki for the position of Senate President, Lawan licked his armpit and went back to the backbench. When APC’s victory in 2019 presented another chance for the North East to produce the senate president, Mr Lawan was again a candidate. As a candidate, he faced an inevitable defeat from Senator Danjuma Goje of Gombe State. In a compromise that President Muhammadu Buhari struck with Goje in Aso Rock on Thursday, June 6, 2019, Goje agreed to step down for Lawan in exchange for a total wipeout of all the corruption charges against him from his days as governor.

President Buhari got the senate president he wanted, but it was the wrong Senate President that Nigeria needed at this crucial point in its existence. Nigeria is a critically ill patient in an intensive care unit of a teaching hospital. A patient in the intensive care unit deserves the best doctors and medical professionals, not mediocre. To call Mr Lawan, a mediocre senate president is to demean all the other mediocre senate presidents we have had since 1999. Not only is Mr Lawan not the brightest crayon in the box, but he also does not even deserve to be one of those pulled out when we were considering potential senate presidents.

In his two years as senate president, Mr Lawan has done nothing to improve the quality of governance in Nigeria. In trying to avoid conflicts with the executive, he abdicated his responsibility to hold the executive accountable and ensure accountability and government transparency. With little understanding of the importance of the parliament in overseeing the executive and the judiciary, he has failed to meet public expectations or even reflect the public’s concerns. Instead of establishing democratic norms, Mr Lawan has only become an accomplice in lowering the democratic IQ of the nation and the consequence crippling of any progressive reforms.

Mr Lawan got a doctorate in remote sensing from Cranfield University in the UK in 1996, three years after the school started awarding degrees. Before then, he graduated from the University of Maiduguri in 1984 with a degree in Geography, and in 1990, he obtained a master’s degree in Remote Sensing from the Ahmadu Bello University. Mr Lawan was a lecturer at the University of Maiduguri before his election in 1999 to the House of Representatives. That is the extent of Lawan’s public life experiences. There was not a moment of brilliance anywhere. And as senate president, we have not seen any either.

But Mr Lawan does not need to show brilliance to serve the Nigerian people he represents in the senate. He only needs to show a basic understanding of the role of the parliament in a representative democracy. And that fundamental is something that he lacks. And Nigeria is paying a huge price for it today. If these were ordinary days, it would not have mattered so much. After all, he was not the first mediocre senate president in Nigeria and won’t be the last. Unfortunately, these are extraordinary days when Nigeria needs its best eleven to have any chance of surviving.

Every public utterance of Mr Lawan is a display of an unending cringe-inducing show. Where will one begin? Is it his reaction to Southern Governors who met in Asaba and demanded the restructuring of the country? The best Mr Lawan could offer was to knock the governors for not starting the reforms at the state level by granting independence to the local governments. Or was it is the bizarre argument that elected leaders should not champion agitations. This was coming from the man leading a national assembly that is supposedly overseeing a constitutional review.

And if this is happening in an era when there is brilliance up or down the Nigerian succession line, Nigeria could have endured such misfortune and hope for better luck next time. But in this critical time when everything is at stake, a senate president of Mr Lawan’s calibre is a death knell for Nigeria.

Unless a miracle happens, when Nigeria’s obituary is written, the name of Ahmed Lawan will be at the top of the list of the undertakers. History will remember Mr Lawan as a bad carpenter who was brought in at the dying minute to keep the leaking Nigerian boat afloat. But due to bad workmanship, he inflicted the deadly hole that finally sank the boat. On Mr Lawan’s tombstone, it shall be written in bold letters: Here lies the man who killed Nigeria to death.

https://gazettengr.com/rudolf-okonkwo-ahmed-lawan-the-man-who-killed-nigeria-to-death/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost

Lawan will never be forgotten in a hurry....



Placed there to do the biddings of the north will representing South....

History will never be nice to him and his entire generation for all the evil that he's doing to the people of the south....


Let him restructure this country..... Review the constitution and allow this country to sail properly....


Just how the legislative arms and the executive arms of government will do absolutely nothing but are the highest paid public servants while the people are graded based on level and are paid peanuts and sometimes underpaid and given IPPIS to manipulate them to accept whatever they're given... And when retired, they go home with nothing worth serving this country for...

For those who have not forgotten, Ahmed Lawan’s emergence as Senate President was deeply soaked in corruption. The compromise that brought Lawan in was a critical indication that President Buhari’s anti-corruption stance was mere lip service.

As a candidate, he faced an inevitable defeat from Senator Danjuma Goje of Gombe State. In a compromise that President Muhammadu Buhari struck with Goje in Aso Rock on Thursday, June 6, 2019, Goje agreed to step down for Lawan in exchange for a total wipeout of all the corruption charges against him from his days as governor.

President Buhari got the senate president he wanted, but it was the wrong Senate President that Nigeria needed at this crucial point in its existence. In his two years as senate president, Mr Lawan has done nothing to improve the quality of governance in Nigeria. In trying to avoid conflicts with the executive, Lawan abdicated his responsibility to hold the executive accountable, ensure accountability and government transparency.

With little understanding of the importance of the parliament in overseeing the executive and judiciary, he has failed to meet public expectations or even reflect the public’s concerns. Instead of establishing democratic norms, Mr Lawan has only become an accomplice in lowering the democratic IQ of the nation and the consequence crippling of any progressive reforms.

Buhari only chooses the corrupt dull dumbasses mediocres that fit his kind of person.He alongside Ahmed Lawan, Gbaja, and the Sharia SC judge- Tanko formed the worst ensemble that dragged Nigeria into its present abyss.

This President of the Senate, who has now become an autocrat in the Red Chamber declared, “The question of whether we will approve the loan request of the Executive arm of Government? Yes, we will pass it.”

Fanatical Lawan no longer understands the concept of check and balance in a democracy. He is unconscious that we are running a constitutional government and that check and balance must apply.[/color] Yes, the legislature does not exist to antagonise the Executive. However, it must effectively and efficiently check the Executive, else, there will be absolutism, as we are now experiencing in Nigeria.

The principle of check and balance has been thrown into the garbage can.No wonder Lawan said he would do anything Buhari requests of him in the Senate. For him, the loan request is a done deal. He cares less if this generation, and indeed, generation yet unborn, would be plunged into stifling debt repayment

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2019/12/21/lawan-is-just-a-rubber-waiting-to-stamp-anything/

Ahmed Lawan is not only the most dull, inactive or lacklustre but equally the most useless SP Nigeria has ever got.Well he was heavily manipulated into that position.Guess those who said the Saraki senate is bad can now appreciate it better though it was also corrupt?

Just imagine where the heavy manipulation of the legislation and judiciary by the APC government has land Nigeria.No separation of power between the tiers of government in a participatory democracy.

Please before you crucify him, find out who suggested his nomination even before the 2019 election, tinubu was the same person who nominated him for the post

Now Nigerians understand why and how Saraki was booted out of office by all means... They wanted a Senate they could easily manipulate. Na thunder go fire all those nairaland ediots who were celebrating the removal of Saraki... E no go beta for una generation

We have no SENEATE President ....Mr Lawan is a MINUS

Nbote:
Now Nigerians understand why and how Saraki was booted out of office by all means... They wanted a Senate they could easily manipulate. Na thunder go fire all those nairaland ediots who were celebrating the removal of Saraki... E no go beta for una generation

If you like Saraki with all the baggage of corruption just say that. That Lawan failed does not give reason to venerate Saraki who should be in jail for numerous financial breaches.

When did nairaland start making and removing senate presidents? Are you not simply stupid for dragging generations of people here? Take your frustrations and pains elsewhere. But know that public opinion is a privilege your lot does not deserve.

The criminal frog eye should be bombed.

Na wa ooo… and tinubu was the one that fought that this man must be senate president

He's an overfed malu

kettykin:
Please before you crucify him, find out who suggested his nomination even before the 2019 election, tinubu was the same person who nominated him for the post

I can never vote for Tinubu but you guys should stop blaming Tinubu for everything... Tinubu solely nominated and voted the docile guy for S.P while others were looking so if Tinubu is that Powerful and influential, no matter the hatred, he will be the next President, which I don't pray for....

Anyiamaka:


If you like Saraki with all the baggage of corruption just say that. That Lawan failed does not give reason to generate Saraki who should be in jail for numerous financial breaches.

When the nairaland start making and removing senate presidents? Are you not simply stupid for dragging generations of people here? Take your frustrations and pains elsewhere. But know that public opinion is a privilege your lot does not deserve.

Whixh corruption?? Where are any of the cases the APC and the govt brought against him? What happened to those cases?? It is the stupidity of ur likes dat brought Nigeria to Where it currently is.. I am not pained any more than U and ur kind who continue to live in denial.

Nbote:


Whixh corruption?? Where are any of the cases the APC and the govt brought against him? What happened to those cases?? It is the stupidity of ur likes dat brought Nigeria to Where it currently is.. I am not pained any more than U and ur kind who continue to live in denial.

You should have existed as a snail, a fowl, a goat, a sheep or anything suitable for human breeding and consumption. You are not a Nigerian

His generation will pay for it

An incompetent senate president of APC government

This is the man Bola Tinubu went to war to foist on the country as the senate president.
If not for sarakis savvy displays, this same Ahmed would have been the countrys Senate president from day one!

Lawan cuts off fellow senators while they're trying to make their positions known, tries to school senators ceaselessly just to buy time to either defeat a bill against the president or to gather support for the ones in favor.., rams through every bill brought in by Buhari...., sometimes gives it to the minority with fake voice votes!

The man is the worst if the worst..

The man is a he-goat.