Reuben Abati: The Senate, CCT And The Politics Of Saraki’s Trial

NIGERIA:

The present Senate serving the Nigerian people runs the risk of being remembered as the worst since 1999. Public Relations Consultants and media officials of this particular Senate have done their part flooding both the print and the online media with details of how productive the Bukola Saraki-led Senate has been, and they have been quite
aggressive in telling us about 30 important Bills which when passed, will change the face of Nigeria and deliver change.


The Senate according to one report has considered over 125 bills, debated over 48 motions, and passed three bills. But nobody is apparently impressed. During the Jonathan administration, the Senate was the better regarded of the two legislative chambers. While members of the House of Representatives in the Seventh Assembly behaved as if they were a band of students’ unionists, the then Red Chamber
projected an image of maturity and temperance, even if it was also self-serving! With the 8 Assembly, the House of Representatives, apart from the shameful resort to physical combat over the distribution of “juicy” committees in November 2015, has shown itself to be better organized than the present Senate. The critical difference is that of
leadership. It is one of management. It is a matter of
weight and politics.


What is clear is that the leadership recruitment and
selection process in the legislative arm of
government is as critical as it is in any other sphere
of government. During the 7 Assembly, the politics
of the emergence of the then Speaker of the House
of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, a PDP
lawmaker who became an agent and later, chieftain
of the opposition party, ensured that the House
remained almost permanently in a frosty
relationship with the Executive. Likewise, the manner
of Bukola Saraki’s emergence as Senate President,
marked again by alleged disloyalty to his own party
and collusion with the opposition for personal gains,
has laid the foundation for the supremacy of
intrigues, cabals, and the politics of mischief in a
Chamber that should be devoted strictly to the
making of laws for the good governance of Nigeria.


His colleague in the House of Representatives also
emerged under controversial circumstances, but Yakubu Dogara’s politics seems to be better
managed. Saraki’s politics is made more complex by
the fact that he has strong roots in the two dominant
parties in the National Assembly and has proven to
be extremely influential across party lines, making
him a dominant force in Nigeria’s current power
equation, and most certainly, a threat to other power
centres.


Online, the Saraki-led Senate claims that it has done
a lot, even if it has spent more time being on
vacation in less than a year, and obsessed daily with
the politics of contradictions. The Senate President
once reportedly boasted that the Senate under his
watch has helped to block corruption by helping
Nigeria to save money. He talked about the Senate’s
probe of the Treasury Single Account (TSA). But now,
here is the contradiction: Many Nigerians would find
it difficult to see how a Senate whose leader is on
trial for corruption-related matters, and that has
chosen to buy for its members, luxury SUV vehicles
at inflated cost can claim to be helping Nigerians at a
time when the economy is on a tragic downward
spiral, and yet the same Senators had allegedly
collected vehicle loans. This has brought the Senate
condemnation from both the Nigeria Labour
Congress and a coalition of about 400 Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGOs).


But we know where the problem lies: politicians are
always playing games, and the Senate under Bukola
Saraki’s watch has acted more than once, as if it is
against the people. This Senate has had to reverse
itself thrice in the last one month following public
outcry about its lack of moral rectitude. The painful
reality is that the impression has now been created
that the Senate as presently constituted is playing the
politics of one man. It has reduced itself to a Saraki-
must-stay-and-the-Executive-and-anti-Saraki-APC-
leaders-must-bow-Red-Chamber. Most members of
the House of Representatives have tactfully stayed
away from this abuse of privilege and utter contempt
for the original mandate of the National Assembly,
but they need to be advised to also stay away from
the kind of infectious madness that seems to be
seizing hold of the Senate. It is a form of madness
that encourages recourse to farce, burlesque and
conspicuous acquisition.


Determined to show support for their embattled
Senate President who is on trial before the Code of
Conduct Tribunal (CCT), and whose name has also
been mentioned in the Panama Papers scandal,
many of the Senators abandoned the Senate
Chambers and started following their boss to the
Tribunal. On one occasion as many as close to 50
Senators abandoned their primary assignment and
chose to go and play politics at the Tribunal. If this
seeming relocation of the Senate to the Code of
Conduct Tribunal was meant to intimidate the
presiding judge, His Lordship has refused to be
intimidated, either by the crowd or the convoy of
buses or the retinue of 90 defence lawyers. He has
now chosen to attend to the case on a daily basis.
The number of Senators doing follow-follow has
since reduced: it will of course, be absurd to shut
down the entire Senate to embark on sycophantic
frolic. Nonetheless, the Saraki case is taking its toll
on the Senate. It has placed it on a collision course
with a court of competent jurisdiction, with the
Executive and also divided the ruling All Progressives
Congress.


It has also led to a situation whereby the lawmakers
even attempted to change the Code of Conduct
Bureau Act in an obvious attempt to frustrate the
Saraki trial. In less than 48 hours, the amendment
bill went through first and second readings. If there
had been no public outcry, the lawmakers would
have passed the bill in less than 72 hours. It would
have been the fastest piece of legislation ever, and
yet it was meant to be self-serving: making a law to
sabotage due process, even when they know that a
law cannot have retroactive effect. When that failed,
our Senators came up with the ingenious idea that
the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal must
appear before the Senate Committee on Ethics,
Privileges and Public Petitions. An indignant crowd of
civil society agitators also shut that down. The
Chairman of the CCT has also been a target of
campaigns of calumny. Saraki’s supporters are
throwing everything possible into this matter, where
the legal process fails, the legislative process is
deployed; when that also fails, an internet war,
rallies, protests, all designed to win the public mind
is launched.


Senate President Bukola Saraki may not have read
Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, for he seems
to have broken too many of those laws already;
perhaps he has read The Art of War by Sun Tzu. He
should have been told that to rush headlong into war
without mastering the dynamics of power is costly.
This is one bitter political lesson about the strategy
of war that Senator Saraki is currently learning. But
now that he has gone so deep into the battlefield, he
may no longer be allowed to surrender or retreat,
even as his troops are gradually fleeing. Saraki has
stepped on the proverbial Banana peel; as he
struggles for survival, our Senate, the people’s
Senate, must not be allowed to fail as a public
institution. Senator Saraki should step aside, for
now, as Senate President. If he emerges victorious
from his travails, his colleagues should do him the
honour of reinstating him to that office of honour,
without question. But if he loses, he should
remember that war only offers two possibilities, and
even when a warrior wins, there may still be dangers
on the way back home. In all, the politics of Saraki’s
trial should not consume the Senate, and indeed the
8 Assembly.


“So far, so good”, Saka Olawale wrote assessing the
present Senate. I don’t think so. If anything, this
Senate needs to be rescued. Whatever explanations
our present set of Senators offers would be difficult
to believe given the manner in which they have
exposed their own limitations. The Senate cannot
even keep documents. Copies of the 2016 Budget
vanished from its custody. The copies when
eventually found mutated into versions unknown to
the Executive arm that presented the same Budget at
an open ceremony.


For five months, the Senate is embroiled in a
needless controversy over the content of the Budget.
What is worse: In almost one year, no Senator can be
quoted as having said anything engaging or
profound. The only Senator who makes a serious
effort to display some common sense is far more
active on Twitter than on the floor of the Senate. The
more prominent Senators are known for their rabid
politicking or their wardrobe or exotic cars or the
comedy that they provide. One of them even came
up with a bill to gag free speech. It was in this same Senate that some male chauvinists declared that
women cannot have any equal rights with men, and
so a Gender Equality Bill is unacceptable.


They failed to realize that in the United States, whose
Constitutional democracy we are copying, a woman
is only a short distance away from emerging as
Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party and
as 45 President of the United States. I imagine
many of them struggling to be photographed with
the same woman if they are so privileged. Was it also
not in this same Senate that a member argued that
Nigerian lawmakers should only patronize Made-in-
Nigeria-women? This was meant to be a “brilliant”
contribution to a debate on the need to promote
Made-in-Nigeria goods. How dumb! And this
kindergarten level statement actually generated
some debate!


Challenging as the democratic process may have
been, Nigerians can still remember a few Senators of
old who sat in that same Assembly and made impact
with their interventions and insightful speeches. To
now have a group of Senators who crack jokes,
borrow their imageries from road side bars, embark
on a frolic, or spend time on sycophantic exertions,
and when called upon, prove annoyingly incapable
of analyzing and interrogating policies and making
solid contributions is sad. We expect this to change.


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