Senate as old Peoples Home
By Owei Lakemfa
SENATOR Saminu Turaki was a promising politician in 1999 when he became governor of Jigawa State. He later claimed to have transformed the state into a digital revolution.
He was accused of being a tourist governor and of being quite free with the finances of the state. For this, he is supposed to be facing criminal charges. Turaki was so much a dispersal agent of the state finances that he was accused of dispersing some of it to neighbouring Niger Republic.
When his tenure expired, he joined the bandwagon of governors who took the road to the Senate. He was in the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) as governor, but he saw the light and switched to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Like most proselytes, he became a fanatic: preaching that not just the PDP, but also then President Umar Yar’Adua had been ordained to rule the country for many years.
In fact, Turaki began a campaign that Yar’Adua who had just begun his first tenure must be allowed to rule beyond the constitutional two terms. He put the minimum terms he must rule at four. But it turned out that Turaki was a mere mortal who was proposing. President Yar’Adua could not even complete his first term before succumbing to the cold hands of death. Turaki has since dumped the PDP for the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
The Senate is the preferred play ground for many former governors. This is because after controlling state votes, the only other places they can do same are as President or Vice President, outside these, the Senate is the best option. Here, they can have almost unlimited access to public funds.
So no matter how badly he performs, the average governor wants to make his way to the Senate. Once in the hallowed chambers, these ex-governors’ voices are hardly heard in debates nor are their names affixed to bills. The experience of many of them do not count or are not relevant. In fact some of them, like Turaki and former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu State , carry to the Senate, the additional burden of being tried for serious economic crimes; consequently, their legislative duties suffer.
There are serious implications for the country when tickets to the Senate are hijacked by serving or former governors. Given their exposure to the huge funds of state, they are unlikely to see any sense in our cry that the salaries and allowances of Distinguished Senators and Honourables in the House of Representatives be made public and drastically cut. A former governor in the Senate may see a N45 million monthly package as chicken feed.
This may be partly responsible for the outrage in the Senate when Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi revealed that at least one fifth of the annual Federal expenditure is swallowed by the Distinguished and Honourables. Despite their effected righteous indignation against this revelation, none of them has had the courage to tell Nigerians how much they earn.
Part of the reasons why the transition from governor to Senator is relatively easy is because parties make governors or ex-governors the party leader in the various states, and given lack of checks and balances, and the huge state funds at their disposal, they easily hand-pick candidates, or impose themselves as candidates.
In this process, the wish of the party member or delegate does not matter. Where incumbent senators lose the primaries, or there is a clean sweep of all senators like the Tsunami in Ebonyi State, it is difficult to know whether this genuinely reflects the will of party members and delegates, or it is an indication of the governor’s mood and preferences. For me, democracy cannot thrive where one man combines the position of Executive Governor, Chief Security officer, purser-in-chief and party leader; the party should be independent of the governor. It is the party which provides the platform for the governor to contest, that should be the driver, and not the governor driving the party.
Things are unlikely to change in the nearest future. For instance, former military dictator of Lagos State, Olagunsoye Oyinlola who was also governor of Osun State from 2003 to 2007, was found by the courts to have illegally occupied the Osun Government House for three and a half years from May 2007. For his crime, the courts merely retrieved the stolen mandate from him. Rather than keep his head down or at least bow it in shame, the Okuku prince pushed other party aspirants aside in a bid to make his experience available in the Senate.
He has an ally in Olusegun Agagu, who as a former Minister for Power is yet to explain to the country how the billions of dollars spent on the energy sector under his watch merely procured darkness rather than improved electricity.
After serving his country as minister, he went on to serve his people as governor only for the courts to expose him as an impostor in the Ondo State Government House having fraudulently procured the 2007 certificate of return as governor. Agagu is now heading for the Senate, unless the electorate can successfully stop him.
Generally for many in the political class, the Senate is an old peoples home where expired , discarded or tired former public officials take shelter.
Doubtlessly there are many committed and principled politicians in the country, but the Turakis dominate the landscape and the Senate. The Senate has become the dumping ground for tired or retired politicians who have no place to go, and are obviously bored.
It has become in the main, a motley collection of discarded non performing ministers, mostly expired governors, veteran coup plotters, retired generals who earned their ranks in the battle field of coup plotting, and military apologists. It also has statesmen, who are so called not because they are versed in managing the affairs of state, but basically because they are old men or have been recycled in the endless flow of bad governance.
Doubtlessly, the Senate is in urgent need of rebirth.
