By Tonnie Iredia

I used to wonder what people enjoy in the ‘dull’ game of Billiards until last Thursday when a friend persuaded me to accompany him to cheer his cousin who was into a tournament in a recreation centre in our neighbourhood.

*House in session

It turned out to be an evening of no dull moments in which I was thoroughly entertained. The real fun was not the game but an unorganized debate which suddenly evolved between those who hate our legislators with a passion and those who chose to play the devil’s advocate on lawmaking issues.

The man who began the entire debate could not be ignored by anyone because of his passion laden submission. He said he shed tears the week before when he gathered that the legislators who were at loggerheads with themselves over the leadership of both houses of the National Assembly had resolved their differences. He could not imagine why that should happen adding that once the legislators became united nothing would stop them from teaming-up once again to appropriate our national treasury.

Another member who had posed as a kind of referee in the on-going game and who ordinarily should not have followed the argument cut in to say no one should ever be misled by the well rehearsed happenings in our legislature. According to this second speaker, our legislators who purported to be so angry with each other were merely into shadow boxing to attract attention and no more. He added that the political tension arising from the supposed disagreement among the legislators was only for the purpose of alignments ahead of some juicy assignments.

He concluded that since the return of democracy in 1999, the trend has been for legislators to pretend to be at war with themselves while working out their plan of action to join the club of millionaires. A third member popularly known as ‘leader’ then began his lengthy contribution to the debate.  He described the National Assembly as a trade union judging by the way the members muster massive support for one another on any subject. He then went to memory lane to review the famous 2003 case of El Rufai versus two Senators.

What happened then was that El Rufai who was nominated to be a Minister in the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo raised an alarm that some specific senators demanded millions of naira from him so as to make his clearance easy. The senate then went ahead to investigate the matter and cleared its affected members while declaring el rufai’s allegation as false. Well, neither the nation nor the senators themselves believed the ‘findings’ of the senate which explains why the ‘liar’ ministerial nominee was still cleared.

A few years later, according to the narration, the then Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Aruma Oteh revealed how the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market demanded N44 million from her in two tranches of N39 million and N5 million respectively. She also alleged that the chairman of the committee previously collected an amount of money and a business class ticket to travel to the Dominican Republic for a conference, but that he neither made the trip nor returned the money.

The House brushed aside all these weighty allegations and began to examine certain perceived deficiencies in the competence and conditions of service etc of the lady and thereafter, passed a resolution that the President should sack her. The House also resolved that should the President fail to comply with its resolution, it would cease to accord any recognition to Aruma Oteh. Following its discovery on resumption from recess that the lady was still in office, the House re-affirmed its earlier resolution and gave a 14-day ultimatum for compliance by the executive.

The senior brother of the House-the Senate-eventually waded into the matter like an appeal court and also an umbrella trade union of law makers to resolve that if President Jonathan did not sack Aruma Oteh, it would no longer relate with the commission. Mr. ‘leader’ ended up with the argument that the national Assembly was of no use adding that its modus operandi is to make both noise and money with no work and that at the tail end it would pass 46 bills in 10minutes as the 7th  senate did.

At this point ‘the advocate’, a member known for highlighting the other side to every argument took the floor. He warned members not to compare the present National Assembly especially the senate with its ‘hopeless’ predecessor. Three pertinent issues according to Mr. Advocate had already been achieved by the Saraki-led Senate, namely: the prompt clearance of service chiefs in support of President Buhari’s anti-terrorism war; the visit of a senate delegation to internally displace persons in the North-East to empathise with them; and the setting-up of a panel to review the bogus salaries of legislators. Credit according to Mr. Advocate should be given to whom it is due. He was loudly applauded.

Recognising that I was in their midst, the members at this point insisted that I say a few words before leaving. I thanked them for the honour and told them how impressive their debate was notwithstanding that it had no moderator to determine topic and duration of each contribution.

I enjoined them to take the lead in bringing some sanity to our legislature by encouraging their kith and kin to also unite to make a legislator accountable to his electorate by democratically removing from office any non performing legislator.

The way to do this according to sections 69 and 110 of our constitution is to mobilize 50% of the electorates within their locality to sign a petition to the electoral commission recalling such a member from office. Within 90 days of doing that the legislator would be out of office if a simple majority of voters in the affected locality agrees with the petition in a referendum. This would stop any legislator whose only interest is to fight, scheme, acquire wealth and do nothing to justify the votes that took him to the law making body.