When the Yar’Adua administration promised to give Nigerians thousands of electricity megawatts at the end of its first year in office, officials of that government themselves knew that the game plan was to deceive the people.

During Nigeria’s second republic, certain ministers and a few other political office-holders who paraded the corridors of power as close associates of the President were loathed nationwide for their perceived roles in the conduct of government business. There was the generally-held opinion that such persons and not President Shehu Shagari were responsible for whatever went wrong with the nation’s governance.

One of the lasting legacies of colonial rule in West Africa is the convention whereby rulers deny the governed access to information. To sustain that strategy of remaining unaccountable to the people, the British, in particular, effectively gagged the media.

When I first heard the news of the arrest of Dimeji Bankole, immediate past speaker of the House of Representatives, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), I had the feeling that it was only for a chat that would last some minutes. My mind went back to 1993 when as Director of Public Affairs at the defunct National Electoral Commission; I was invited for a chat by the State Security Service (SSS) in the heat of the controversial June 12 Presidential election.

An ardent follower of activities of the legislature at State level in Nigeria would not find it difficult to establish the true character of its members. Events since the return of democracy in 1999 have shown that a typical member of a State House of Assembly operates essentially as a dubious person. In this article, we shall concentrate on three areas. The first is the legislator as a Tout.