Daily Independent Online.
*
Monday, July 05, 2004.
Gbinije and Delta lawmakers: How not to criticize
By Basil Esekumuemu
Mr. Bobson Gbinije’s piece
fiendishly entitled “Delta lawmakers and a satanic jamboree” published in Daily Independent of Monday, June 21, 2004 and in The
Pointer of Tuesday,
June 22, 2004 makes for interesting reading. Interesting, because the rather crooked piece is somehow
indicative of what those who know better would accurately diagnose as delusion
of grandeur, one of those ego-exacerbated diseases of the mind.
The foundation of that vituperative commentary is the
extremely important trips of members of the Delta State House of Assembly
(DTHA), first, to Ghana and then to the United States of America in May,
2004. The visits to those
parliaments were, predominantly to witness and experience, first hand, their
legislative processes for improved performance standard in parliamentary
service delivery to the people of Delta State.
Indeed, it is not the policy of the DTHA to join
issues, or engage in unnecessary controversies, with aggrieved persons or
groups. However, considering the
crude, uncouth and unsavory remarks as well as the monumental falsity employed
in the article Bobson Gbinije wrote against the House, it is only meet and
proper that he gets a reply, no matter how dismissively, in the interest of the
unsuspecting public.
In his opening, Mr. Gbinije pompously described the
honourable members as a group of “happy-go-lucky lawless lawmakers”
among several other infuriating, jaw-breaking and meaningless superlatives not
worthy of mention here. In paragraph
two, he referred to the journeys of the legislators as “gallivanting,
junketing and bacchanalian jamboree…” He later, at paragraph 3, rested the foundation of his
accusation on “a motion empowering the House to investigate its
activities in the past one year.”
The accuser demanded to know in the 4th paragraph, the actual amount
expended on the US trip and, later, ambiguously put it himself at “almost
N800,000,000 (eight hundred million naira).”
While it may not be necessary to go over all what the
pseudo-grammarian wrote in his piece, it is galling to see the careless
deployment of such invectives as referring to respected honourable members of
DTHA as “lawless” and “satanic” six times in so short a
write-up. He also tagged the
hallowed chamber “a sanctuary… and a synagogue for the veneration
of revelry.”
Well, in order to redress the misleading charges and
poorly digested claims of Mr. Gbinije, it is noteworthy to mention that there
are pre-determined amounts of allowances for government officials when on
official trips. As such, Members
of the House, cannot, had not and couldn’t have taken more than their
dues which also cannot be altered, even by the Speaker of the House - not
a penny more, neither less!
Then, on the issue of hiring “a consortium of
professors and other Nigerian institutions” in place of traveling, it is
only trite to inform the agent provocateur that legislative business is,
regrettably, not a professorial affair.
And, people are yet not aware of any such institutions here in Nigeria,
as he recommended, who are experts in the art of law making or other
parliamentary matters whatsoever, yet are not legislators.
Essentially, it is an acceptable practice the world
over for officials at certain levels to travel either within or outside the
country for acquisition of required experience and skills in the execution of
State assignments, this time for a consolidated legislative practice. Or, has
he forgotten that that Arm of government was the most devastated in all the
years of the inglorious military rule?
Legislative exchange programme is recognized globally and nationally for
the Legislature to evince a better quality and stronger future of the political
process. According to the Dakar
Framework for Action (Senegal:
April 26 - 28, 200), “Exchange Programmes are geared towards
tapping each individual’s talents and potentials, developing
personalities, so that they can improve their lives and transform their
societies.”
Even at the academic level, it is common knowledge
for foreign students (through EEPs - Educational Exchange Programmes) to
visit Nigerian universities and vice-versa. In the same vein, students in Foreign Language Deptartments
(French, German, Russian etc) of Nigerian universities travel, sometimes, for
upwards of one year. So, does that
in any way imply a paucity of teachers in those depts? It was in the light of the significance
of such programmes that Prof. Jelili Omotola, former Vice Chancellor of the
University of Lagos, established an outreach in South Africa to encourage
exchange programmes.
Surely, it has for sometime now been fashionable for
all sorts of people to denigrate political leaders. It must, however, be abundantly stressed to all
right-thinking people that a situation in which certain individuals either
parade themselves, or are encouraged to present themselves, as the watchers of
the workings and programmes of highly placed public-serving officials, can be
subjected to grave and regrettable abuse.
Politics in Nigeria has been, and still is, an open
game exercised on an open field.
And, Mr. Bobson Gbinije is a bonafide Deltan, a full fledged adult from
Okpe State Constituency. To that
extent, it is my wholesome advice that the starry-eyed commentator should stop
faffing about with his pen and imbibe the spirit in the wise counsel that the
probability that he may likely fail in politics should not propel him to put on
a garb of the pull-them-down attitude which lavishly laced the article in question.
* Esekumuemu wrote in from Warri
