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NASS, please let the beat go on
By Mihcael John
Email: [email protected]
What is really going on in this country!
Copycats all over the place. One cannot invent anything and keep the patent.
Anger, which was my initiative, is now having a field trip round the country
and is generally infecting people like the wild polio virus. Like everything
Nigerian, it is now being abused.
I was particularly upset about the way
things were going in this country and decided to run this column to vent my
anger on issues I feel strongly about. I had decided not to be physically
violent no matter the level of provocation, but look at what is happening now.
Those who decided to copy me are now stealing the show simply by just adding
physical violence to it.
Again unlike in my situation where I get
angry purely on principles, the pirates explode on issues that are either
directly or indirectly linked to pecuniary interests. But all the same, anger
has taken over the land and the way we are going, one day we would be startled
with the news that one very big Oga has bullied his deputy.
Violent anger used to be a motor park
affair where urchins and touts who struggle for crumbs end up adding some red
to their eyes and tender flesh to some parts of their faces, while reducing
some particulars in their dentition. Subsequently, it entered the local
government councils where councillors engaged their chairmen and gave them
Uncle Sam’s noses. It graduated to state Houses of Assembly where the
Mace, a sacred instrument, an embodiment of authority had severally been
reduced to missiles.
In the last dispensation we occasionally
had stories of some kind of mass action within the so-called hallowed chambers
of the National Assembly (NASS) whenever any person or group tries to outsmart
the other in the sharing of their loot, but it never got to a one-on-one.
Free-for-all was it.
But in the last one month, the National
Assembly Complex of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has become our own Maddison
Square Garden where our own breed of Mike Tysons are groomed, but unlike the
Olympic type wrestling which have rules and are subject to adherence, our own
is the typical Royal Rumble version of American wrestling.
The devil has, in deed, found an abode in
the parliament. But why won’t it! Why? Does the holy book not say that
the love of money is the root of all evil? And who does not know that the devil
is the proud sponsor of all evil? So if filthy lucre becomes the toast of the
House, where would the sponsor longside! Right in there, man!
Dandy old Isa Mohammed said it all, that
the devil used him when his fist tasted the tender cheeks of his colleague,
Iyabo Anisulowo. This devil is in deed a ubiquitous being. One thing led to the
other, and Iyabo lost her spectacles courtesy of Mohammed’s fury; and the
devil was blamed for the action. The devil, I am very sure, must have led the
grand old woman to borrow committee money to transact some disguised
businesses. That tempting mongrel must have drawn the attention of Mohammed to
it. In fact, it urged him to confront her and turned to the other side to
advise Iyabo to ignore the intruder. They all heeded its counsel. The cunning
devil turned to Mohammed and screamed: ‘men! How can you take that kind
of shit from a bloody woman?’ I have it on good authority that the devil
took his hand and landed a dirty slap on the woman’s face such that her
glasses flew off her face. Mohammed confessed that much. He shamed the devil by
revealing that it was the one behind the whole show. Because his colleagues
knew that it was not the Mohammed they knew so well but the devil that was
behind it, they had compassion on him, and asked him to take a two week
vacation and return to a rousing welcome for exposing the evil machinations of
the devil. That whole stuff is no longer news, it is now part of the jokes
shared in palm wine joints and beer parlours. It no longer carries the weight
of a senatorial bashing from a distinguished being.
While Mohammed was still packing his bags
and baggage, he heard uproar in the lobby of the Assembly. Another NASS member
has done it again, this time from the lower chamber. A balance has been
achieved. A woman has retaliated the insult meted out to a fellow woman a
fortnight ago. Iquo Inyang Minima is the woman. She dazed Emmanuel Bwacha with
a dirty slap on the face. The slap must have carried the same impact as the
first recorded one. Just like Mohammed’s slap sent Iyabo’s glasses
flying off her face, bystanders had to look for Bwacha’s glasses after
Ikwo had finished with him. Spectacle-wearing committee chairmen in the
National Assembly must beware of their deputies.
In both cases, it was the deputy that
slapped the chairman; and both victims are spectacle-wearing fellows. In the
first case, they were about going out for committee engagement; in the second,
they were just returning from one. But all these, according to reports,
happened at the lobby and the bottom line is said to be the devil’s
bread. The first had to do with the Committee on State and Local Government,
the second Committee on Police Affairs. Did I hear police? Were there any arrests
made? Sunny Igboanugo, the Metro Editor of Daily Independent must be a very
happy man. On the very day he published an article in the opinion column of the
paper Let the slapping continue, Ikwo made his day.
Others were simply just excited. I am dead
sure Udeme Nana, the senior special assistant on public affairs to Governor
Victor Attah must have popped the best wine from his cellar. So also would the
Akwa Ibom State Assembly Chief Whip, Chief Ukata Sam Akpan. Chief Otu Robert
Akpan, former chairman of the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC) may not
have been particularly excited, but he nonetheless must have said ‘she
has done it again’. These eminent Akwa Ibom politicians have suffered
injury from Ikwo’s rough edges at one time or the other. For them, their
Ini Local Government Area has exported a familiar spirit to national politics.
Both Nana and Ukata Akpan are still nursing bruises they sustained when they
had the audacity to contemplate contesting Ikwo’s ticket to the House
during the build up to the 2003 elections on the PDP platform. Chief Otu Robert
got his share for trying to play god to other contestants.
When Mohammed slapped Iyabo, although it
was a senator slapping another senator, the female folks changed the language
screaming that ‘a man slapped a woman.’ They started gathering
signatures that would give impetus to their call for Mohammed’s head on a
platter, but Ikwo saved them the trouble, being a staunch believer in the
‘an eye for an eye’ philosophy. The ladies have returned to base.
Ikwo has taken the wind off their sail, and Mohammed can have his head pretty
on his neck. I also hope that Funke Egbemode, just like her friends in NASS,
would sharpen her blunt pen and use the tip to withdraw her verdict on Mohammed
which she passed last Thursday in Daily Independent.
Has somebody really bothered to ask why
there is so much anger in the land! Now that the extinguished senatractors and
horrible, sorry honourable, members have joined this anger, or rightly put,
violence train, are we still sure of our destination? This thing is inching too
close to the engine driver o! If it happens, I wish the train good luck. Can we
still call these fellows distinguished and honourable?
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