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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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ONE important difference between the 1979 Constitution and the 1999 one which is currently in operation is the provision of the power of recall. With this provision, voters can bring back from the legislature " whether at the local council or National Assembly level " anyone who, in their opinion, is unable to meet their aspirations and needs, or who works against their interests. A couple of attempts have in the last five years been made to withdraw from different legislatures some lawmakers, ostensibly on grounds of incompetence and embarrassing representation. But they all failed.. None of the recall moves was rooted in the people. Each began because the legislator in question fell out with his state governor. To retain his seat, the embattled lawmaker was forced to seek peace with the governor who, in typical Nigerian fashion, uses state power to amass monstrous resources, among others. In one or two instances, the legislators found refuge in the courts.
The present move to recall Senator Jibril Aminu of Adamawa State has all the features of previous attempts at legislative recall in various parts of Nigeria. The anti-Aminu move is choreographed by the state government. No one takes seriously the claim by some political minions that this is no case of the voice being that of Jacob, but the hand Esau's. The public knows it is all high-wired politics. Those ostensibly leading it are all ciphers, insignificant agents of the Boni Haruna administration. Professor Aminu is accused of poor performance, non-accessibility to his constituency, non-distribution of financial goodies and instructively, supporting a presidential aspirant who is not from the North-eastern geopolitical zone.
Every perceptive analyst knows these charges are spurious. Aminu's record in the Senate is sterling. He chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which, among other things, did a painstaking, thorough and fair job of evaluating all ambassadorial nominees; the manner of accomplishing this task was such that it earned the Senate praise from all and sundry, including the critical press. Even when Senate President Adolphus Wabara dissolved earlier in the year all Senate committees, only Aminu's still stood.
Aminu is also a member of the Senate committees on air force, health and education. Aminu's membership of these committees on social development, for instance, helped a lot in making the Federal Government allot to education and health the highest sectoral votes in the 2004 Budget, the first time in decades social spending has received the lion's share in the federal budget. As regards the charge that Aminu does not share booties in Adamawa, it is not deserving of the dignity of comment. Does Prof Aminu have the money to share endlessly? Those spreading the news that Aminu does not share money know too well that a senator does not have the power to"make money", unlike a minister or a governor or the president or vice president or even a local government chairman.
Can anyone in his right senses expect Aminu to belong to the clique of senators reputed to habitually extort huge money? Aminu is, first and foremost, an old-fashioned professional, an engaging scholar in the finest tradition. He is not a money-man. Throughout the decades he has served as an international professor of medicine, university vice chancellor, executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, Minister of Education, Minister of Petroleum Resources, and Nigeria's ambassador to the United States, did anyone regard him as a money-bag?
The allegation that Aminu does not have the interests of Adamawa people at heart is decidedly preposterous. The most important economic project in Adamawa , apart from the hugely productive farm belonging to Vice Admiral Murtala Nyako, is the oil facility belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, which was conceived, designed, built and commissioned when Aminu was the Petroleum Resources Minister. How our people wish that other prominent individuals from our state who have held high public positions had such monumental legacies in our place to their credit!
Aminu is, by every account and standard, eminently successful. Whether in the United Kingdom or the University College Hospital in Ibadan, he was a prize-winning student. Despite having held a number of plum positions, he remains disarmingly simple. The senator recognises the imperative to observe the dignity of the human person. It is, therefore, strange that the same person is now being accused in broad daylight of not making himself accessible to the very people who gave him the mandate to articulate, defend and espouse their interests in the Senate. Wonders will never end. Let us repeat the obvious by acknowledging that Aminu's mortal sin is his perceived support for General Ibrahim Babangida in the 2007 presidential vote. There is no conclusive evidence yet that Aminu is backing the retired general.
But his political opponents presume that his long friendship with Babangida and Babangida's appointment of Aminu as a minister would make it difficult for the influential senator to support a rival candidate. What is more, Aminu is not notorious for going to Vice President Atiku Abubakar's residence every morning to genuflect and indulge in other acts of obeisance. As if to exacerbate the situation, there has of late been mounting pressure on Aminu to take part in the 2007 presidential election, with campaign posters by unknown groups all over Abuja and elsewhere. For Vice President Abubakar's strategists, this is bad news, as another Adamawa indigene, Buba Marwa, is also in the race. The multiplicity of Adamawa candidates would seem to mean that the vice president is not popular amongst his own people, let alone have a firm grip on the state.
Why is it that it is not the Vice President's office which is directly rolling out tanks to unleash political terror on Prof Aminu? Why is the Boni Haruna government playing this role? There is no mystery about all this. Governor Haruna was working as an employee of the Vice President on his The Week magazine up to the time he became governor. Atiku chose Haruna as his running mate when he became the Peoples Democratic Party gubernatorial flag-bearer in Adamawa; the two luckily belong to the two dominant religions in the state and also come from two separate senatorial districts. When President Obasanjo selected Atiku to be his vice presidential candidate, Haruna naturally became governor- elect. Haruna has ever remained fiercely loyal and grateful to the vice president. But in his commitment to Atiku's presidential ambitions vis a vis Jibril Aminu, the governor has elected to play Don Quixote, the interesting character in the Spanish novel by Cervantes; out of extreme love for his mistress, Quixote ferociously fights all manner of opponents, most of them imaginary.
Like all the previous attempts at legislative recall in the last few years, the ongoing efforts to get Prof Aminu out of the Senate will fail. It is a storm in a teacup. If the current effort has excited the nation more than others, it is because of the profile of the person supposedly in the eye of the storm. For, as it is often said, if the office of the Senate President had not been zoned, like other high offices in the land, Aminu would probably have been occupying it effortlessly, and on merit. Those campaigning for Aminu's recall are by no means optimistic of the success of the project. All they want is to rattle him, to cut him down to size so that he will not run or even be of tremendous value to Vice President Atiku Abubakar's opponents. But what does all this unnecessary sabre-rattling tell us about Nigeria's political culture?
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