The melodrama at the Senate and other matters

Nothing has revealed our high sense of drama and love for salacious tales than the sexual harassment allegation against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, by Senator Natasha Agboti-Uduaghan, representing Kogi Central. Not even the controversial memoir of IBB, A Journey in Service, launched in Abuja recently with much funfair could eclipse the sensational romance tale emanating from the Senate. Even the release of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s much anticipated novel in 10 years, Dream Count, could dwarf the Natasha /Akpabio story. The media has feasted on it endlessly bringing to the readers, every development on a daily basis. The social media has increased their traffic with the love story. Content creators are also having a field day and falling over themselves over the epic thriller.

The tale emanating from the Senate shows that we are not yet serious as a people. We still dwell on mundane things. We love drama, high drama and in fact any type of drama, so far it is entertaining. At a time millions of Nigerians have no food to eat; our lawmakers are regaling and entertaining us with amorous tales that should not be discussed in the Red Chamber or even the Green Chamber. We never heard such romance stories from the state assemblies. The Senate is a place to discuss serious issues affecting the nation and making good laws to ensure the good life for the majority of Nigerians.

We need laws to ensure that every Nigerian child is educated up to senior secondary school or even to a university. We also need laws to guarantee the right to health, food, shelter, education, electricity, water, sanitation and other basic necessities of life. These are issues that will concern our lawmakers and not the trivia emanating from the Senate. The sexual harassment allegation against Akpabio by Natasha remains an allegation until proved otherwise by the courts. Good enough, Akpabio has strongly denied the allegation. He said he had never sexually harassed the said Natasha or any other woman in his life.

Many political actors from the North and South, including hired demonstrators and others, have trivialized, politicized and tribalized the matter. Some people have even over-exaggerated the matter and blown it out of proportion. A matter that started with a routine reassignment of seats in the Senate has morphed into sexual harassment and other tales. When the altercation started, many rightly guessed that it will snowball to intimate and sexual harassment tales. And they have been proved right. We shall see how it will end.

Fame is good but it can also court trouble in its own way. The same thing goes for power, beauty and wealth. Position of power can also attract envy. Wealth is known to attract enmity. They have a way of bringing trouble to the owner, including solicited and unsolicited trouble. This include pull-him-down syndrome. That is why those who have these attributes must be careful in their private and public life. However, when does personal admiration of a beauty lead to amorous harassment? Must sexual harassment be always men against women? Can’t men be sexually harassed by women? I am just thinking aloud over men and women matter. Is there anything in the matter beyond what has been revealed?

Apart from the ugly scenario from the Senate, the stories from Osun State over the control of local governments, the Lagos Assembly crisis over Speakership, and the political crisis in Rivers State over the recent Supreme Court judgement are not palatable. They all point out that our democracy is sick and not working and may not likely work because of so many factors, including our skewed federalism and the seeming lack of clarity over the operations of the three tiers of government. While the relationship between the federal and state governments can be said to be clearly defined to some extent, that of the state and local governments is not.

While the federal government does not own the states in theory, in practice there are things the states cannot do without the permission of the federal government. On the other hand, the local governments supposed to be under the jurisdiction of state governments. Because the state governors have abused the local government system and denied them of funds allocated from the federal government, many Nigerians called for direct allocation of local government funds from the federal government instead of the Joint State/LG fund. The federal government later got a Supreme Court ruling affirming financial autonomy for Local governments.

Despite the celebration of the apex court ruling, the LG allocation still goes into the Joint State/LG account and the governors are apparently smiling. The scenario still subsists because the federal government agents claim that it is difficult to determine democratically elected officials of the 774 councils across the country. It is really difficult to determine which LG officials are elected democratically because almost all LG elections are selections of the candidates of the party in power. It is never an election. It is a mere coronation of the chorus singers of the governor in power. Every state LG election is therefore a ruse and not in line with democratic ethos and tenets.

With the way things are going, local government autonomy or even the much-touted financial autonomy granted by the apex court may not see the light of the day because of the inherent contradictions in the system. Granting total autonomy to LGs will cause confusion in the polity. It will amount to creating a state within a state. If LG chairmen cannot take orders from the governors, we are getting set for anarchy of the highest proportion. We must do everything possible to reconfigure our federalism and make it to work. The separation of LG from the states will have dire consequences.

The three tiers of government can only work in theory. In practice, only two tiers of government, federal and state, can work effectively. Local government ought to be a creation of states and not otherwise. The federal government and other stakeholders should quickly address the political matters in Osun, Lagos and Rivers states before they engulf the entire nation. They should also wade into the rumble in the Senate. The courts must be clear in the judgements emanating from them. Clarity in ruling ensures smooth enforcement of court rulings. Where court rulings are ambiguous, they will be extremely difficult to enforce.