The Senate 'Roforofo' fight
We have never gotten leadership right since independence in 1960 and if Nigeria must work, we have to have a leadership shake-up.
Senator Abdul Ningi
Today, Tuesday, 12th March 2023, a loaf of ShopRite wheat bread, my family's favourite sold for N1.500. My wife bought our usual two loaves for 3000 naira. One and half weeks ago she bought two for 2600 naira. When we started patronizing ShopRite in 2016 or thereabout, a loaf of wheat bread sold for 400 naira. If things continue the way they are now we might buy the same loaf for two thousand naira by the time the year ends. By that time, my finances may not carry it to eat that bread again. By that time also, there may be no Nigeria again. So, as I explained to a friend who queried why we commoners must be involved in the fight for our senators, our lives are so hugely affected by these leaders that we can't leave politics to them alone, as the late Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said.
In Nigeria especially, our politicians are so rotten and so undisciplined that they must not be left alone. If we leave them alone they will ruin us. Their interest is not the people of Nigeria but their narrow interest and the interest of their families. Experienced mothers know a rotten fish by examining the head of the fish. Once it is greenish, they know the entire fish is rotten. If you want to examine why Nigeria is corrupt through and through, examine the leadership. We have never gotten leadership right since independence in 1960 and if Nigeria must work, we have to have a leadership shake-up.
I have this nagging feeling that there must be a revolution in Nigeria to sweep the current leadership away so that Nigeria can start on a new level. Most Nigerians think we need restructuring, I don't disagree with them on that but if we change to our favourite 1963 constitution which we left in 1966, we will find out our current leaders will ruin us again and lead us to another civil war. We need not only restructuring but also a personnel change. One without the other will leave us running around in circles. I took my theory of a mass revolt to a comfortable family in Lagos and they let me know they had American and British passports and they would be out of Nigeria before the date I thought that mass revolt would take place. I was making my calculations by the misrule of the insensitive and indolent Buhari reign. Truly by the time I felt Nigerians were going to roar in protest, I found out this family had gotten out of the country. So I knew that was the plan of many rich Nigerians. Many in the middle class also don't want my theory of revolution. They told me that I may not escape the revolt. One of them who prides himself as a kingmaker in Nigerian politics agreed with me that they were not choosing the right leadership for Nigeria but that they must keep doing what they do to prevent the lower class from hijacking power because that will be dangerous. They have examples to cite from history. They give examples from Liberia and other West African countries. Despite them, I don't see any way out of a revolution. Would I join the mass revolt, one of them asked me. I told him I would be the first on the street especially now when it getting difficult to afford my ShopRite wheat bread.
That is why the ongoing senate 'Roforofo' fight is for me a comic relief and an assurance that things are going to change in Nigeria. For the younger generation of Nigeria 'Roforofo' fight is a song waxed by the late Afrobeat king, Fela Anikulapo Kuti in his day of intense war against the bad government of Nigeria. Things are going to change not because these dealers who call themselves leaders are going to change but because their fight against one another will expose their well-kept secrets to Nigerians and will engineer a move that will change things.
What is happening now is an implosion and it is inviting the searching attention of Nigerians. What the current leaders fear most, a coup d'etat will not happen not because our soldiers have changed but because of providence and because the people have come to understand that the military is no better, that they are worse and that they have so much raped the nation and contributed immensely to the rot we have now. Before the 2023 elections, I wrote in different essays that a Tinubu rule may be what providence needs to shake Nigeria out of our indolence and stupidity. Tinubu is a master in the dirty game of politics. He gets loyalty by use of prebendalism and use of money. I said the North is going to find him tough to handle. The north itself is very deceptive and they live by divide and rule but as I said they are going to find more than equal march in Tinubu. Tinubu will outclass them naira for naira and even dollar for dollar. When they find him too tough there will be an implosion and Nigeria will seek true freedom from their oppressors through the implosion.
So in the current senate, because some northerners who always wanted to lord it over the rest of the nation could not have their way in the appointment of the Senate leader, they up the ante by reviving the Northern Senators Forum. When these senators fight, it is not for the interest of the common man, not even the interest of the poor in the north of Nigeria whom this wicked oligarchy has put down in the name of Islamic religion practising and preaching a thirteenth-century Islam as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the emir that refused to be called former emir but the 41st emir of Kano was removed in a kangaroo system, meaning Nigerians must expect many wars to come out of Kano emirate.
During Muhammadu Buhari's inglorious eight years of disastrous reign, the northern senators forum was inactive because a northerner, their brother but our oppressor was in the saddle. But as soon as Buhari was out of the power loop and a southerner got in they felt the need for a more active forum to continue their oligarchical stranglehold. Their first duty was to wage war against an administrative decision to transfer a department of CBN to Lagos on the excuse that President Tinubu was planning a return of the capital to Lagos even when it was known that they were fighting to stall the move so that their over-pampered children who were affected by the move will be spared. Even when they have nothing to offer the nation but retrogression and monstrous stealing they must continue to dictate the pace; the worst of us ruling the best of us.
According to Senator Opeyemi Bamidele from Ekiti State, one of the states in decline after having seen many glorious years of leadership in education, the last time the Senate had a Southerner in the saddle as leader was 40 years ago when the late Senator Joseph Wayas was president. Between 1999 and 2007, the Southeast had about four senate leaders in rapid succession because they were being impeached. Even if the PDP, the party in power had zoned the office to the southeast, the northern caucus will not allow them to have peace always because their oligarchic interest must be stroked. After those tumultuous years of eastern senate leadership came about three senate leaders from the north who had times of peace because the north would not move against its own. Now that Godswill Akpabio from the Niger Delta is on the seat, the northerners are back at war to unseat Akpabio before June 2024. That is the game plan, that's why Senator Abdul Ningi rushed to the press to announce the padding of the 2024 budget by about N3 trillion. Nigeria is certainly making progress in the reverse. Time was when leaders stole in millions, then they upgraded to billions and in the Buhari era, the man who falsely claimed to be incorruptible, leaders scaled up stealing to trillions. The pioneer is Godwin Emefiele, the CBN governor who allowed Buhari’s cohorts to pilfer as much as they wanted so that he could stuff away as much as he wanted without anybody bothering him.
This is the time of Tinubu and if anybody expects corruption not to be scaled up that person must be sleeping. That person does know the Tinubu magic in Lagos. But it will be more costly for that magic to be repeated at the federal level. Tinubu knows how to get people to do his bidding with the power of money. Very soon Nigerians at the leadership will be kneeling to greet Tinubu and his family. Do you doubt that? They did it to Buhari too. This will only be in high dimensions. And by the time it ends, you will know why Tinubu took his sons, Seyi and Yinka to Qatar and gave them high rank in Nigeria's diplomatic protocol. One, he was saying to Qatar businessmen and women: if anybody wants to do business with me and with Nigeria, these are the two boys you must see. It never happened in Nigeria but it happened and so many unthinkable things are about to happen. Two, at some point in future, don't be surprised if Tinubu hands over power to Seyi Tinubu. It’s not possible, I hear you murmur. You will be massively disappointed. Who has been ordaining all governors in Lagos since 2007? Tinubu of course and by Nigeria's brand of democracy. The same can happen in Abuja and it will be a matter of cash. Why did Senator Abdul Ningi run to BBC Hausa to announce his alleged padding of the 2024 budget by N3 trillion? Did it happen or did it not? Why did Senator Abdul Ningi resign as the chairman of the Northern Senators forum immediately after he was suspended for three months by his colleagues because they wanted us the commoners to believe that what the senator said was not true? Abdul Ningi was not acting alone, he was acting in cahoots with all senators from the north. He expected their support but when they did not give it he felt betrayed and in protest resigned. Crack in the northern caucus? The first success in Tinubu's deft political move.
Senator Opeyemi Bamidele did not deny that each senator collected N500 million, he only said it was for constituency projects. But why did Senator Agom Jarigbe say he did not collect it? Why was he left out of the constituency money? Perhaps he gives birth to no constituency projects. That will be novel. Senator Opeyemi Bamidele will have to educate the public, otherwise we will have to believe that 500 million naira was a largesse and not a constituency projects allowance. Senator Agom Jarigbe did not say what the senators did in collecting the largesse was wrong, he did not say leaving him out of largesse was in bad faith, he only didn't want the senators to wash their dirty linen in the public. This is why he did not rush to press. Perhaps Senator Abdul Ningi too had been shortchanged in another deal and he had to rush to the press. The distinguished senator as they like to impress on the poor public, but are anything but distinguished in conduct should have followed his example by not rushing to the press. Senator Agom Jarigbe looks like somebody who will like things discussed in hush tones. He is a very good Nigerian, an example of what corruption has made of all of us.
Kudos to Senator Opeyemi Bamidele to whom distinguished activist late Frederick Isiotan Fasheun gave a glowing tribute in his biography. I wonder if the late Fasheun will not be thinking in his grave that he gave his pearl to a swine hearing Opeyemi Bamidele's defence of the 500 million naira largesse. Kudos to Senator Agom Jarigbe who preferred not to have dirty linen washed in public. Without meaning to, he has given Nigerians a weapon to fight with.
Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos