LITTLE ENDS: The Speaker does violence to meaning

Pius Adesanmi

The frenetic pace of farce generation in Nigeria is a columnist's worst nightmare.

I had initially decided to write this week about Isah Yuguda, the CEO of Aides Multipliers Nigeria Plc, after reading that President Yar'Adua's son in-law had fired over a thousand aides, mostly idle personal and special assistants, when the headlines screamed that we had lost another twenty-two lives to a road accident in Kano.

This comes a week after twenty-two members of the same family perished in a previous road accident in Kano, apart from the seventy souls we lost to yet another fatal road accident on the Okene-Auchi-Benin road! I was still trying to settle for one of these two subjects when Dimeji Bankole broke the deadlock.

In his contribution to the so-called Democracy Day celebrations, the House Speaker veered into the question of leadership and good governance - the horse he has been flogging since he got an undeserved Canadian platform to perorate on good governance, only to go and brandish gunboat democracy in Ekiti as soon as he got back to Nigeria.

First the good news: a residue of the mind trained and humanized by Oxford University miraculously managed to come across in the Speaker's Democracy Day message to Nigerians.

He distinguished between rulership and leadership, a key distinction I have sustained in this column, borne out of my conviction that Nigeria neither has leaders nor leadership at the moment.

Then the bad news: Dimeji Bankole adjudged himself a leader who is determined to continue to provide qualitative leadership.

Nigerians deserve leaders and not rulers; hence he and members of his PDP cabal in Abuja will continue to be leaders! Sometimes you can't help but feel truly sorry for Nigeria and Nigerians.

It is not enough that our country and state are in the hands of totally visionless and corrupt characters, they must insult our intelligence by continuously invading the space of public meaning with an untidy combination of solipsism, sophistry, and conceptual malapropism.

One recalls that in March 2008, former Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu, had publicly humoured himself by declaring that "the good ones among us" are "honestly embarrassed" by the state of the country. Yes, Mantu included himself among Nigeria's "good leaders"! I wrote an op-ed at the time asking Alhaji Mantu if he had forgotten that he even looted Allah after looting Nigeria: as Amirul Hajj in 2005/2006, he had supervised the disappearance of a hefty bunch of American dollars in Mecca.

If examples of Nigeria's rulers grandstanding as leaders in the public sphere are legion, Dimeji Bankole's take on the issue is important because he is the first, as far as I know, to have paid attention to nuance by acknowledging the difference between leader and ruler.

By the same token, he is acknowledging the struggle for meaning between the ruler and the ruled. If Mr. Bankole looks around in Abuja and sees only leaders and leadership, he needs to urgently dust his Oxford notebooks and reacquaint himself with what his professors taught him about the characteristics of leadership.

I am sure they did not teach him that you could waddle through one giant corruption scandal after the other - Peugeot contract scam now safely under the carpet, alleged involvement in Rural Electrification Agency contract scams - and still get to define leadership for your country.

I am sure no one in Oxford taught him that he could make his predecessor, Patricia Etteh, look like an apprentice looter and still get to imagine himself a leader.

Let's be clear: Dimeji Bankole is not a leader. He is not even on the track to earning that designation. Although they are not there yet, Babatunde Fashola and Sullivan Chime are working hard to earn that descriptor - leaders - from the people of Nigeria.

And they are not doing yeye ego talk: just working and avoiding corruption scandals. Mr. Bankole will eventually earn those funny PDP designations by merit: chieftain and stakeholder.

Let him humour himself with those. The PDP and the ruling class have won the struggle to define and invent stakeholders and chieftains and no one is quarrelling with them over that.

Expectedly, they have bastardized the two. Any charlatan with access to a good tailor who can sew a babanriga or an agbada in Abuja, immediately begins to call himself chieftain and stakeholder.

We, the people, have lost everything to our rulers in Abuja. Let's not concede the true meaning of leadership to them. They don't get to define that.

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Reader Comments (4)

Posted by fellentino on Jun 06 2009

Pius! Bankole is right, defining leadership is relative... if he thinks getting on the podium to deliver a speech, to party loyalist,makes him a leader so be it... He is foolingonly himself

Posted by Gbeborun on Jun 06 2009

Pius! Pius! Pius! How many times I call you? Abeg leave our darling Speaker-Leader alone O. Democracy means the freedom for anyone to run his or her mouth. Dimeji Bankole has the right to his delusions. I will defend his right to be deluded with my last breath! That's one of the dividends of democracy.

Posted by Bruce UGIOMOH on Jun 07 2009

Teacher Pius, What gave you the temerity to refer a (dis)honourable member of the National Assembly to his school notes at Oxford? Did you for one moment thought you were talking to your Canadian Students? Please confine yourself to the activities of Dimeji Bankole's political opponents who are trying to distract the speaker of the House of Representatives, from performing his leadership activities! Your Leadership (101) lecture will definitely be discountenanced by Mr Speaker who is not only a garrulous upstart, but bad news to his generation and our great Nation of good people! I don't envy your job as a columnist, but I appreciate a well crafted piece, the economic meltdown notwithstanding. Thanks.

Posted by Chief Kayode Odunaro JP on Jun 07 2009

My Dear Adesanmi, Compliments. The piece is well written if I am permitted to say so and this is from somebody I can vouch is not writing for a consideration or some other interest as many are wont to do. In that case the compliment and criticism of Dimeji Bankole as a leader is in order. But even at that the piece still follow the usual path of a onesided article which I dare say is not objective. It has always been said that a one-sided coin is not a legal tender. It may even be acceptable if one side is defaced but for Adesanmi to see no leadership qualities or action on the part of Bankole is to say the least uncharitable. Let face it at the societal level it is often said that a society deserve the leaders it gets except the society is willing to cede its leadership to alien in which case it accept the accompanying degradation as an inferior race. Given the above Bankole is a product of all of us. Under the circumstance of all that has transpired in Nigeria as a nation that is even older than the young man people should realise that Bankole even with the best leadership credential has to work within certain established parameters, good or bad, that he can only challenged gradually in a democratic setting. One s proud to say that even within those parameters Bankole has distinguished himself gallantly by providing leadership in areas with serious societal raminifications. A few that are in the public domain but which Adesanmi never acknowledge even with a phrase would suffice while one is aware of a lot that are not in public domain where this Nigerian has registered his name as an agent of positive change. As far as I know Bankole led House of Representatives popularise the issue of returning unspent funds in Budget to be captured in subsequent budget. Hitherto, huge fund running into Billions disappear into private pockets from unspent funds from unexecuted appropriations through bogus end of year contracts that are unexecuted and still captured in incoming budget! From 2007 Nigeria got wiser to the looting of unspent fund as Bankole led House ensured that a paltry N23billion unspent fund presented in the budget grew to N450billion! This was now reappropriated in the 2008 Budget. I as seeit leadership is not just some form of oratoral pontification. It has to be back by conscious actions and this is an area Bankole is TRYING to do something differently even when some can only see ALLEGATIONS AND COMMENTS by him as the major leadership yardstick. Adesanmi should imagine where we would have been if this unspent fund issue has been on at least during our last 10 years of democracy. In the 2008 budget N350 billion was return as unspent funds and presently there are varioud litigation in court relating to mishandling of unspent fund. Again, Bankole led House through its Finance Committee pursuant of it oversight function discovered that over N3 trillion was not remitted into the Federation Account by revenue generatin agencies of the government as it should constitutionally in the last five years alone. If this has been used as expected, one is sure service delivery and our infrastruture would not be in the parlous state they are today. Legislation is presently before the House to block the lacuna giving rise to this unacceptable situation. Leaving financial matter to an area that Adesanmi touched on albeit in relation to another in the negative but an area where Bankole has exhibited leadership. The Hajj operations in Nigeria is always a yearly source of shame and embarrassment to Nigeria in its failure to do that which other nations take for granted. That was until Bankole was made the Amirul Hajj of 2008. With zeal and yes leadership acumen that is yet to be acknowledge Bankole broke a failure jinx of over 20 years for Nigeria. For the first time the problematic airlift of pilgrims was completed a clear 4 days before the closure of Jeddah Airport. The return journey also recorded a feat as all pilgrims that are not sick were brought home 2 days ahead of scheduled. Of course Bankole had to work etra hard to achieve this even having to return to Saudi Arabia to get concessions for opening of a new clearance point. Hitherto in the media the failure in this area is usually a well celebrated story(ies). But this modicum of success that should be celebrated and benchmarked for future has been gloss over by people fixated on Bankole occasional and usually misinterpreted utterances on some burning national issues. As aforesaid, I will not bore you my brother with some of the things that Bankole is champioining to advance the cause of majority of Nigeria, But let it be noted that Bankole under the circunstance of Nigeria and not USA or some other utopian model as some are wont to compare is trying his best to fulfil a generational mandate that is still under attack by old paradigm. It is quite uncharitable as Adesanmi has done to judge Bankole on the basis of scandals- just two- that are to the best of my knowledge mere ALLEGATION just as Adesanmi rightly wrote in his piece. Indeed, in one of the instance a forged document was giving to someone in Bankole's generation to sustain a false allegation. When this became apparent and Police were ready to investigate and prosecute for forgery and perjury, the man whom has been sold a dummy by political enemies of Bankole quickly rushe to court to stall investigation and certain prosecution! One is aware that the expectation is high for Bankole to be a generational redeeming factor but he is also human and have to work with established norms that only him can only begin to scratch the surface from his legislative position. All in all ,we still see the Adesanmi article as a clarion call for correction and intensification of action on WHAT MUST BE DONE TO MAKE OUR NATION GREAT. All points well taken. Chief Kayode Odunaro JP.