LITTLE ENDS: A day in the life of the National Assembly

I am not playing on the title of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s great novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. I am coming from the Yoruba proverb, “omo buruku l’ojo tie.” Yes, even the most wayward or useless child has his or her own day - that day, just that one day, when a child that one habitually dismisses on account of congenital bad behaviour suddenly makes (some) sense - before sadly returning to his or her ways.

Nigeria’s otherwise forgettable National Assembly recently had its day in the voices of one “Honourable” Representative and one “Distinguished” Senator respectively. Taken together, the statements credited to the two members of the National Assembly may be the only time that that expensive but colossal failure of an institution has said or done anything that truly deserves the attention of the Nigerian people since 1999.

First was Patricia Etteh taking serious exception to the PDP’s handling of national affairs on the floor of the House! I had to read her utterances as reported by NEXT twice to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming. She complained about the state of the nation and lamented bitterly that things have gone from bad to worse on the watch of the PDP. She was particularly scandalised by the party’s handling of the electoral situation in Anambra. In essence, Patricia Etteh, a corrupt party ‘Chieftainess’, feels that her good name and reputation are being ruined by the PDP! A member of the PDP takes exception to corruption, bad governance, and electoral malpractices! Just what is the world coming to? Thankfully, party members in the House shouted her down and returned her to the PDP’s core philosophy before she carried her unwelcome sanity too far. I’d be surprised if she didn’t face a disciplinary committee eventually for anti-party utterances.

Enter Senator Smart Adeyemi. Now, here I am seriously tempted to gloat that the only Senator who has ever added anything worthwhile to national conversation since 1999 is from my own neck of the woods. Piqued by the scale of looting he sees around him, Senator Adeyemi suggested we travel on China’s road to zero corruption: execute anybody found guilty of corruption. I do not know any Nigerian who wouldn’t be inclined to support Senator Adeyemi’s call for the death penalty as comeuppance for corruption.

The few voices of dissent I have encountered thus far are moved by some of the routine pro-life arguments one encounters in the anti-death penalty community globally. But when discussing corruption in Nigeria, we must be careful to distinguish between crimes against the Nigerian state and crimes against the Nigerian people. That state - a criminal state as currently constituted - has always used the death penalty for crimes she says some citizens have committed against her. She executed Ken Saro-Wiwa. She even went as far as executing the troika of Bartholomew Owoh, Bernard Ogedengbe, and Lawal Ojulope retroactively in 1984.

If innocent people could be put to death for crimes not committed against a state run by publicly acknowledged criminals in Abuja, how much more those who commit mass murder against the Nigerian people?

Corruption is not a crime against the Nigerian state. The Nigerian state is corruption and you cannot commit corruption against corruption. Corruption is a crime of mass murder against the Nigerian people. Criminals like Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Andy Uba, Bode George, Lucky Igbinedion, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, James Ibori, and Tafa Balogun are mass murderers when you consider the human costs of the billions they loot(ed).

Tony Anenih’s millions translate to the caskets - sorry, coffins, only the rich get caskets - of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who have died needlessly on the roads he did not fix; James Ibori’s millions equal the death of thousands of kids that could have been saved by the hospitals his loot could have built and supplied with drugs; Ibrahim Babangida’s health safaris stretch from Monaco to California, funded by the millions he stole from children and women that are dying in Nigeria because they drink contaminated water or cannot buy drugs from the patent medicine store.

The only thing one could add to Senator Adeyemi’s heartening recommendation is that electoral rigging, another crime against the Nigerian people, should also attract the death penalty. Our situation is sufficiently desperate for such desperate solutions. Where to start? Oh, Senator Adeyemi’s boss, David Mark, was not elected. He rigged his way from Makurdi to Abuja. Let’s start with him. Let’s try him for corruption and electoral rigging.