Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, caught the attention of many
Nigerians last week. On Wednesday, at the end of the plenary session,
the former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, oblivious he was still on live
television, announced to his colleagues that the clerk of the National
Assembly would send tokens to their various bank accounts to enable
them enjoy their holiday. Aghast, few of his colleagues immediately
approached him to call his attention to the gaffe and Akpabio had to
withdraw his statement in an embarrassing attempt to switch ‘tokens’ to
‘prayers’. I and many others had a good laugh after watching the clip
that quickly went viral.
Akpabio is a good man with a large heart. I met him while he was the
Governor of Akwa Ibom state, and he came across as someone who is
ready to go out of his way to make others comfortable. He called himself
an uncommon governor, and his achievements while in that state
endeared him to his people. Again, his loyalty to President Bola Tinubu
and the huge votes he delivered to the All Progressive Congress, APC,
during the presidential election, made his choice for Senate Presidency
very easy for Tinubu to endorse. Now is the time for him to learn the
ropes and adjust quickly to the nuances in the legislative arm of
government.
Sending tokens to lawmakers is not new in Nigeria. It has been part of
our political evolution and it is not likely to die soon. Akpabio’s sin was
that he innocently broadcasted the token issue to the whole world. Now,
the said token which he later changed to prayers, according to most
witches and wizards in Nigeria, is a hefty sum of N2m that has been sent
to each of our Senators. The principal officers may get more. They have
just worked for less than two months following the inauguration of
members of the National Assembly on June 13. Their colleagues in the
House of Representatives, we have been told, are now screaming blue
murder as no such ‘token’ has been extended to them. Theirs may be on
the way too. Our Senators have a ‘token’ that would enable them to
enjoy their holiday but many Nigerians, who have no holiday in the first
instance, and must work daily to survive due to hunger and deprivation,
have nothing to fall back on. The largesse must have come from the
screening and confirmation of Ministerial nominees sent to the
lawmakers by President Bola Tinubu. It is good to be a politician in
Nigeria.
Our Senators have millions to cushion the hardship of fuel price hikes
and the unification of the dual exchange rate which has seen the Naira
on a free fall in the last few weeks, yet, millions of Nigerians have been
told to bear with the government. They could not afford to go on holiday
as hunger is permanently keeping them company. I hope they will not
turn hungry Nigerians into angry citizens. If the poor can’t sleep, it
would be advisable for the rich to sleep with one eye open.
While the poor continue to wallow in their poverty, their sufferings are
about to be taken a notch higher as Heads of State of the Economic
Community of West African States, ECOWAS, has directed its standby
force to be on red alert for a possible military invasion of Niger. If there
is an armed conflict between ECOWAS and Niger, many poor Nigerians
will bear the brunt owing to the fact that there are seven northern states
that share borders with the Niger Republic.
Niger has been in the news since July 26, when military adventurists
arrested the democratically elected government of the country and
proclaimed themselves rulers. But the ECOWAS, headed by Bola
Ahmed Tinubu feels that coup d’etat is gradually becoming rampant in
the West African sub-region and there was the need to put a check to it.
The regional body few days after the coup gave the coupists seven days
to restore the democratically elected government headed by President
