SERAP IN THE NEWS

Doesn’t it know that law making is serious business; so our NASS lawmakers certainly deserve
more than the little comforts they are asking for?

I wonder what the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) hopes to gain from persistent criticism of our democratically elected leaders. Whenever they hear that the Federal Government wants to spend some huge sums of money, they kick. When our lawmakers in the National Assembly want to spoil themselves on our behalf, SERAP would complain. It is as if the essence of the group is always to kill the joy of our very important personalities.

The latest problem of the group will shock you to the marrow. SERAP is threatening our National Assembly (NASS) members that they should perish the thought of buying very good cars for themselves. As a matter of fact, they told our almighty Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and the House of Representatives Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas, in unequivocal terms to drop the idea of spending “N40 billion on 465 exotic and bulletproof cars for members and principal officials and N70 billion as ‘palliatives’ for new members”.

Just hear the deputy director of the busybody group, Kolawole Oluwadare: Akpabio and Abbas must “repeal the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act to reduce the budget for the National Assembly by N110 billion, to reflect the current economic realities in the country and address the impact of the removal of fuel subsidy on the over 137 million poor Nigerians.” That is not all. SERAP also told the senate president and the speaker to “request President Bola Tinubu to present a fresh supplementary appropriation bill, to redirect the N110 billion to address the situation of the over 20 million out- of-school children in Nigeria, for the approval of the National Assembly.” So, the group even knows the solution to our country’s out-of-school children better than our honourable lawmakers? What effrontery?

Perhaps if the group had stopped here, the duo won’t have felt too offended. But the group still continued: “While N70 billion ‘support allowance’ is budgeted for 306 new lawmakers, only N500 billion worth of palliatives is budgeted for 12 million poor Nigerians. N40 billion is also allocated to buy 465 Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and bullet-proof cars for members and principal officials.”

As if all these are not insulting enough, SERAP threatened the lawmakers with law suit if they did not do its bidding within seven days. “We would be grateful (pocket your gratitude) if the recommended measures are taken within seven days of the receipt and/or publication of this letter…” Please let me stop here. Despite not being the one that SERAP wrote, I am already losing my temper over the group’s impudence and lack of respect for our lawmakers.

Is SERAP not aware of the saying that ‘all animals are equal but some are more equal than others’? What current economic realities is it talking about? What is new anywhere under the sun? What realities are Nigerians facing now that other people have not faced in other parts of the world? So, because the average Nigerian has been relieved of the burden of fuel subsidy which they were all the while carrying for a few over-pampered thieves in the country, and they are now carrying it for and by themselves, SERAP thinks that is enough reason for all Nigerians (including our lawmakers) to be living like paupers in a perpetually potentially rich country like ours.  SERAP please stop this rude joke.

How can anyone in his right senses be asking our own lawmakers to use made-in-Nigeria cars, for example? Pray, if such very important personalities use locally made cars, what will ordinary Nigerians use? What is wrong if the ‘ogas’ at the top in the NASS have bullet-proof cars? Is SERAP not aware that it is only for the less privileged that life has no duplicate? Does the group know how much it costs Nigeria to produce one NASS member? So we should not make provision for more than one life for the ‘ogas’ there, having invested so much to be national lawmakers? Haba SERAP! We should even be grateful that they are not asking for bullet-proof cars for every member of NASS. SERAP and their co-travellers who don’t agree with this prudent decision had better retrace their steps before our lawmakers change their mind and decide to buy bullet-proof cars for all of them. Such antagonists should remember that the NASS members would take the cars away when they are leaving and we would have to make provision for the latest model for their successors.

At this juncture, I implore all well-meaning Nigerians to join me in tendering an unreserved apology to Akpabio and Abass on behalf of SERAP. The almighty senate president and speaker should not mind the youthful exuberance of supposedly mature executive officers of the group. They should realise that no matter how good a child knows how to eat wrapped pap, it would always mess up his hand.

At any rate, it would seem this is a season of apologies. Our own Mmesoma Ejikeme, the one who suddenly woke up on Sunday, July 2, and told us that she topped the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) with 362 marks finally apologised for lying to the world on Wednesday, at least two clear weeks after we had all known that she lied. She actually scored 249.

I guess those who were tutoring her saw the danger in her not apologising, hence her change of mind. There was first the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) ban for three years which was dangling over her fate like the sword of Damocles. Her tutors also probably realised that this was even a slap on the wrist compared to the sentence Mmesoma would face if the matter went to court. Afterall, at 19, she is no longer a minor.

If our NASS members did not reject this apology (mind you the ‘truce’ between JAMB and Mmesoma took place right in the NASS), there is no reason why they would not accept the one I am tendering on behalf of SERAP for its executive members’ audacity to talk to them as if they were talking to their mates.

The problem is that some people do not seem to understand the limits of democracy.  They think democracy confers on the people the right to run their mouths ‘sho sho sho’ all over the place.

My dear Senate President and Speaker, it is you I have to plead with. The kind of insult that you got from SERAP is not uncommon with people like you. But you have to understand that your exalted positions have more or less made you a dunghill where all manner of people come to dump all manner of garbage. At a critical juncture like this, you have to sip from the well of patience. I can understand how you feel. In fact, but for your loving kindness, the SERAP people who don’t know that honour must be given to whom it is due would have been cooling their heels somewhere now, eating half-boiled beans with gari and coconut. I promise on their behalf that this would be the last time that such  a thing would happen from the recalcitrant group.

Ordinarily I should have marched them to the NASS straightaway so they can use their own mouths to apologise. But I must be assured your anger has simmered down. Who will such happen to that would not feel sufficiently embarrassed? SERAP’s director would lead the apology train with the letter of apology whose content has to be to your taste and in your humble image, followed by his deputy, Oluwadare, who behaved like the turning stick that does not know how to reject errand, by signing the insulting letter addressed to you.

As a matter of fact, the apology visit would be well publicised. The world’s media leaders, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and our own local media would cover the great event live, with the SERAP leader and his team prostrating while giving you the letter. They would remain in that position until you tell them to get up. The lesson from Nigeria should reverberate around the world; other recalcitrant persons and groups wherever they may be under the sun must have something to learn about how to respect people in power. If that must be Nigeria’s contribution to such topic, it is jolly well worth it.

As I always say, a hunchback cannot appreciate what people who stand straight unaided go through until he decides to do same. My dear senate president you have to know that these people are behaving the way they are because they don’t know what it takes to have been governor for eight years in our kind of country where it is easier to make paradise than it is to survive the do-or-die battles that people fight before getting to such offices. Not only that, you had been minister; not one in charge of admin where all you deal with are files and piles of files, but in a juicy one like the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs which also is no mean feat. Now that you have, in the tradition of some of your predecessors, gone to the next level, instead of congratulating you for making it to this point, some misguided elements are not even allowing you to settle down to know what is where before threatening you with an ultimatum.

I learnt you people are already contemplating quitting the office if this is the reward you will get from an unappreciative people who do not know the sleepless nights you suffer to make Nigeria great. But you can’t do that. The country still needs your service.

You see, I am not worried about the larger NASS members because I know once both of you forgive SERAP, your colleagues know the group stays forgiven. Kindly fix a date for this great event. Even SERAP and its leaders are looking forward to it. I can tell you, Mr Senate President and Honourable Speaker, they are now remorseful. They have realised their mistake and would come not only with a letter of apology but also individual undertaking never to do such again.

They have now known that people like you who represent others are there to enjoy on behalf of those you represent for better for better, for richer for richer, and in good health alone. The ‘for worse’ is reserved for the hoi polloi. SERAP and its co-travellers must realise that our lawmakers can only give their best when they have the comforts of life that SERAP in its ignorance wants to deny them. Lawmaking is enervating. Good lawmaking, like the one we have been having in Nigeria, is even more so.

Less than two months into a four-year round of enjoyment in the first instance, and some people are already complaining. What kind of people are we? Please let no one truncate this ‘enyoyment’.

— Editorial of The Nation Newspaper