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One certain thing when former President Muhammadu Buhari was leaving office on May 29 this year was that whoever succeeded him would be caught up in a bind of financial quagmire. The man had so messed up the system, he was even practically begging to leave, voicing out repeatedly his desire to leave when he could no longer cope.
Unfortunately, Bola Tinubu, on whom Buhari’s smudged mantle fell, perhaps, overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem he inherited, compounded the situation from his first day in office by announcing the removal of fuel subsidy one month ahead of schedule. Nigerians have been facing the most grueling period of their lives ever since that announcement.
The restive populace has been up in arms, led by the organised labour, which threatened to shut down the country, and even pulled down the gate of the National Assembly Complex in Abuja during its protest but was deceived by empty promises of palliatives.
The promises are beginning to unfurl in our Animal Kingdom where some Nigerians are born to suffer while others enjoy. This manifested when Senate President Godswill Akpabio announced in plenary that he had sent ‘tokens’ to the lawmakers to enable them ENJOY their holiday.
“In order to enable all of us to enjoy our holidays, a token has been sent to our various accounts by the Clerk of the National Assembly,” he said. The holidays commenced on August 7 to September 26.
His insensitivity to the plight of ordinary Nigerians has stirred umbrage among the suffering people, who have now seen the underbelly of the kind of people supposedly leading them.
This same Akpabio was pleading with the protesting Nigerians to exercise patience with the government, even after admitting that the people were passing through grueling times occasioned by the government’s ill-digested policies. Now, while the masses endure, the leaders enjoy. God dey!
When corrected, Akpabio made matters worse by turning the tokens into prayer points.
The embarrassment was numbing. In fact, the tokens or prayers are strange to the law of the land. The legally approved senator’s entitlement is an annual salary of N2,026,400 and N202,240 recess allowances. The Senate President’s annual pay is N2,483,242, and N248,424 as recess allowance. As for the Deputy Senate President, his annual salary is N2,309,166, and his recess allowance is N230,916. 21.
It is a thing of concern that these ‘super Nigerians’ received almost their annual salary for a recess that is less than two months while many Nigerians are being owed their paltry minimum wage of N30,000.00 for several months.
However, there has been talk that Akpabio received N1 billion from ministerial nominees. It is not clear whether this is the source of Akpabio’s unbudgeted prayer points but many are worried and asking how some of the ministerial nominees, especially the clearly unqualified and comic ones, were cleared to perpetuate the misrule in the land.
If this was true, Akpabio may have also cheated fellow lawmakers because the prayer points were reportedly N2 million per senator, which came to N218 million for a total of 109 senators. Where has the remaining money gone? This may stir its own trouble in the near future.
Some people also speculate that the tokens came from the N70 billion allocated to the National Assembly in the amended 2022 supplementary budget, which President Tinubu proposed in the supplementary budget “to support the working conditions of new members”, and was promptly approved by the lawmakers. This was irrespective of the hefty allocation of N228.1 billion to the National Assembly in the 2023 budget, which was actually increased by about N59.1 billion. Buhari had proposed N169 billion.
It is suspected that the gesture was Tinubu’s deft move to have the lawmakers inside his ‘sokoto’, but time will tell.
Be that as it may, these mindboggling expenditures by a government that is preaching patience and belt-tightening, a gospel for the lesser animals, clearly show that the sufferings of Nigerians have taken a turn for the worst.
Indeed, Akpabio’s plea that the people should exercise patience is a good call, as this government actually inherited an empty shell except that while the masses exercise patience, Akpabio would be dispensing huge largesse to his members to enjoy their holiday, and considering also that Tinubu is about leading Nigeria to a headless and unsolicited war in Niger Republic. How irresponsibly unfeeling could our leaders be?
Nigerian lawmakers are notorious for helping themselves heftily through illegal allowances from the public treasury and budget padding but this latest affront with prayer arsenal, coming at a time when there is nationwide economic hardship caused by the removal of fuel subsidy is most unconscionable.
Nevertheless, it is also feared in some quarters that Akpabio’s prayer points may actually be a blackmail to rope the lawmakers into the supposed bribe from ministerial nominees. Unfortunately, even though he prayed amiss, no senator has been bold enough to return the prayer points back to the sender, Akpabio.
One of the senators magnanimously vouched for his former lecturer’s nice qualities during the ministerial screening, and the man’s past good deeds made a way for him. But where is Nasir el-Rufai, the pugnacious ex-governor of Kaduna? The stench of his bigotry clung too tightly to his sparse skin it fouled the air in the hallowed chamber of the senate. The lawmakers had to cover their noses and suspended him in mid-air.
He has reportedly travelled to Egypt after attacking President Tinubu, who was not the cause of his troubles. That he has travelled to Egypt where he ought to be coming out from exposes the depth of his descent. Whatever a man sows, he reaps, including Akpabio and those in power today. Tomorrow is pregnant; nobody knows whether it would birth a monster or Siamese twins.
