Who wants to recall Andy Uba?

By UCHEM OBI

There has recently been some noise about a group which wants to recall Senator Andy Uba from the Senate of the Federal Republic. The group, which goes by the name, Dynamic Youth Organisation of Nigeria, claims to represent youths, students unions and trade unions, community leaders, elder statesmen, women leaders and religious leaders, traditional rulers and artisans. This is quite a handful for an organisation without a forwarding address.

This organisation has three issues with Sen. Uba. The first is that he has not been carrying its members along. The second is that his representation has never been in the interest of the people and thirdly, that he has, in seven years, only represented himself, his family members and friends.

My opinion is that the three individuals that purported to represent this organisation are confused because their three issues are unarguably one issue — that the Senator is not performing creditably in the red chamber of the National Assembly. This, unfortunately, is a non-issue because it contradicts available and verifiable information coming out from the Senate Chambers.

This confusion exposes the profound ignorance of this organisation that claims to represent different classes of Anambra population. Does it mean that not even one of its members, which include students, traders, women, town-union presidents, elder statesmen, clergy, royalties and ordinary people are conversant with information emanating from the Senate, where Sen. Uba represents them? How can they sincerely assess or criticize the Senator when they don’t even know his score-card in the Senate?

To refresh memories and educate the members of the Dynamic Youth Organisation, if indeed they exist, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the highest arm of the nation’s legislature. The core job of the Senate is to make laws for the good governance of the nation. The laws metamorphose from bills mostly sponsored by its members. A Senator is fundamentally assessed by his Functions in the Senate chambers and not by the prejudices of people who evidently know nothing about the Senate or reports on the activities of its members.

If they did, they would have known the foolishness of their intention to recall Sen. Andy Uba from the Senate. They would have known that this doomed ambition of recalling the Senator would only expose them as foolish, ignorant and unserious. This is because Sen. Uba is one of the leading lights in the constitutional functions of the Nigerian Senate.

The records are there in the National Assembly for anyone to peruse and investigate. Suffice to mention here that the Daily Trust Newspaper in reviewing the activities of distinguished Senators reported that Sen. Andy Uba has the highest number of bills in the Senate. “The review showed that Sen. Andy Uba led the chart with 13 bills” (Daily Trust Newspaper, Monday, June 13, 2016.)

Again, on November 23, 2016, the Senate Press Corps (that is the body of journalists covering the Senate and the activities of Senators) conferred an award on Sen. Uba as one of the outstanding Senators of the 8th Senate. Awards like this do not come cheap They show that the Senator is excelling in his functions in the Senate.

It is, therefore, not unpredictable that he was re-elected from the 7th Senate to the 8th Senate with relative ease, thus setting an unprecedented record as the first and only Senator from Anambra State to have won a second tenure in the Senate. The tragedy according to Bertrand Russell is that, “the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” But nothing and no one is in doubt here.      

    Sen. Andy Uba was actually elected into the Senate to join hands with others to formulate laws for the good governance of the Nation. Available and authentic records show that he is doing just that and doing it even more excellently. Rather than this demented idea of recall, the members of this organisation should join hands with the satisfied and proud people of Anambra South Senatorial Zone in commending the distinguished Senator for becoming a champion in the very business he was elected into the Senate to do.

Let me also educate the “members” of the group that senators are not elected into the senate to construct roads or to provide water and electricity. These are the responsibilities of the executive arm of Government. If “they” feel short-changed in the provision of these amenities, their anger and frustration should be properly directed to either the President of the Federal Republic or the Governor of their state. To use the non-provision of these amenities as excuse to fantasize Andy Uba’s recall from the Senate is the worst way of announcing their profile as paid agents of the detractors of the Senator. They seemed to forget or are ignorant of the fact that the famed constituency projects are also in the hands of the Executive as the funds for the projects are not given to the Senators.

If things are really this way and they are, then who is behind the story of Sen. Uba’s recall from the Senate? No one is, indeed, recalling the Senator. The whole noise is really about nothing and about nobody. This is an election year in Anambra and as usual, fraudsters have identified foolish and over ambitious politicians and have begun to sell to them all manner of deluded projects, which as foolish politicians, they buy, in the hope of pulling down people like Sen. Andy Uba, whose towering political presence have made the political space too narrow for them.

This is what the noise is all about. A few “magas” have just drilled holes in the pockets of some “mugus” to ensure their meal tickets. For the right fee, they can be full of sound and fury but truly signifying nothing.

The process of recall is a serious democratic check on failed representatives of the people and not a weapon in the  hands of megalomaniacs, which they abuse at will, as the “members” of the Dynamic Youth Organisation just did. You don’t recall a Senator who, from available records, is a champion in the representation of his people. You don’t recall a Senator, whose philanthropic endeavors dot the entire landscape of Anambra state and beyond. You do not recall a senator who is at the peak of a highly successful tenure in the Senate. To attempt to recall this kind of Senator is akin to fishing in a shark-infested pond, which makes the very wonderful enterprise of fishing a very dangerous and suicidal choice because the real people the Senator represents would stand up to fight against the antics of his detractors.

Sen. Dr. Andy Uba is a great son of Anambra State and has greatly touched and influenced the lives of more people than the organization seeking his recall can claim as members in ten lifetimes. This whole perfidy is an infantile delinquency and should not be carried out in the names of traditional rulers, religious leaders and elder statesmen, especially, when they are not even aware of the existence of any organisation by this name.

The so-called members of this organisation may continue to exploit the naivety of Anambra’s over ambitious political nitwits and smile to the banks daily but they should know that certain projects they are paid to carry out, like making noise about recalling Sen. Andy Uba, are not viable and can only expose them as nitwits also, assuming they are not.

Therefore, no one is recalling Sen. Uba from the Senate except in the fantasies and illusions of desperadoes and their pay masters.   

Obi writes from  Abuja