By Abraham Amah
When Abdul Ningi, Senator representing Bauchi Central in the Senate made a scoop of his discovery of alleged N2.7tn padding in the 2024 national budget to the Hausa Service of the BBC, little did he know that he was embarking on a one-man coup plot that would land him in hot soup. The scoop did not edify him before his colleagues because many of them turned their back against him for laying bare their filthy lucre before Nigerians but it also further ruptured the roof of Godswill Akpabio’s Senate that is already leaking.
The story is that Ningi had approached Akpabio in the company of a few Senators and availed him of information which showed that the country was operating a different budget from the one passed by the National Assembly, a discovery he made after he engaged an independent auditor to scrutinise the budget, apparently after he had observed some discrepancies. According to Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Abdul Ningi failed to show him full details of his discovery before going to the BBC and that was the sin that earned him a three-month suspension.
Following Ningi’s scoop, more damaging revelations about Akpabio’s filthy house came to the fore when Senator Jarigbe from Cross River disclosed on the floor of the Senate that some Senators received N500m each for projects, which he did not receive.…..before his microphone went off. This is the third time Akpabio is having an illicit romance with microphone. After a series of denials, it took the face-saving intervention of Senate Leader Bamidle Opeyemi to tell Nigerians that Senators actually received as much N500m for Constituency Projects; a meaningless lexicon which has been used by the Senate to fritter public funds since it found its way into Nigeria’s budgeting process.
Reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1945 Animal Farm, the Napoleon of our Senate, Senator Ali Ndume proclaimed and boasted to Nigerians that ‘all animals are equal but some are more equal than others because he received N1b for Constituency Projects. Unknown to Ali Ndume, his paltry N1b is money for meat pie in Mr. Biggs when compared with Godswill Akpabio’s Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial district which had a whopping N25b earmarked for it for sundry Constituency projects including N2.5b to be used for the provision of deep freezers and generators as part of women empowerment for ten local government areas and N500m for the installation of solar street lights.
The uncommon governor of Akwa Ibom State who did uncommon things to change the face of Akwa Ibom where he was governor for eight years, Godswill Akpabio as Senate President has continued to display uncommon callousness and recklessness in running the Senate since he became its President in June 2023. Gaffe after gaffe, Akpabio has consistently shown Nigerians that he is not fit to be a Senator, much more, the presiding officer of the once hallowed Chamber which has turned into an institutional ridicule and embarrassment not just to itself but to Nigerians as well.
The first sign of Akpabio’s unruly conduct was his nonchalant display of insensitivity with the ‘let the poor breathe’ joke in the heat of the crushing hardship this government led Nigerians into in the early days of this administration. Unmindful of the fact that a society’s worth is measured not by how it protects the strong but the way it protects the vulnerable, Akpabio sent N20m to Senator’s bank accounts for their recess when millions of Nigerians are languishing in poverty, with more millions unable to afford a meal a day.
The N20m was sent to each Senator’s mailbox according to Akpabio after his Senate had shared a whooping N70b with members of the House of Representatives to retrofit their offices and wardrobes even when everything in Nigeria was going down and all the economic indices were showing negative. Worst of all, that was the first loan borrowed by the Bola Tinubu government to assuage the hellish impact of the fuel subsidy removal that kickstarted the present economic downturn that seems irreversible.
Akpabio’s litany of misdemeanour reeks of incompetence, inexperience and insensitivity to the challenges facing Nigeria at the moment. In handing an illegal three-month suspension to Senator Abdul Ningi without passing through the established process of trial and fair hearing by the Senate’s Ethics and Privileges Committee, Akpabio has simply shown that he is power drunk and incapable of moderating a legislature that should be the backbone of a country in search of a new/ beginning to give hope and succour to the millions of people who wallow in despair.
Lacking in the historical knowledge of the house he superintends, Akpabio is gradually digging holes in the already shaken foundation of the Senate that would bring down the house in no distant time. The Senate Rule in Order 67 (4) is very clear that a member should not be suspended for more than 14 days after it has referred the matter to the Ethics and Privileges Committee for trial and recommendation. In recent history, the Senate has always made a jest of itself by not following appropriate measures to discipline its erring members because the courts have reversed all the suspensions on Senators.
Under Akpabio’s watch, the Senate has come under very embarrassing moments, caused not by outsiders but through the words of its leader, a man who speaks before he thinks. It is difficult to reconcile Akpabio’s political immaturity with the high level political positions he has occupied in Nigeria; commissioner, governor, minister and now Senate President. As governor, he publicly said he was giving hungry PDP chairmen N1m each for lunch in Mr. Biggs in the presence of PDP National Chairman Bamanga Tukur, publicly claimed to have rigged election in favour of a Senatorial candidate in the presence of Minister of Information Labaran Maku and capped it up with “what money cannot do, too much money can do” in veiled reference to his uncanny ability to buy over political opponents.
During the burial of late Herbert Wigwe in Isiokpo a fortnight ago, Akpabio turned the solemn occasion into a political comic and made a misadventure of himself when he attacked Governor Governor Sim Fubara after he had done so during another occasion and asked the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike to replace Sim Fubara with someone from Ogoni. In the height of the recent massacre of 16 soldiers in Okuama in Delta State, Senate President was quick to exonerate the people of Niger Delta as the killers even before a full scale investigation is conducted.
Godswill Akpabio represents a new low in Nigeria’s political leadership and the Senate he leads is quite unrepresentative of the yearnings and aspirations of the majority of Nigerians that look up to it for good governance. Unfortunately, a very few Senators are exempt from this assault on the intelligence of Nigerians as all of them are in cahoots with the shenanigans of Akpabio, otherwise they would have called him to order. More worrisome is the fact the other Principal leaders of the Senate do not represent a different aspiration.
Efforts by Opeyemi Bamidele to reduce Abdul Ningi’s scoop to a coup plot to feather ethnic nest, is to say the least unintelligent and uninspiring because the budget padding is actually a crime against all Nigerians. In the words of Bill Clinton, “the road to tyranny, we must admit, begins with the destruction of the truth.” The Senate needs to do a self evaluation of itself and begin to reinvent itself to serve the purpose it is meant to serve. Under the present leadership, the Senate is self-serving and until the person of Godswill Akpabio is shoved aside, the house would fall before it runs through its first year. It has already started falling.
Abraham Amah is Abia PDP Vice Chairman/Acting State Publicity Secretary
