When Big Dogs Bark in the Red Chamber –By Jerry Ochada
Nigeria can still be described in fairness to factual narrations as a Third World Country but our legislators are living large at the expense of the poor masses.
Everybody cannot be a legislator but the electorates who are voting for their reps in the National Assembly are musing in grief and agony.
Either in the Red or Green Chambers, these Senators and Honourable Members of the House of Representatives (HoR) are living BIG in terms of salaries and they are one of the most exploitative income earners in the world.
Little wonder, a legislator was seen and read on the pages of newspaper in recent times calling for the increments of their take home pay and allowances. According to this Oliver Twist, legislators are underpaid in Nigeria.
Shame of a Nation!
Nobody is even asking these Senators what they do with their constituency development allowances. In case you don’t know, they collect these monies annually as giveaway promos, illegitimately sponsored by the Federal government as captured by the Appropriation Act.
It is very sad, shaming and hurtful to calculate the annual earnings of a sitting Senators in Nigeria. Yes, sitting Senators.
Just like the name implies, many of them are “sitting” Senators. They sit in the hallowed chamber to warm the seats then return to their constituencies during the campaign and electioneering season to hustle for more votes chanting fallacious electoral manifestos. In reality, some of these Senators are bereft of any tangible ideas; they are not even aware of happenings in their various constituencies.
The recent hullabaloo in the Nigerian Senate has further exposed a lot of shady dealings in the National Assembly. To be realistic, budget padding is not a recent development in Nigeria except we want to shy away from the truth.
Padding of the national budget is an annual ritual codified to enrich greedy politicians– especially the ruling class – at the expense of the poor. It is not a new trend.
Therefore, the recent observations incited by Senator Abdul Ningi (Bauchi Central) is just a mere pointer to other fraudulent engagements holding sway in the Senate under the ‘sterling’ leadership of Senator Godswill Akpabio.
Senator Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe (Cross River North) crowned it all when he complained that as a high ranking Senator, some of his colleagues got a whooping sum of 500 million naira as part of their loot from the 2024 Budget tagged as Constituency Development Allowance.
In short, the Senate Chief Whip, Senator Ali Ndume (Borno South) justified Jarigbe’s claims when he asserted that he benefited more because of his portfolio in the Senate. Really?
We joke a lot in this country. We are suffering from misplacement of priorities. Else, revelations and testimonies from the 10th Senate can trigger a national protest calling for transparency in leadership. In a saner clime, the Senate President and his battalion of “high ranking Senators” fingered in this mess ought to have resigned while a probe will be initiated but this is Nigeria. Allegations are always trivialized especially when the culprits are bigwigs full of looting talents.
Which way Nigeria?
For a country that is battling to pay the sum of 30,000 naira as minimum wage, echoes of the barking of the big dogs streaming from the Red Chamber is deafening and very disgusting. This is a clear illustration of the inhumanity of man to man. It must not continue!
At this juncture, our politicians must rethink because it is lucid they are hellbent on sinking our ships especially now that the country has been tossed to embrace the whirlwinds of President Tinubu’s economic policies.
To this end, there is no gainsaying, Nigerians are suffering. An average Nigerian (including myself) is finding it hard to afford his/her basic needs but in a sharp contrast to the current realities, our senators are busy scrabbling for personal gains amidst untold hardships in the land and the sufferings of the common man. These ostentatious spendings and public display of criminality has further earned us a bad name in the international community.
Let the truth be told: No foreign investor would want to commit their hard earned resources to invest in a nation where the leaders have proved to the world – beyond reasonable doubts – by showcasing their identity tag of looting spree. Yes! The recent outburst by the high ranking Senators is a strong attestation of the embezzlement tactics inherently sinking the fortunes of an already suffocating Giant of Africa.
Since the big dogs cannot vacate their seats, they should cover their faces in shame instead of striving in vain to justify their loots without any trace of reasonable evidence.
Nigerians are not fools ?
