Olajide Fashikun
As kids, we were taught that all men are equal. However, in one of our many classes, we read from the books the story of Ali Baba and the popular 40 thieves. Adept, smart, cunny and sly like the fox. It is the man who is caught that is called ‘a thief’. So, if a man steals all his life and is not caught, he is not yet a thief.
A caught thief is also seen as careless and pays for the price of his carelessness. In this case, the erstwhile Chairman of the House of Representatives committee on Capital market, Mr. Herman Hembe (I won’t call him Honourable) is caught. From the environment of his case like the street folks will say, he’s already paying for his ‘carelessness’.
Meanwhile, that was an aside. In our investigations since the Hembegate scandal, it has been shown that Mr. Herman Hembe was simply unfortunate, naïve, careless and allowed himself to be so caught like an errant fish that the hook caught with the nook. The scam’s web was deep, wide and has splashed so much mud on him, his members on the committee, the entire House and the parliament as an institution.
The truth according to the Chief Executive of one of the nation’s parastatal who conceded to discuss this issue on strict anonymity is that, “Hembe’s sin is not personal. It is a way of life therein. All of them are involved. Hembe was just stupid to have been caught and Hembe’s assailant (Anuma Oteh) is just courageous and probably was so frustrated to have resorted to striking back not minding the cost, including her job. Hembegate is a parliamentary norm.”
These things are done in the name of “oversight function”. The CEO added that “most of us either as Executive Secretary, Director General or whatever title are not sitting happy doing what we are doing. We are simply a conduit of making money for the parliamentarians. We have a hawkish parliament whose stock in trade is to unnecessarily load your parastatal with funds, most atimes, unsolicited increase in your budgetary allocations. They come in the name of oversight function to sweep the excesses they have loaded into your budget.
Sometimes, the two chambers come in a joint visit, some other times, they come alone. They normally do not expect anything than just deliver what they have come for. Then, you’ll receive all the encomiums. If you do not deliver, they’ll summon you to parliament and chastise you with all manners of invectives in the world before camera. They are ready to use their parliamentary privileges to embarrass you with threats making you look like a felon.
Before you know it, petitions would have been flying even in the air against your administration. They’ll then organise public hearing on your activities. They get to deliver all the unprintable words on you during such public events not giving you any space to defend yourself. They’ll rush you and if you try to counter them, they’ll sometimes shout you down.
After such tempestuous sessions, about two or three of them usually including the chairman will send for you at night, name their price. Once you then cooperate, that will be the end of the matter. Go and investigate and see this trend having repeated itself severally. Such matters die and are never heard again.
Our source told us of the story of a training institute with base in Kaduna. Their budget allocation used to be N880m yearly. Last year, the money just jumped to N2.1b! The Executive Secretary, an Islamic fundamentalist, thankful to God for the bountiful increase just went on to put together infrastructures, employed more staffers and improved the activities of his agency.
When the joint committee visited his agency, he was delivering a well scripted welcome speech when in anger one of the parliamentarians in anger accosted him in Hausa language: “is it your father’s money?” angered, petrified and harassed. He dropped his speech. Was speechless for some seconds during which one of the chairmen, (of the lower chamber, let’s call him ‘the giant’ by virtue of his size and voice) did a verbal check on his colleague. It was late.
The Executive Secretary in anger was reputed to have picked one of the chairs close to him which he swirled with the intention to hit the particular that abused his father. Apparently, the visit ended there. What happened thereafter may have remained history.
Words have it that in very recent times, the Director General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Dr. Patrick Ekeji who has been a victim of consistent harassment by the House committee on sports is getting the treatment because he was playing Arunma Oteh.
Asking in review thus, this reporter went back to reports of ChannelsTV, AIT and NTA on the Senate’s Police Pension scam. My take looks like the Maina of a person was also playing Arunma Oteh. Like Oteh, he was disparaged, harangued, harassed and made to look like a robber. All manners of allegations which bothered on libel, slander and defamation of character were leveled against him under the guise of parliamentary privileges. Sure, were Maina not a civil servant, there would have been some legal brickbats by now.
Ironically, why I knew the Senate committee on pension goofed so badly is obvious. Two months ago, this reporter broke the story of the N20b Police pension scam. From that insider knowledge base, I saw the futility and the wrong, unfair and probably, selfish angle the Senate committee was coming from.
So, as the Senate committee was playing its script, I knew and was so convinced that the man at the butt’s end was simply being criminalized in the eye of the public for playing the role of Arunma Oteh. The Senate committee to my mind, after these new facts played out, may not have been different from Hembe’s committee.
I wish I am wrong. I wish my thoughts are not correct. I pray my premises are simply not true. I wish the Senate committee did the right thing unlike Hembe’s committee. I wish they never asked Maina for what Hembe asked Oteh.
Hang on till tomorrow on this platform for why all my wishes may be dreams. Yes, dreams. Dreams that will fizzle out when the eyes are opened. I have so many questions that you need to ask the Senators with me. Keep it a date.