Date: 2016-07-04

What is the world turning to? Despite his baggages, Senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki, can muster the (Dutch!) courage to accuse President Muhammadu Buhari of being a weakling who has abdicated his responsibilities! His tantrums came at a time his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, also accused the president of being a tyrant! As you mull who to believe, it might sound a bit off-colour that none of them addressed the weighty crime of forgery hanging on their necks!

These are queer and cockeyed allegations leveled by two men who should gladly adopt Olaniyonu (Fame has its drawback) as their middle names against a president who has chosen to play by the rules! The allegations are made queerer by the fact that they are coming at a time more Nigerians think former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, should be canonized despite his tenure being remarkable for its unrivalled disdain for legislators!

What the senate president and his deputy failed to say is that, in the Obasanjo days, they could never have toyed with the idea of forging Senate Rules, as alleged, in their conspiratorial rise to the leadership of the Senate! Even if they tried it and succeeded, chances are they would have been forced out, hauled before a judge after which they would have become unwilling guests at Kuje prisons. If in doubt, they should ask Salisu Buhari whose conspiracy involved forging his age and not House Rules!

Ironically, it is the magnanimity of the government in following due process in the anti-graft war that provided Dr. Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu the tonic to accuse President Muhammadu Buhari of a witch-hunt. Otherwise, there is no the witch-hunt putting a person accused of forging federal government documents or who falsely and anticipatorily declared their assets on trial. It is funny that one moment these men claim they did not forge the Senate rules and the next they claim they are prepared to go to jail! It is good to know that Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu know people regularly go to jail for forgery and corrupt enrichment!

And, to the stone-age senators in the clowning Saraki-is-always-right camp, here's hoping their shameless attitude is not borne out of the lazy and wrong-headed belief that, as legislators, they are a rare and special breed. The earlier these people realize they are not above the law or possess the license to commit all act of infractions without being sanctioned, the better! And, by the way, what gave the senators the funny idea that they cannot be investigated, tried and jailed if they breach the law of the land?

Where, as alleged by Ike Ekweremadu, is the threat to democracy when people are put on trial for corrupt enrichment and forgery? What, on earth, is the signal the deputy senate president, himself a major beneficiary of official impunity of the recent past, is sending by calling attention of the world to their crime? The man should wake up from his sixteen-year impunity-induced stupor! Did he expect government to turn the blind eye to a crime because it was committed by senators? May be Ekweremadu should craft a second epistle and tell the world he is being persecuted because of his support for Biafra!

Tell me! What sane government will, for whatever reasons, turn the blind eye when people who should protect the law are the ones breaking it? What manner of legislation do Nigerians expect with people like Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu occupying strategic positions in the National Assembly? Does Ekweremadu know what further damage he has done to the already battered image of the National Assembly by his epistle? Do these senators understand what is meant by separation of powers? Heck! Is it animal republic?

It is repulsive to even imagine that there are senators who cannot lift their games above that of their embattled leaders. Reference here is to the infantile statement issued by the senate in defence of their embattled leaders. By its position, what the senate is saying is that government has no business to investigate what they claim is an internal affair of the Senate! Is that right? Now, can anyone beat that? By this warped reasoning, government should as well go ahead to free apologize to those serving time for forgery because their crimes were internal affairs of their individual work places!

The mess in the Nigerian senate is because the Buhari/Osinbajo administration has elected to be guided by due process. It is in the spirit of due process that Dr. Bukola Saraki was hauled before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (for false declaration of asset) and, he and his deputy before a Federal High Court (for forgery). All the legal gymnastic by injunction-seeking lawyers to slow or abort the wheel of justice would not have been necessary had the administration opted to be hawkish in the anti-graft war.

Nigerians now know that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and his clowning handlers who lamely campaigned that President Buhari would turn Nigeria into one big jail were desperate to conceal many things. If President Buhari was the tyrant the Goodluck Jonathan crowd, among them Ekweremadu, wanted us to believe, chances are Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu would have been cooling their feet in some cold and uninviting prison cells!

Again, and more importantly, Nigerians now know that, despite his trade-mark scowl, President Muhammadu Buhari has an angelic heart! For instance, the president refused to follow any of the several options available to whip the June, 2015, conspirators into line. It is safe to postulate that the president disappointed Nigerians who believed he would have been justified to swing the axe instead of congratulating and extending an olive branch to the conspirators.

Honestly, there is scant surprise in the cheap blackmail that hallmarks every act and deed of the desperate duo of Dr. Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu over the past one year. Honest, decent and innocent people do not blackmail when they are tossed before a judge for an offence they believe they never committed. They do not chase shadows, pass the buck and lamely accuse others for their crimes. Honest people do not rent crowds and surround themselves with lazy and fawning colleagues. Neither do they indulge in one recrimination after the other as these two senators have chosen to do.

If they need being reminded, Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu should be told that buck-passing and people not being man enough to own up to their deeds is undignified old hat; it just doesn't add up! Nobody is interested in Bukola Saraki's blood and nobody is witch-hunting Ike Ekweremadu. By resorting to the cheap and the time-worn practice of finger-pointing, both men merely seek an escape route by appealing to Nigerians' legendary short memory of hate. They are so ensconced in their comfort zone to even realize that times are changing.

An indication of the changing times is that Nigerians are refusing, at least gradually, to be swayed by people who blame others instead of owning up to their crimes or those who appeal to primordial sentiments in their desperation to evade justice!

Nigeria go better, I swear!

Magaji is based in Abuja and can be reached at .