At times I am better able
to express myself when I ‘manufacture’ my own English words. As
for the original English language, ‘e get as e be’! It is confounding enough! There is ‘thief’
but there are no ‘thiefs’; it must be thieves!
They have wife but no ‘wifes’; it must be wives! There is musician but
they grudgingly acknowledge academician; it is rather, ‘an academic’! They have ships but there are no ‘sheeps’ and
while adultery is a religious or moral
infraction committed by adults, infantry has nothing to do with
infants! What of ‘choir’, instead of straightforward ‘qaya’
or ‘kwaya’? In Nigeria
political arena, you can shamelessly and
fraudulently decamp from a party, under which
you campaigned and obtained the votes, to another party, provided you can prove that there is crisis in the former party. The crisis may just be that the Secretary dd not greet the Chairman properly at a
caucus meeting. ‘Corollarily’,
because the English language cannot put its house in order, because it is in
crises, I am at liberty to create my own version and even register and obtain
copyright for same! All this circumlocution
is because I feel so pissed off by
this ‘constituency project’ business, and particularly the weird nature
of some of them to the extent that I
believe that absurdity is not enough. I therefore decided to
strengthen it with ‘ludicrousity’, instead of
ludicrousness, which is the right word.
All over
the democratic world, even in pseudo-democracies or pretend-democracies,
the principal duty of the legislature is law-making. They make laws for the
individual and collective wellbeing of their constituents but this has to be with an inclusive and holistic mindset because there are different constituencies
with different challenges and peculiarities.
There greatest law -making responsibilities are in constitution making
and budgeting, which does not include padding gymnastics. The also have oversight
and public petitions responsibilities. There may well be other ancillary
responsibilities.
In Nigeria however, because this is Nigeria, a
nebulous concept has emerged and
reached to the very top of
legislative agenda and discourse . That term is the constituency project(
CP), the legislative version of palliatives.
This has become so relevant that
legislators now assess themselves in
terms of CPs and they have so thrown it at the face of the people that it is now foolhardy to discuss legislative
performance without talking about CPs. Unfortunately and sadly, in the process,
the primary assignments of the legislators take backseat, that is if they are
mentioned at all.
There is something
wrong with the concept because project
allocation and execution ordinarily belong to the executive realm. But
that is a minor matter. The major matter with the theory and practice of
constituency projects is that most of the daylight thievery in the National
Assembly is routed through the constituency projects. And while those who
attract roads and the like, will honest
enough to indicate attracted by ‘so so and so’, those who give out things like
refrigerators, motorcycles or burial materials will act as if they were funding them from their personal pockets. Beyond the iniquity that pervades the entire
process, the inequitable sharing of the spoils cries to
heaven for vengeance because the
leadership and ‘ranking’ members voraciously corner all that
there is and leave the crumbs for the legislative jambites. And
these others complain, not because of all the shenanigans but because they were cheated in the sharing and their
constituents will grade them as failures since there are few things to eye-mark!
For instance, in the 2024
budget the Ministry of Agriculture allocated multibillion Naira 280 projects in Akpabio’s North-West
Senatorial constituency. Most of these
projects were not only extra-budgetary, they fell outside the core mandate of
the Ministry and included ICT centers, freezers, school equipment, royal
palaces and police stations. The other parts of the state shared only 15
projects (as opposed to 280 given to Akpabio).
The source for these largesse was ‘the insertion of projects worth N632bn into the Ministry of Agriculture’s budget,
raising
its capital budget from N332bn to N963bn’.
Budg-IT argued that this type of skewed off-budgetary allocations could stall
economic growth. The Ministry of Women Affairs also allotted
N2.5bn(out of its budget of N10.027bn) for deep-freezers and generators to the same Akpabio’s Constituency. Lucky they! In the last
budgeting cycle, the number of freezers cornered by Akpabio for his
constituents, may be enough to serve the
whole households in the Gambia!!!
However, the BIGGEST problem
with these constituency projects is the demeaning, dehumanising and insulting
types of items procured and donated by some of our ‘legislooters’
or ‘legislathieves’. This
topic has been in my pipeline for more than 5 years, and would have remained
there for a while longer had not Senator Hanga stirred the hornet’s nest
by openly and proudly donating burial
materials to his constituents. These items were made up of white fabrics and
clay-pots used for Muslim burials. This
according to him was in response to frequent requests for burial
assistance by his people. So, they
should die and go in peace, and particularly without disturbing his busy
schedules? Keeping ethnocentrism out of it, the way I understand this is equivalent to distributing caskets to
constituents and in my part of the world, this is loathsome and abominable.
This morbid gesture is the most weird of all constituency
projects executed in Nigeria and even beyond. Giving your constituents burial
materials as constituency project merits a place in the Guinness Book of Record
and my NGO, Muo_Unlimited
will push vigorously for it! I note that
this burial-support politics is very
popular up-north because at a certain time, Governor Bala Mohammed accused his predecessor, of spending between
January and May, 2019, well over N2.3bn on funeral materials, dresses for
wrapping dead bodies and the woods that you lace the graveyards with.”
His predecessor proclaimed his innocence, saying it was just 1.2bn,not N2.3bn,!
And just last week, Hon Sarkindaji, the Speaker of Niger State House
of Assembly decided that the best thing he could do for his teenage female constituents as number 3 man in
the state was to marry-off 100 of them,
who are said to be orphans, to willing
or unwilling husbands. He proudly
assured that their comfort as new wives has been taken care off. He did not think of their formal education,
he did not think of vocational education, he did not encourage them to go into
farming or agricultural commerce. He just married them off, some of them as the
nth wife in this precarious economy. And I am sure it was not a willing
buyer-willing seller market! It was just like senator Hanga who did not
think of improving the health services infrastructure so that they would not
have to die so carelessly in the first instance.
I have tracked this issue
for a long while and here are some award
winning Constituency Projects in town. I
will crave your indulgence to determine the winner of the gold-medal award in
CP, the one with the highest tokenistic-quotient. Daniel Ukpera, a Benue Politician donated ropes to ‘his people’, with which to
tie their goats. Note that he did not
provide the goats; just the ropes for the goats! In 2022, an Honourable
Councillor donated 2 plastic mats to the Sadad Community in the Kebbe LGA of
Sokoto. And he was so happy with himself that he pictured and posted this act
of unapparelled legislative generosity. Maigari Bello-Kasimu, representing
Jalingo/Yorro/Zing Federal Constituency in Taraba State upped the ante by
donating wheelbarrows to the poor who hitherto hired these one-wheel vehicles
on daily basis. In August
2021,Hon. Evangelist Margaret Inde, the Chairman of Obanliku Local
Government Area of Cross River State, empowered pilot farmers each with a hoe,
cutlass and one tuber of yam. Just ONE tuber of yam.
In July, 2021,Umar Muda Lawal , representing Toro
Federal Constituency of Bauchi State in the green chamber, donated 10
deep wells( not boreholes!) to his constituents and boldly announced
same in his Twitter account( now X): ‘This time we are going outside the
box to construct 10 Deep wells in 10 rural towns and villages of Toro LGA.
Because traditional wells are often more reliable and last longer than any
modern small-scale water supply system. Most wells today are centuries old
and still working.” An excellent justification. His people should go back to the ‘hygienic and sustainable’ deep-well days
while he is in Abuja enjoying water from integrated water treatment systems. On
July 9 2021, Senator Oriolowo of Osun
West in the 9th Assembly unveiled an Airtel Mast at Ago-Owu Farm
Settlement as a constituency project,
saying it exemplified APC fidelity with promises. I wondered why Airtel did not
sue him for this public, barefaced conversion.
Earlier in 2018,an unknown member of the Federal House of Representatives from Borno State, empowered over 5,000 youths with bags of oranges and new improved shoe shining kits, fully equipped with polish and brush. He had no vision for them to grow beyond shoe shining! I thought this was an indigenous thing until I came across a Kenyan politician, Rebecca Lomong, of the Baringo County, who donated a single,( just one) self-branded pot, ( popularly called sufria)to a primary school in Kenya and ensured that it was fully ‘camera’ed’. And then, Hon Protazio Baumusa, MP for Ndorwa East in Uganda repaired( just repair) a wooden, makeshift bridge and proudly announced on X that People in Ndorwa East can now use the Rubira bridge which I recently repaired! However, there was one unusual constituency project in 2022when a member representing Anambra East & West Federal Constituency, Hon Obidigwe took 40 of his constituents to Egypt for training on dry-season farming. It appears he did not see what his colleagues have been doing
Somebody had noted that As
more Nigerians face economic hardship and wallow in poverty, largely occasioned
by corruption, politicians further insult the populace with the donation of
such ridiculous and bizarre items as so-called economic empowerment or welfare
packages. That is the saddest part of
it; the ruling class will wilfully push people into poverty and then make a jest of that poverty by presenting
miserable items to them for empowerment.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs
Uju Kennedy-Ohanye, who donated 25% of
her Ministry’s budget to Akpabio or to
Akpabio’s constituency, has petitioned the Inspector General of Police and gone to court to seek an injunction to stop the Speaker of Niger State House
of Assembly, Hon Sarkindaji, from marrying off the 100girls, which he is
planning to do on May 24. She has also promised to GO TO COURT if the speaker failed to un-speak
what he had spoken! And the girls have
become lucky as she has promised that her Ministry will take care of their
education, technical training or other forms of empowerment henceforth. I hope
they will accept the offer! But the speaker has lambasted the Minister! After
all, he is not the first to organise similar weddings in that clime. Let’s see how this ‘eyeball to eyeball’
scenario will go!
As indicated earlier, I am craving your indulgence to identify the best CP from
the above list. This should exclude that of Obidigwe! Please, voting should
start now on the ‘best’, actually the most weird constituency project, with the
highest tokenistic quotient. Send to muoigbo@yahoo.com or 08033026625 .
Winners will jointly receive as their
prize, one, just one, of my textbooks, which they should share as they wish! Thy may share it in bits or rotate it on hourly basis amongst themselves or digitalise and share online. I believe that this is even better than some of
these Constituency Projects!
Sometimes ago, a frenemy
‘poked’ me for describing Nigeria as a country suffering from progressive
regression. Fellow debaters, impartial
judges and accurate timekeepers, I hope that with these two cartoons, I have
been able to convince you and not to confuse you that my assertions are in good faith and supported by other
VERIFIABLE authorities.
Ihuowelle Qaurterly, an ALL-COLOUR community magazine based in Ihuowelle Village IgboUkwu has joined the physical media world. With incise reports in local, national and global.
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