National Assembly. Photo Femi Ipaye

One such big lie which Jubrin has ceaselessly trumpeted is the claim that he installed Speaker Dogara and some other principal officers. The question that naturally trails this claim is: how? Perhaps the embattled lawmaker did not reckon with the wise counsel of late French dramatist, Jean Anouilh who cautioned that “propaganda is a soft weapon, hold it in your hands too long, and it will move like a snake, and strike the other way.”

If Jubrin contributed funds towards the quest, I wouldn’t know, but as an insider who ran the media wing of the Consolidation Group, which produced the Speaker and his deputy, Lasun Yusuf, I challenge Hon. Jubrin to name one, just one member who he convinced to join the Dogara camp, himself having crossed over barely one week to inauguration on June 9, 2015.

I do need to point out, however, that the essence of my intervention today is neither to denigrate Jubrin , nor question his integrity ( members of the 7th and 8th Assembly are free to draw up their own conclusions); rather my concern centers around how to preserve the sacred institution of the legislature, rather than have its disgruntled members lie through the teeth, in a classic rehash of the ‘You Tarka me, I Daboh you’ episode.

It would seem, regrettably, that Representative Jubrin is perhaps too far gone in his open display of hate for Speaker Dogara, that he could gloss over the timeless warning of his presumptive hero, Goebbels, who himself asserted, “there will come a day when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and the truth will triumph again.”

To Jubrin and his co-travelers, that time is nigh, in September, 2016 when the honorable members of the House of Representatives will resume for plenary. Until then, he may do well to take a deserve vacation, away from the path of propaganda and the denigration of an institution which he ought to help fortify.

* Hon. Ogene, a journalist, served as Deputy Chairman, Media & Public Affairs in the House of Representatives (2011-2015).