Promise Adiele
A popular expression which consistently seeks to negotiate spaces in gender studies is “what a man can do, a woman can do better”. Feminists and people sympathetic to gender polarity which designates women as the weaker sex always rehash that expression. They do so to underscore the capabilities of women to do everything and all things that men are capable of doing in a patriarchal commune. Whether women are capable of doing things men can do or surpassing them in their masculine domain will continue to generate responses ranging from the mundane to the spectacular. However, borrowing a leaf from that gender-equality-motivated expression, one can conveniently state that what Yahoo boys can do, distinguished men of Nigeria’s National Assembly can do better. The Yahoo boys’ and legislators’ comparison is necessitated by all the filthy, corrupt shenanigans which characterized the legislative chamber since the country’s return to democracy. Nigerians are aware that the National Assembly has always been a putrid chamber where heist is incubated and nurtured to maturity. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo stated the obvious when he declared that “the National Assembly is full of rogues and armed robbers”. He could not be more Delphic.
For simple clarity, Yahoo boys are youths who deploy the vast instrumentality of the internet especially Yahoo webservice and email to defraud unsuspecting victims of large sums of money. In other words, any youth described with the appellation of ‘Yahoo’ is an internet criminal who maintains an ostentatious lifestyle through fraud and sleaze. Nigeria’s financial watchdog the EFCC has over the years made it a habit to maintain undeserved relevance by hounding Yahoo boys and other small-time criminals who take to fraud in a desperate need for survival. However, the activities of honourable men of Nigeria’s National Assembly over the years provide huge evidence that ‘Yahoo boys’ are leaners whose criminal enterprises are infinitesimal compared to their more distinguished compatriots at the legislative house. Ironically, while the illustrious honourable men of the legislature walk free and are celebrated, EFCC unleashes their fangs and expend raw nerves on Yahoo boys. I once wrote an essay in 2022 titled ‘Scrap EFCC now’ where I excoriated the financial watchdog for their selective operations in the arrest of financial criminals in Nigeria. Below is an excerpt from the essay.
“A country where suspected double-dealers, criminals, and corporate thieves make laws and determine people’s destinies can only head for the rocks. Those who are searching for the problem with Nigerian need not go far. The name of the game is stealing, pilfering, and siphoning of public funds using every available channel. Yet, EFCC sleeps over these issues. Their past time is to pursue petty thieves, yahoo boys, and other minor financial infractions. I do not in any way ask EFCC to spare any category of criminality, but their neglect of bigger criminals demands an inquest and a thorough remonstration by those who care for this country. Although the failed Buhari administration always regales us with tales of fighting corruption, Nigerians bear testimony to the growth and entrenchment of the vice in the country. It is galling and disconcerting. Corruption under the Buhari administration, for all its disastrous intrusion of public culture, is undergoing a legitimizing process. By the time this administration is over, corruption would have become a medal worn as a national honour, a national recognition of achievement.” The underlined words in the excerpt, in all their symbolic exactitude after Buhari’s administration, capture Nigeria’s current political realities. Sadly, those with medals in corruption are our current national heroes.
Recently, millions of Nigerians devastated by Tinubu’s elementary economic policies and all shades of socio-political misadventure were further flummoxed by the allegation of budget padding by lawmakers. These lawmakers flourish like a bay palm tree amid ravaging poverty in the country. The cat was let out of the bag by Senator Abdul Ningi of PDP Bauchi Central who alleged that the 2024 budget was padded by N3 trillion. According to Ningi, the budget passed by the National Assembly for the 2024 fiscal year was N25 trillion while the one being implemented by the presidency is N28.7 trillion. Senator Ningi further stated that N3 trillion was not linked to any identifiable thing in the budget. He revealed that while some constituencies got N150 billion for projects, others got N120 billion, others got N60 billion, N30 billion and N2 billion in that order. Also, Senator Agom Jarigbe of PDP representing Cross River North collaborated Ningi’s allegations that some ‘senior senators’ got colossal amounts of money for constituency projects.
Some people benefitting from the rot in the system or ancestrally intertwined with the defence of abominable social conditions, are trying in vain to defend the oozing putrescence from the legislative chamber. But Nigerians are duly aware of how those elected or selected to make laws partake in the mindless allocation of their commonwealth. It surely grates at the heart that while the country is grappling with multidimensional poverty, while citizens are crippled by material needs and lack of basic comfort, lawmakers in Nigeria further submerge the economy by fleecing the exchequer through irresponsible appropriation of funds for personal use in the guise of constituency projects. And I ask, what is a constituency project? What does it mean? In a normal clime where responsible people populate the political arena, constituency projects are recommended by the legislature but executed by the executive arm of government. But unfortunately, in Nigeria and sadly so, constituency projects have become an avenue for greedy lawmakers to line their pockets and scam the country. If Bola Tinubu is committed to fighting corruption, if indeed he is committed to accountability to governance, by now, all the lawmakers fingered in this shameful act of budget padding will be answering questions at the EFCC office.
Nigeria desperately needs a total overhaul. Some concerned citizens believe that the 1999 Constitution has become untenable going forward. The current government, if it has the will, should commence the process of reviewing the constitution because events in the country prove that the 1999 constitution is supremely flawed on all fronts. Some people also argue that bi-cameral legislature is a complete waste of scarce resources. It is only a means of empowering indolent lawmakers who do not have the interest of the country at heart. In the current dispensation, one would not be far from the truth to submit that the legislative chamber has become an accomplice of the executive, to rubber-stamp all their intransigencies and in return, the executive would look away from the legislators’ documented baseness. Recall that not too long ago, the executive headed by Bola Tinubu approved a scandalous, mind-boggling amount of N60 billion to procure cars for lawmakers while the country steadily stewed in economic privation.
The current allegation of budget padding is an indictment on all the Senators from all the political parties. Something must be done. If EFCC was alive to its responsibilities, many of these lawmakers would not be qualified to contest an election in Nigeria much less, become legislators. We are indeed all hypocrites if we point a damning finger at Yahoo boys as they are dragged to face the law while we look away as Yahoo men of the National Assembly walk away as free citizens after defrauding the country. Between Yahoo boys and Yahoo men, who are more culpable? Who are the criminal champions of Nigeria? Can Nigerians who elected these lawmakers react in some ways? Can the executive arm of government with the president as head set an example of accountability with the current case of alleged criminal conduct by lawmakers? Should Nigerians look away while this matter is swept under the proverbial carpet? Some people have posited that Tinubu is handicapped in the matter because he needs to be in the good books of the lawmakers to forestall impeachment in the face of his many sham conciliations in the corridors of power.
It is a mental violation to wake up every day to the reality of the kind of characters that populate our political outposts. Nigeria’s political characters, except for a few, deserve permanent habitation in Hades, no pun intended. In the face of these conditions, where will the saviour or solution come from? Nigerians are hungry but I think they are not angry enough. Quite unfortunately, the political leaders are interested in lining their pockets, mopping up dollars and crippling the local currency. The high cost of living does not affect them. Given all the accusations and counter-accusations of fraud in the Senate following the 2024 budget, the federal government should order a review of the budget. Also, Senators who have put their soiled hands in the till should be made to face the consequences. But I doubt that the executive has the moral justification to do so. The crass irresponsibility in Nigeria’s political highway will surely not last forever. These Yahoo men are more fraudulent than Yahoo boys. Does EFCC agree? I don’t think so.
Promise Adiele PhD
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