Obasa’s Scandalous Delusion of Absolute Power by FAJ

About two weeks ago, the leadership of Lagos State House of Assembly, LSHA, made a statement which import and tenor would have been laughable if not that it was scandalous. The spokesperson for the Assembly was responding to the fallout of the new Act passed by the Zamfara State House of Assembly. The mainframe of the Act throws into the gutters of infamy the atrocious foolishness of heaping huge sums as pensions and allowances on former governors and their deputies simply because they spent four or eight years luxuriating over hapless states of the Nigerian federation as chief executives (frankly, more often as chief executioners).
Speaker Mudashiru Obasa and his colleagues would not be stampeded to follow in the path that many Nigerians praised as a reasonable and patriotic reaction to stem the fast-dwindling resources of the nation; the spiraling collapse of aging infrastructures; dispiriting graduate unemployment; dilapidating educational facilities; mounting insecurity, and many more sad news.
We had hoped that, at long last, some amongst our “leaders” would somehow “borrow themselves brain”, and start devising ways to cut cost and stop wastage of inadequate resources and manpower.
We had hoped that the spirit of Zamfara would spread to other states where insensitive legislatures had burdened their states with humongous financial servitude to delusional potentates who pretend to have “served” (rather than starved) their states as governors, et al, in the past 20 years of democratic governance.
Alas, we have grossly over-rated the sensibilities, sophistication and intelligence of our lawmakers. They would rather build more traps and holes to push their states further into debt and impoverishment, than deny their godfathers and mentors the extravagant lollipops of state-sponsored pickpocketing.
The shameless parade of the worst representatives of us as leaders of thoughts and in politics easily categorises us as an endangered and unfortunate society. Our so-called leaders are hauled from “hallowed” chambers of legislatures into detention centres; clamped into jail “with hard labour”… several high officials of government ministries, agencies, and departments are seeking injunctions to avoid warrants of forfeitures, arrests, committals, etc. But, I digress.
Speaking for Obasa and his mates, here is Tunde Braimoh, Chairman, House Committee on Information and Strategy, spitting vapid legalese: “The Supreme Court had made it clear several times that no arm of government can repeal the constitutional provisions of another arm of government. Therefore legislators make laws that are in tune with the yearnings and dynamics of their society. Until another legislature comes to alter, review or amend the law, the law is meant to be obeyed. The judiciary cannot pronounce that a law by the state is unconstitutional unless such state law is contradictory to the constitution”.
The tone and imagery of the Assembly’s undisguised philistinism may mislead a casual reader of Nigerian absurdities to assume the spokesman was talking about his family inheritance or some ancestral patrimony willed to the legislators to dispense in endless jollification!
Let someone remind the Speaker and his fellow travelers that they do not speak for everyone in their constituencies…and not every Lagosian is cartwheeling in ecstasy at the squandering of resources on few men and women privileged with the unique grace of unleashing “double jeopardy” (eating from both sides of the mouth) on the state, in and out of power.

History will treat the flippancy and insensitivity of the Assembly dwellers with the same casual aggression and absolute cock-sureness. In a time not too far away, I believe that common sense, responsible governance and truly representative democracy will overcome the land, and chase pretenders and charlatans far away from the vicinity of the treasury, halls of legislative activities and corridors of executive powers. It is a matter of time.