Editor’s note: Abubakar Sadiq Ahmed, an aide to Senator Kabir Marafa in this piece writes about happenings in the National Assembly.
Ahmed writes about senate committees and the need for politics to reflect more on national interests than personal ones.
A senator’s aide has said that the Eight Assembly cannot be business as usual
I have, lately, of course, been inundated by several text messages and in some cases, correspondences in form of article requesting for comments over the on-going in the senate, especially as it borders Senator Marafa.
Such request, I must admit, are not out of place given that, Senator Marafa, is my principal. In essence, I work as his Senior Aide.
While this piece is a riposte to many of these correspondences and text messages, they were not at the instance of Senator Marafa.
The views expressed herein are sorely mine and I therefore, take responsibility for them.
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In the first place and as a matter of fact, it doesn’t stop to amaze me when I hear certain committees described as juicy or any of sort.
My take on this categorization is this, to have accepted such labelling is also to have agreed and concluded, it is still business as usual. But even more so is this, how juicy a committee is, assuming it does exist, is not always given.
Rather, it is the product of the sagacity and the workings of the person driving it. And in any case, it would be naive for anybody to think juicy deals could be pulled in the downstream sector (a sector chaired by Senator Marafa), where PMB, effectively sits as the substantive Minister.
Secondly, what I want us to appreciate is that, the issue in the Senate is not about marafa. It is about making institutions work and operate within certain fundamental principles. It is it therefore, about public interest.
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Up till now, nobody had yet come out to say that the matters raised by Sen Marafa were not fundamental to the operations of the legislature.
Still yet too, nobody had still come out to say that many of the issues raised by Senator Marafa were and, are still not valid. If you ask me, what Senator Marafa did and stood for belongs to the public. The onus now is for the public to own it and take it a notch further.
Thirdly, committee chair or not, it would have been naive for anybody to think, given the somersaults and effectively, the recession hitting the economy, such belligerence stance on the part of Marafa or indeed, anybody else would have been condoned with.
It remains to be seen if the system or indeed, the country can afford it.
But I make bold to tell you, such a stance would have affected the effective functioning of the legislature and, would have effectively brought the system to a near, if not a complete halt.
Lastly, let me also, point blank, tell you: politics, whether for Senator Marafa, President Buhari and indeed anybody else, is about and, is for self interest.
The tendency to see and define politics as separate from personal interest is more like, taking us into the old conversation, especially in the social sciences, as to whether there can be what one may call objective reality, or in the kernels within the conversation on national interest.
The arising question especially on the latter still remains, who defines and conceive national interest?
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This remain to be seen. However, my take is this, it is not possible either now and the foreseeable future for a Berlin Wall separation between individual interest and public interest, especially in matters of politics.
Watch this ZENITHBLOG.com’s video of Nigerians lamenting the All Progressives Congress administration:
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