PIB, CONSTITUTION REVIEW AND OTHER RELATED MATTERS
Nigerians are a peculiar people.
It is very easy to get our temperatures to rise. We like getting angry without
properly understanding what is getting us angry. Various factors are
responsible for our anger. 1. Sometimes, we are angry because we do not have
the full picture of a situation and the extent to which we are informed is
offensive to our sensibilities. This type of anger can be staved off by making
sure that the full picture is presented at all times. Where it is a government
agency presenting the information, then massive sensitization must be carried
out to ensure that most (it is impossible for all to agree) of the populace
understand what the policy is all about. 2. Other times, we get angry because
some people we look up to for directions or like they say in twitterland, our
overlords, are angry hence, it is only natural that we join in the anger. This
type of anger is quite dangerous. It defies reason and commonsense, it is borne
out of the need to please another person and maybe curry some favour from them.
In street parlance, it is called ‘buying the case’. You get angrier than the
supposed offendee and bring down the roof. Larger goals are subverted and an
otherwise good cause is truncated because someone needs to be seen to be angry.
3. The third and base reason for
our anger is financially induced anger. It is just below the anger for the
benefit of the overlord. This time around, you have sold your right to even
think and rationalize the situation for yourself. You have been paid to do a
bidding and you must do it. At regular intervals, we are entertained by placard
carrying people at the gate of the National Assembly voicing their displeasure
over one matter or another. Sometimes, when you call one of those young men or
women aside to enquire what the cacophony is about, you get a blank stare. They
usually scream the loudest and are ever willing to turn violent if need be.
They are of a dangerous specie.
4. Now every once in a while, there
is actually genuine anger because rights are being subverted and latitude is
being taken which if unchallenged, could grievously harm the interests of
individuals or sometimes, large sections of the populace hence the need to
speak up.
Every follower of events in the
National Assembly will notice that on a regular basis, tempers flare up. Within
and outside the legislature, issues tabled for discussion on the floors of the
two chambers of our National Assembly are scrutinized, analyzed and thoroughly
fleshed out to be sure that there are no hidden motives behind them other than
what is visible to the naked eye.
At the moment, the two hottest
items on the table in the National Assembly are the Petroleum Industry Bill
(PIB) and the Constitution Amendment Bill. The PIB has been pulled and dragged
from all directions and it has been pummeled, vilified, defended and harangued
by different sections of the populace according to interests sought to protect.
If you look closely at all those shouting for or against the PIB from their
rooftops, you will be able to situate them amongst one of the four groups of
angry people enumerated above. My only fear is that most of those who are angry
may end up falling among the first three categories of angry people and only a
fraction will pass the 4th test.
From Oil Companies to
politicians, lawmakers to youth leaders, Governors to Community Chiefs,
everybody has weighed in on the PIB and tempers have risen on numerous
occasions complete with vociferous cross-country exchange of broadsides and
attendant threats. You have to be inhuman not to feel some pity for Madam
Diezani Allison Madueke. The amount of time she has devoted to pitching the
merits of the PIB is enough to get a major enterprise going but it just seems
as if the more she tries to convince us all of the wonders of the PIB, the more
determined opponents of the bill become that it will not see the light of the
day or as a compromise, if it does, the chunk of flesh in the Bill would have
been stripped living it a skeleton of its original incarnation.
To make matters worse, the PIB
contains too much big grammar and rocket science-like terminologies to make it
easy for a lay man to understand. The way we are wired, we are naturally
suspicious of anything that is not readily understandable to a layman. It can
then be argued that most of the opposition to the PIB is coming from those who
do not at first reading, understand what it is all about. If it contains all
these high-falluting technical phrases, then there is something fishy about it.
Why wasn’t it written in plain English? Were the framers trying to pull wool
over some people’s eyes? Ah. Lots of questions, few answers.
I sincerely hope that by the time
the PIB is eventually passed, it will still have enough substance to meet the
aspirations of its originators.
The 2nd issue that is
generating equal if not proportional heat is the attempt to comprehensively
review our constitution. Initially, there were calls for a conference to
discuss Nigeria.
The champions of those calls irked our Lawmakers by prefixing their conference
with the term ‘Sovereign’. The argument from our ebullient Lawmakers was that
as elected representatives of the people, the mantle has fallen on them to
speak on behalf of their constituents so exactly on what premise, authority or
representation would the SNC purveyors be congregating?
Finally, the National Assembly
took up the gauntlet and after some emergency amendments to serve the purpose
of the last general elections, they decided to carry out a comprehensive review
of the document some naysayers still insist does not represent the aspirations
of ‘We the People’ as it was handed down to us by the military.
In Nigeria, best intentions – whenever
they can be found – do not always play out the way we planned them. Already,
brickbats are flying and tempers are simmering. A previous attempt to present
the report of the Committee that undertook a nationwide tour to ascertain the
wishes of the people was aborted. Fresh invitations have been sent out inviting
all stakeholders to a rescheduled date for the presentation of the reports. Already,
feelers are that some initially muted objectives of the exercise have been
truncated. Others were either stillborn or declared dead on arrival. There are
threats that if a zone doesn’t get A, then another zone will not get B. State
Creation, Local Government Autonomy and Revenue Allocation formulae are some of
the hot-button subjects the Lawmakers are trying to address. Angry people are
being mobilized on all sides of the divide and they have been put on notice to
express their anger once the report does not contain certain expectations.
Anger is good, anger is a
motivator, anger is important but at least, get angry for yourself and not
because you feel you need to or because you were asked to or worse, because you
were paid to.
@hartng
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