The Race For the Mace

Pius Adesanmi is always looking for trouble. Imagine tweeting about the paunches of our service chiefs. Children raised in Yagbaland should be forgiven for their ignorance of what goes on in Officer’s Mess and Mammy Markets. I’ll let Adesanmi in on a secret; people don’t go to those places to push abs. They go there to push green bottles, consume hot plates of steaming peppersoup and if you’re as uncharitable as Alozie Ogugbuaja, to plan coups.

Doctors and ab trainers are unlikely to recommend those places, but then soldiers hate being told what to do or not to do by bloody civilians. After his tweet, I wouldn’t advice Adesanmi to sneak into any Mammy Market or the Officers Mess on his next home visit except he does so incognito or gets an all clear from General Brutal.

Why bring a cousin’s surreptitious tweet into a write up would soon become clear. It has to do with what a lady on Twitter aptly called The Mace Race. A brazen gang of daredevil youths launching an attack on the nation’s Sinnate is not news except to those living in Sai Baba’s utopia. Before you crucify the old man for massive delusion, please spare a thought for Raji Fashola, in whose idealistic Naija there is improvement in electricity supply. In the real Naija, there are communities that use their electric wires as clothesline. Please do not try that at home.

As a Naija foreigner, I dare not disbelief my president’s position or suspect his minister’s claims; I just want a visa to that Naija they’re describing. I pray that it’s not denied me. So, while the valiant Bukola Saraki was away, the mouse of thuggery was unleashed on the red chamber during which the mace disappeared. The entire exercise was like a bad movie aired live on television and witnessed by visiting Ghanaian lawmakers.

Thankfully it didn’t happen while Sai Baba was briefing his supervisor, Theresa May. If the disappearance of the mace signified a permanent deletion of the economic sinkhole that the chambers represent, it would have been a well-written drama. Before they found it under the bridge, they found a spare and continued the silly debates that justify their continuous haemorrhaging of our economy and social embarrassment of our country.

During that momentary confusion, the superfluous egos of our extinguished sinnators were put to the test. You could see the palpable fear in their eyes. Some even attempted a sprint, except that their corrupt garbs wouldn’t let them run. Like our pot-bellied service chiefs, these sinnators can’t run even if their lives depend on it. Their highly paid orderlies were caught napping just like their bosses as the security of the nation is threatened.

The security of a parliament is usually in the hands of the Sergeant-at-arms and his crew. On October 22, 2014 Corporal Nathan Cerillo was cowardly gunned down at his guard post at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa near the Canadian parliament. The assassin, not worth naming here dashed into the Canadian Parliament hoping to kill others. Gladly nobody else was hit. Kevin Vickers, the Sergeant-at-Arms tackled the assailant along with officer Curtis Barret. Vickers became an instant hero, and later Canada’s ambassador to Ireland. The Governor-General has recognized Vickers and two others, albeit late.

It’s sad comparing death with somnolence, but there are lessons here. Our extinguished, overfed, overpaid, overprivileged, overrated and underperforming sinnators have never had a fire drill. Neither the NASS administration nor the Villa authorities have any idea what to do in emergency situations. Canadian school children do lockdown drills and know what to do even in the event of an emergency. Our sinnators have no clue where the nearest fire exit is in their chambers except it leads to shareable money.

With over 200-armed officers on guard duty on sitting days, five thugs beat the nation’s security apparatchik to their professionalism. Hope somebody sends the sergeant-at-arms to Ottawa to learn how to do his work even though Naija’s politricians are not worth saving.

Incredible security lacunas exist in the country. Bandits freely operate a few meters away from security checkpoints. Boko Haram constantly execute raids on schools and communities even as Buhari insists on his dream that they are defeated.

Here is how the NASS management is likely to react to this assault that bears the uncanny imprimatur of state security involvement. They would militarise their vault of corruption. They’ve always wanted to block public access to the zone desiring no contact with constituents except closer to elections. This assault is proves that anyone with raw braggadocio could even break into Aso Rock and kidnap whomever they desire.

The day our nation’s ruiners feel the vulnerability their greed and inaction exposes the rest of us, they’ll transform our country in a jiffy. Until the privileged class gets a good dose of the carnage daily unleashed on the hapless by their greed and corruption, they would not understand the clamour for true change. Nobody should shed a tear for these indolent people living on stolen titles whenever the stuff hits them. They’ll reap what they sow.