Iyke

As a businessman, he excelled. As a grassroots politician, he has equally proved his mettle, serving as a two-time local government chairman. In fact, in 1997, he bagged the best local government chairman award and was subsequently elected into the short-lived Federal House of Representatives between 1992 and 1993.

Wabara also has a very reputable family name to flaunt if he so wishes and this is important. He has all it takes to raise his head high in the Nigerian society. Having also served in the immediate past Senate, the man who represented Abia South Senatorial District in the last four years has all it takes to be Senate President.

He wouldn’t carry the liability of an Evan (Evans) Enwerem nor an Arthur (ABN) Nzeribe.

Though he is not known to be very rich, at least, not in the class of his governor, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu, or even his brother, Marc Wabara, chairman of Hallmark Bank, who was the pointsman of the team called Corporate Nigeria, that raised N2 billion for Mr. President in less than one month thereby creating a slush fund with which President Olusegun Obasanjo secured a second term in office, the senator is comfortable materially.

So, Chief Adolphus Wabara could have made an excellent Senate President and the Igbo who have become the butt of all silly jokes in the last four years because of banana peels dropped by the side of the Senate President seat ostensibly by the presidency perhaps for once, would have had cause to raise their heads high.

Unfortunately, this cannot be. Senator Wabara unwittingly has become a metaphor for fraud, and this is sad. But I see God’s hand in what is happening in the Senate now. When ordinary mortals begin to act with impunity, when people begin to act God, the Almighty has a way of ridiculing and exposing them for what they are. And that is exactly what has happened with the case of the Senate Presidency. It has nothing to do with Wabara as a person, but a scapegoat must always be found in any betrayal endeavour, but woe betides you if you are the ‘Judas Iscariot’.

The truth is that Nigerians who have absolute faith in democracy and fought for it have been betrayed by their leaders and God has used Wabara and the manner of his election as the Senate President to expose the parody and absurdity that is currently going on in Nigeria, all in the name of democracy.

The issue here is the subversion of due process which makes Nigeria a laughing stock in the comity of nations. Sadly, those who ought to know better are either keeping quiet because Obasanjo, a Yoruba man, is the president or they have been ’settled’. Hypocritically, many are admonishing the new National Assembly to be subservient to Mr. President, a man whose inclination to dictatorship is rather too obvious. They want a pliant National Assembly that will kowtow to the whims and caprices of the President and even if the system is pulled down if only to strengthen the hands of only one man, so be it.

How unfair can some people be to fellow human beings all in an attempt to maximize power? Nigerians have been reduced to mere spectators in a game they ought to be the major players. Democracy is a game governed by the sacrosanct rule of the majority. It is a game where the people must generally have a say but the majority must have their way. But like everything Nigerian, the process has been so subverted that whatever Obasanjo and the conceited, boastful and self-important few that constitute his kitchen cabinet decide becomes law and is rammed down the throat of hapless Nigerians.

For how long will this continue and for how long will ordinarily discerning Nigerians play the ostrich on the altar of tribalism? The fact is that the powers that be are gradually but inexorably destroying the system. They started with the electoral process which they have thoroughly discredited. The average Nigerian has lost faith in the power of the ballot, and apathy is creeping in. If the local government election eventually holds, many Nigerians will begin to appreciate how bad the situation is. It will not be surprising if only PDP candidates contest the elections in all the 774 local government councils in the federation because no sane Nigerian would ever waste his time and resources again to contest in an election in which the results had already been written even before the first ballot is cast. That is the sad reality of Nigeria’s democracy. It has been nudged to the precipice.

Now, those same forces have launched a two-pronged attack on both the legislature and the judiciary. The legislature, particularly, at the federal level has over the last four years been systematically vilified. The on-going drama will drive the last nail into the coffin of that august body. The same forces are now beaming their searchlight on the judiciary. With the likes of Justice Wilson Egbo-Egbo on the bench, sooner than later, the judiciary, which is touted as the last hope of the common man, will be thoroughly discredited and smeared.

The game-plan is to ensure that at the end of the day, only one man is left standing when every other person has been brought down. Then, a Saint Olusegun Obasanjo, the expected messiah will emerge without who Nigeria cannot be. The press, unfortunately, is sucked into this odious scheme.

But that is by way of digression. The issue here as stated earlier is that of due process. Is Adolphus Wabara qualified and has he what it takes to be the President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? My answer is yes. Was he qualified to be Senate President as at the time he was elected? The answer is no. Why? Because, his so-called election didn’t follow due process. In the course of his election, rule of law was dealt a mortal blow.

No matter how you look at it, Wabara’s emergence as Senate President has exposed every Nigerian to ridicule. Wabara’s supporters insist that the man could have emerged as the senator-elect if not for the machinations of his state governor, Kalu, who swore never to allow his (Wabara) Senate Presidency ambition to blossom. Unfortunately for Orji, President Obasanjo who has the ultimate power in Nigeria wanted Wabara to be the Senate President and automatically the man who Kalu ensured that he failed the senatorial election dramatically became Senate President, the fact that he did not cross the first hurdle – election into the Senate – notwithstanding. Even if it meant securing a midnight judgement from a court that has no jurisdiction over electoral matters in order to facilitate Wabara’s election, the powers that be were prepared to circumvent the law.

Now, the question that is agitating the minds of well-meaning and concerned Nigerians is this: Where does the electorate who trooped out in their millions, defying the elements to make their democratic choices come in in the Wabara saga? The answer is nowhere. Their votes are worthless as far as the power game in Nigeria is concerned.

I see the handiwork of God in all these. He wants to expose the system for what it is – a big fraud, using Adolphus Wabara’s election as a veritable metaphor. The fact remains that those who think they have conquered Nigeria have stolen so much for the owner of the house (Nigerians) not to notice. (Apologies to Chinua Achebe).

Those who have hurled all manner of abuses at the opposition particularly as represented by Buhari, Okadigbo and Ojukwu for insisting that what took place in the country generally and the South-east and South-south in particular cannot by any standard be described, as election should now know better. That is, assuming they never knew the truth all along.

The government magic (as the late inimitable Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti would describe it), which ensured the election of a non-senator as the Senate President, has become an eye opener. How long will this charade go on? Why this seeming conspiracy of silence in the face of the wanton, immoral, malicious and unrestrained rape of our young democracy?

Amaechi is Editor-in-Chief of People and Politics newspaper, Lagos