Posted By: Olakunle Abimbola on: July 19, 2016
Bukky’s angels? First, ponder two band of angels: one from John Milton’s Paradise Lost; the other, from contemporary America.

Englishman John Milton (1608-1674) probably had a point to prove in language politics; in those days when Greek and Latin were the core languages of court.

By how times have changed, with Greek and Latin virtually entombed in antiquity! But English has bloomed — core language of the modern court, from scholarship, to diplomacy, to global business. Why, even an irate segment of EU is sniping: at Brussels, with Brexit, UK should exit, with its English! Some hope!

From Paradise Lost to the United States, with Charlie’s Angels: a TV detective series that ran on American TV from 1976 to 1981, starring Kate Jackson, Farrah Fowcett and Jaclyn Smith, three ravishingly beautiful angels, sworn to smashing crime, as their adored Charlie proclaimed!

But nobody ever saw Charlie. He was only a voice — but all-knowing and all-seeing!

Charlie’s angels were angels for good: finding out crime anywhere, and fixing it.

Not so, Lucifer’s angels. In Paradise Lost, Lucifer, the son of the morning and hitherto brightest of all archangels, got consumed by sheer pride and conceit.

His host swooped, bristled, quivered and rippled against the Almighty, on account of Lucifer’s beauty and hubris; quaking, after their doomed hero: better reign in hell than serve in heaven!

They got their wish — and the once luminous Lucifer, archangel of the high heavens, got hauled down as Satan, chained to the pit of hell, infernal king of darkness.

Still, Bukky’s angels?

Well, unlike Charlie’s angels that swooped for the public good, Bukky’s angels are the contemporary Nigerian equivalent of the satanic gang, brusquely resisting their imminent lost paradise of filth.

Like Lucifer and his host, they would rather reign in the continued Nigerian hell, of corruption and dysfunction; than serve in a dream Nigeria: corrupt-free, workable, equitable and fair.

That is the crux of all the excitement on Saraki’s senatorial front.

Bukky’s angels are the quivering and rippling and threatening and swearing senators, bound by no laws but their conceit and whims; held by no parliamentary etiquette, but their rotten and uncouth temper; and ever ready to bristle their wings in anger, hinting at their unlimited capacity for mischief, when, where and how they damn well please!

They are the unfazed guardian angels of Bukola Saraki, controversial president of the Senate, who is not comfy on, but is self-glued to his throne of thorns, since his spiky installation on 9 June 2015.

Yes, it all started in June 2015 when Dr. Saraki, by selling off his party, delegitimized an otherwise legitimate bid for Senate president; and Ike Ekweremadu, by selling his soul to crass opportunism, assumed a position he had no claim to, by his party’s minority status.

Folks say trying to get rid of Saraki is political. It is. But so was Saraki’s premeditated perfidy against his party and its entitlement by right, by law and by convention, for infernal careerism.

So, one political motive cancels out the other, right?

But pray, what would cancel out the criminal raps on the neck of Saraki and Ekweremadu?

Threat-belching senators, with the malady peaking with that kindergarten one to impeach the president?

Or, gambit for time, by Saraki and his lawyers, to frustrate court processes, instead of vigorously and swiftly establishing his innocence?

Still, the embattled Senate president tends to miss something. Whereas the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), if Saraki is convicted, might be soft landing; for its penalty is just some years’ suspension from politics; the alleged forgery case, if found guilty, fetches him gaol and ruin.

Just compare the images. At CCT, Saraki has the “Accused’s Box” to himself, with a chair to boot. But when he appeared in court for the forgery charge, he was herded in the dock, standing with three others — the first Senate president to clock such ignominy!

Yet, the Saraki camp’s strategy remains the same: stalling by bluff and bluster, powered by senatorial blackmail, and not a tad rascality.

When the CCT case broke, Saraki’s senatorial angels caused the CCT Chairman, Justice Danladi Umar, to appear before a senate committee, a classic case of wanton self-help and criminal arm-twisting.

The forgery charge birthed a similar scenario: the fuming band also summoned the federal Attorney-General (AGF), to explain his temerity to dock a citizen — though he be senate president and his deputy — indicted for alleged crime!

What hubris! A Senate created by the Constitution, challenging a constitutional fiat from that same grundnorm!

That conceit provoked a counter-conceit from the AGF, who first spurned the summons, which was unfortunate.

But it does underscore that strengthening institutions in a delicate democracy requires utmost and mutual decorum. The moment a Senate makes a habit of reckless orders, aimed at illicit self-help, by brow-beating others, citizens would start — and not illegitimately too — calling its bluff. That shreds the dignity and integrity of the country’s highest legislative chamber.

Well, the Senate would ram through its legalistic summons, for the AGF eventually appeared. But it heard what it didn’t want to hear. Besides, it was clear who won the moral war.

The Senate, under Bukola Saraki, has reduced everything to reckless gaming, hoping that the consequent noisy spectacle — even if it is scandalously unedifying — would somewhat block the people’s nose from its oozing rot — that turns hollow, an otherwise hallowed chamber.

Add all this to the sewer-speak from Dino Melaye — he of the uncouth and irrational din — and you would easily realize how low the Senate had sunk. Yet, it is still sinking!

The more the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency strives to pull a rotten country towards rectitude, the more Saraki’s Senate desperately rallies to shove it back into the sewers, believing in the inevitable triumph of evil over good.

How so tragically misguided — just like Lucifer and his doomed angels!

Saraki may well herd his tragic ensemble into the hell in which they so wish to reign. In any case, in building a better Nigeria, it’s only a matter of time before they are consumed by own folly.

But parliament would bear the long-term collateral damage, long after this unfortunate 8th Senate would have been history.

The more this Senate craves illicit power, the more it loses authority, respect and prestige, and the more it is fated to domination by the executive.

But it’s doubtful if the Saraki Senate would care, having worked itself into some Samson complex.

It would spectacularly crash, to be sure, bound to self-destruction as it is. But unlike Samson, who at least had some moral grudge against Delilah, for betraying him, Saraki and co would crash alone.

Political self-destruction is a democratic choice. Though it’s still some three years to election time, the electorate nationwide must start pencilling down those senatorial irritants, and ship them to the political Siberia they belong.

The Senate is there for good governance. But the reverse is the case in this 8th Senate, because its leadership has serious ethical and integrity challenges.

May Nigeria never see such a Senate again!

http://thenationonlineng.net/bukkys-angels/

O boy, I need to sleep, when I wake up, I will read.

hehehehehe

See am inside box