Shame of a nation
Last week, the news broke that the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr James Entwistle, wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives informing him of the disgraceful conduct of three House members in the United States who were there for the International Visitor Leadership Programme – Mohammed Garba Gololo (APC Bauchi), Samuel Ikon (PDP Akwa Ibom) and Mark Gbillah (APC Benue). The three lawmakers were alleged to have brought disrepute to the parliament by attempting to rape a housekeeper and soliciting for sex from prostitutes.
According to Entwistle “The U.S Department of State and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs received reports from employees of the Cleveland where the representatives stayed, alleging the representatives engaged in the following behaviour: “Mohammed Garba Gololo allegedly grabbed a housekeeper in his hotel room and solicited for sex. While the housekeeper reported this to her management, this incident could have involved local law enforcement and resulted in legal consequences for representative Gololo… Mark Terseer Gbillah and Samuel Ikon allegedly requested hotel parking attendants assist them to solicit prostitutes. The U.S Mission took pains to confirm these allegations and the identities of the individuals with the employees of the hotel in Cleveland.”
Expectedly, the three legislatures involved have stridently denied the allegations and have gone ahead, in the typical Nigerian way, to allege that the United States Ambassador is after them and their reputations for some strange reasons. We are naturally at a loss how the US Ambassador could just conjure an allegation of such magnitude against three out of ten lawmakers invited by the US government for the International Visitor Leadership Programme. Regardless, we must agree with Mr Entwistle that “the conduct described above left a very negative impression of Nigeria, casting a shadow on Nigeria’s National Assembly, the International Visitor Leadership Program, and to the American hosts’ impression of Nigeria as a whole.” And that “while the majority of Nigerian visitors to the United States behave appropriately, even a few Nigerians demonstrating poor judgement leads to a poor impression of the Nigerian people generally. What is more, “such incidents jeopardise the ability of future programming and make host institutions and organisations less likely to welcome similar visits in the future.”
The alleged conduct of the three lawmakers is keeping with established practice of Nigerian politicians and officials who see their positions not as those of trust and of service, of which the highest ethical conduct and behaviour is not only expected but demanded, but more as a privilege, a right, a license, sort of, to misbehave, to engage in orgies and to commit atrocities without being held to account. It is no wonder that Nigerian lawmakers especially have always cast envious glances on the President and Vice President, governors and deputy governors who enjoy immunity from prosecution and on many occasions have openly canvassed for the extension of such immunity to the legislature. But even without the immunity and due principally to the weaknesses of our law enforcements and a subservient and pliant electorate, they have continued to desecrate the National Assembly with their disgraceful conducts and escaping sanctions. It is time the citizenry gets agitated and rise up to put a stop to this. Countries that enjoy good governance and whose representatives are accountable to never got that on a platter of gold or by virtue of their countries being democracies. The people demanded and fought for them. Eternal vigilance, as the activists always like to say, is the price of freedom.
For our part, we demand the federal government and not just the House alone, to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegation and if the conduct of these lawmakers in the US falls short of expected behaviour of public officials, they should not only be expelled from the National Assembly, steps should be taken to prosecute them. These kinds of conducts bring immense shame to the National Assembly and the country at large. Perpetrators should be in jail and not in the hallowed chambers making laws for the country.