Crocodile tears flood the Senate

When the Senate moved last week to salute Nigeria and Nigerians on our 53rd Independence Anniversary, ravings and rantings, lamentations and wailings filled the Chamber. To quote one media source, speaker after speaker “berated both past and present leaders for failing to alleviate all the woes bedeviling the nation. . . . Most of the Senators who spoke . . . lamented on the poor living conditions of many Nigerians and decay in infrastructure.”

“Many of the Senators,” says our source, “attributed the slow pace of development to sentimental and parochial inclination of the nation’s leaders both past and present, while others blamed the nation’s lack of development on corruption.”

Well, as the saying goes, when you point one finger at someone else, at least three of your fingers point back at you. The supreme irony is that every member of the National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives) belongs among the leadership in question. It is they and only they who, just a few months ago, argued for weeks that the 2013 Budget should be pegged at a crude oil benchmark of $82/barrel instead of $75/barrel as the presidency proposed—while sensibly governed oil nations pegged their budgets at $25-$45/barrel.

To be continued