On Sunday, December 8 2019, Senator Godiya Akwashiki, the senate spokesman announced that the upper legislative chamber will continue to recognise convicted former Abia governor and chief whip of the 9th senate, Orji Uzor Kalu as a senator pending when the Supreme Court upholds or overturns the ruling of a Federal High Court in Lagos which found the former Abia governor guilty on multiple count charges of fraud and sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment. Akwashiki confirmed that Kalu would continue to receive his emoluments as a senior member of the upper legislative chamber until the highest court in the land rules that he is indeed guilty of looting state resources and cornering public funds in service of private agenda.
Kalu who was jailed alongside the director of finance and accounts at the Abia State government house in his time has already announced his readiness to appeal his conviction. While it is well within Kalu’s rights to fight to clear his name using every available legal channel, many observers and commentators however consider it bizarre that the senate, which ought to be the foremost law-making body in the country has taken a position that apparently undermined the place of the judiciary in a democratic setting. What moral justification can there be for paying hefty salaries and other fiduciary entitlements to a man who has been found guilty of stealing by a properly constituted court? A lot of deductions can be made from the position of the senate and one of such is that the senators believe it is cool for an elected official to deploy the weight of his office to enrich himself by directly using a personal business entity to siphon funds. Has the Nigerian senate become so roguish that it is not scandalised paying a convicted looter?
Beyond the moral disgust invited by Akwashiki’s announcement, the silence of the senate president Ahmed Lawan and other principal officers of the senate paints a picture of high-level complicity in the brewing scandal. Is Lawan oblivious of the implication of paying a felon from the coffers of the senate? Even more confounding in all of these is the very little outrage from the public. Why have we not heard from the opposition PDP? What happened to those who previously posed as the conscience of the nation? Are they not bothered that a part of the nation’s wealth is being deployed to paying the gratuitous entitlements of a convict? What is the position of millions of unemployed youths on this? When Shehu Sani spoke about the earning of senators last time, he revealed that each month, the minimum a senator gets as running cost is N13.5 million. This sum excludes their monthly salaries and other allowances.
An average graduate employed into the civil service in Nigeria today earns N50,000 or less. Kalu’s monthly running cost of N13.5 million would be enough to pay the salaries of close to 300 graduates who earn N50,000 or less. While in prison, Kalu’s office in the senate will remain under lock and key. He would not be able to contribute to debates on the floor of the senate and when votes are called, Uzor Kalu cannot vote. He cannot even attend any of the many sessions of the senate either in plenary or at committee levels. Nigerians therefore will be eager to know: what exactly is the senate paying Uzor Kalu for? Looting Abia’s funds?
Akwashiki announced that the decision to pay Uzor Kalu is in keeping with the precedence set in the 8th senate where Joshua Dariye continued drawing salaries and entitlements even after he had been sentenced, like Kalu, for looting the resources of Plateau people. Akwashiki’s logic sounds bizarre. Is he implying that the 9th senate cannot break bad precedence or is the new senate tied to the illegitimate tradition of its predecessor? What really informed this absurd decision to pay a man serving a jail term for high crimes?
It is about time the people of Abia North got involved in all of these. Presently, the district does not have a representative in the senate and it must be a point of concern to the stakeholders in the zone. Agreed that the voters must have made a mistake electing a man with a fraud case hanging on his neck into the senate, the opportunity to correct that error once and for all has now presented itself. The process of recalling Kalu from the senate must commence at once. The constituents must be mobilized to do the needful. It makes no sense to allow Kalu to continue to profit for work not done for the zone. Already, many Abians hold Orji Kalu responsible for the mess in the state regarding governance. Allowing this man to continue to profit inordinately from the politics of the state is clearly offensive to public morality and a great injustice to the state in general and Abia North in particular.
Akwashiki is entitled to his brand of morality and that should not be the immediate concern of this writer, the people currently at the receiving end of Kalu’s indiscretion however deserve a better democratic deal in a system where presence (attendance) is everything. The absent ones are forgotten. It is clear injustice to suggest that the people of Kalu’s district continue to wait until his legal rigmarole is done before they are able to have a representative in the upper legislative arm of government.
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