By Femi Abbas
“Let there become of you a nation that shall call for righteousness, enjoin justice and forbid evil. Such are men that will surely triumph”.
Q. 3: 104.
Dear Nigerian Legislators,
This is the third time in 21 years (1999-2020) that an open memo of this type is coming to you individually and collectively from this column.
The first was in 2008 barely nine years after the commencement of Nigeria’s 4th republic in less than 40 years of independence.
Although the contents of the first two memos were hardly different, the need to write this memo again is informed by the fact that a genuine preacher must never be tired of repeating his counsels and admonitions even where and when the addressees choose to be deaf and dumb as in the case of most of you.
Functions of Conscience
Conscience, according to Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, “is an open wound which only the truth can heal”. But one can talk of healing a wounded conscience only where it has not become cancerous.
Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once gave the precise definition of hypocrisy in one Hadith. He said: hypocrites
are known by three signs, when they talk they lie, when they promise they renege and when they are trusted they betray”.
Most of you (Nigerian politicians) so much typify that definition that one would wonder if he had Nigerian politicians in mind when he was expressing that axiomatic Hadith.
In Retrospect
You will recall that when, as politicians, you started nursing the ambition to become legislators, whether at the federal or state level, your first public announcement was that you wanted ‘to serve your people’.
And, based on that announcement, people rallied round you and embraced you as their servants in the understanding that whoever volunteered to serve in public office must have agreed to be servants of the people.
First Covenant
That announcement was your first political covenant with the people you claim to want to serve.
But that covenant was not just between you and the people in your constituency alone as you might have wrongly assumed, it also involved Allah’s hand as supreme the witness because your voluntary announcement to serve in whatever capacity was done in the name of Allah or whatever God you pretend to be serving.
And, in that case Allah will surely hold you accountable for making such a promise. It does not matter whether you were genuinely elected or characteristically rigged into office as usual.
Two Fundamental Issues
In Islam, two issues are exceptionally fundamental, both of which are not treated lightly by Allah. These are sacredness of life and justice.
It is a great iniquity for any human being to engage in murder and injustice under any guise.
Thus, anybody who kills fellow human beings extra-judicially under any guise, religion or politics or economy, is nothing but an agent of Satan who should also be treated in the like manner when caught with evidence.
In Islam, killing a fellow human being deliberately is such a grievous sacrilege that should not occur without application of commensurate punishment.
Besides recalcitrance to Allah through idol worshipping, nothing draws the wrath of Allah as fast as these two crimes which Satan may continue to ask you to ignore at your own peril.
How honourable are you?
Of the four estates of the realm in democratic governance, none is as fundamental as legislature. In any democratic dispensation, there can be no government without legislature.
Thus, whenever you are addressed as honourable legislator, please, refuse to be flattered. There is nothing peculiarly honourable in voluntarily choosing to serve people by joining others to legislate for them and to get heavily paid for doing so.
If you are a legislator today, it is neither because you are intellectually smarter or wiser than those for whom you are legislating.
Rare Opportunity
What makes certain politicians legislators is sheer expediency arising from queer inadequacies sadly foisted on us by our so-called political system which gives room for audacious gerrymandering.
If such opportunity comes your way illegally, let it not be mistaken for good luck. It may rather be a calamity waiting to strike at the appropriate time in future.
And, when it strikes, no one except Allah can tell the extent of its effect. At least you can see how the consequences of the heartless annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election have become an implacable spectre chasing the ghost of Nigeria as a country, even after two and a half decades of licking her wound with agony.
Lack of Conscience
Due to lack of conscience, most of you, politicians, may not have noticed, but you need to be hinted that shortly after you took oath of office as Ministers, Commissioners or Legislators, the people noticed that you started subverting the covenant which you voluntarily reached with them.
That covenant was to serve the people who paved your ways into those political offices. You promised passionately that you would serve them and anybody who volunteers to serve is nothing but a servant.
But no sooner had you been sworn into office than you started calling yourselves masters or leaders. That is why most of you often find it difficult to bend a little backwards and report to the people in your constituencies on how you are serving them.
Your deviation from your promise is a confirmation of the definition of hyporites as given by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as quoted above.
Morality and Reality
Against cultural morality and constitutional reality of the moment, you, as politicians, have turned the privilege of participating in governing the country or your State into your personal right which you are using to intimidate the poor masses and ride roughshod over them.
When you occasionally pretend to interact with those masses, it is only for the purpose of preparing their minds for the next election in which you hope to be returned, possibly, unopposed.
And for this reason, you cunningly pay them some pittances while making another fake promise to improve their well-being during your second or third tenure in office.
Constituencies foe What?
Some Legislators among you politicians have spent about 20 years in those legislative houses. Yet, there is no sign at all in your immediate constituencies that anybody is representing the people therein to the benefit of the constituencies.
You are contented with their milling around you for the pittances that you randomly dish out to them even as you assume that they are satisfied with such pittances.
Budget Padding
And now, Nigeria is held to a standstill because the Legislators among you must pad the annual budget presented to them by the executive to their own favour so that the largess generated by the executive arm may be jointly shared in the spirit of ‘rub my back and I will rub yours’.
As parents, you will want your children to grow up as responsible men and women, yet, most of you have nothing in you that can serve as good examples for those children.
Which aspect of your conducts do you expect your children to imitate since none is worthy of emulation? If you did not know, those children, like the majority of Nigerian citizens believe that you Nigerian politicians are the real causes of the multifarious problems confronting Nigeria today. And, your political attitudes seem to confirm that assertion.
Law of Existence
Covenant with Allah is the most fundamental law of existence. It is not one sided. As man has responsibilities to bear so does Allah have obligations to fulfill.
It is from the covenant with Allah that all other covenants in the life of man, including those of marriage, family rites, trust and confidentiality, are derived. That covenant is what others call oath.
Oath of office
In Islam, oath, whether private or public, does not necessarily require Muslims to carry the Qur’an in one’s hand as ignorantly done in Nigeria particularly at this time when oath of office has become a meaningless symbol of assumption of office.
No oath is ever made without Allah being a witness to it. Besides, He (Allah) has assigned two Angels to every human being as secret monitors.
The names of those Angels are Raqib and ‘Atid. The duty of these Angels is to record all utterances and secret actions of each person to whom they are assigned.
The one records good deeds, the other records evil deeds. Their recordings are both in video and in audio forms.
This is a fact contained in Q. 50: 16 where Allah states that: “We surely created man and ‘We’ know the promptings of his mind and are closer to him than his jugular vein.
We assign two guardians to watch him, one on his right (called Raqib) and another on his left (called ‘Atid). No utterance from him/her (the watched person) or action shall escape the records of these vigilant secret mionitors….”
It is from the functions of these invisible police that researchers came about the idea of video, audio and other technological devices used for espionage today.
Blind Trust
With this scenario, you can see the damages some of you (politicians) are causing to the present and future generations of this country in a bid to display your illegally acquired loot through corruption.
By interpretation, the problem of corruption engendered by gross indiscipline and lack of functional conscience in Nigeria today is not with the youths as often alleged.
It is rather more with the parents, some of whom are in the executive, the judiciary and the legislative arms of government.
If certain Nigerian youths are found enmeshed in corruption, they are only proving not to be bastards. It is their inheritance from their parents.
Nigeria remains a country without electricity today, even after 60 years of independence, because the priorities of those of you in government are permanently at variance with the country’s national priorities.
For instance, one would have thought that rather than fighting corruption the way Obasanjo presumably started it in year 2000, what a focused and sincere government should have done was to initiate a re-orientation revolution to enable all Nigerians know why corruption is evil.
And if such a reorientation had been backed up with mass employment, it would have been a preventive rather than a curative measure.
Naira Denominations
The Murtala Muhammad and Buhari/Idiagbon regimes experimented ulteration of naira denominations and Nigeria was briefly better for it.
Fighting corruption haphazardly as Obasanjo did during his agonizing eight year tenure was like starting the building of a house from the roof.
Nigeria only wasted those eight years chasing shadow in the name of fighting corruption while the monster kept feeding fat on the blood of poor Nigerians using as the term ‘BLIND TRUST’ served as its cloak.
It was the same Obasanjo as a politician, that introduced series of big denominations of naira and technically eliminated coins to pave way for rampant political thefts and astronomical inflation as well as spiral deflation of Nigerian currency that virtually ruined the economy.
Archive of Naira Denominations
It can vividly be remembered that by the time the 4th republic commenced in 1999, the highest denomination of Nigerian currency was N50 which was popularly called ‘Better Life’.
It was Obasanjo, shortly after he assumed office as President, that introduced N100 on December 1, 1999, with the portrait of Chief Obafemi Awolowo; N200 on November 1, 200, with the portrait of Sir Ahmadu Bello; N500 on April 4, 2001; and N1000 on October 12, 2005, with the portraits of Alhaji Aliyu Mai Bornu and Dr. Clement Isong (the two earlierst indigenous Governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria).
But for suspicious media speculation at that time, the portrait on N1000 would have been quite different. Your guess is as good as mine.
Ironically, after all those naira denominations had turned Nigeria upside down economically and the doors of armed robbery had been widely opened and other heinous crimes had become the order of the day that Obasanjo considered it right to change the then existing coins into polymer notes of N1 and 50 kobo while he completely faced out other coins in May 2007, the very month he was leaving office following the failure of ‘Third Term’ saga.
Thus, with the redesigning of other existing naira denominations, it can be con concluded that all the Nigerian naira denominations in circulation today are an evidence of Obasanjo’s governing era in Nigeria.
Rare Opportunity
Legislating is a rare opportunity to serve one’s nation meritoriously. But some of you (Legislators) seem to have turned that opportunity into one of self-enrichment as well as that of securing the future of your own children at the expense of the lives of millions of other children.
All these are done at the expense of the wretched people around you whose role in democracy has been relegated to voting once in four years.
You have forgotten that wealth is Allah’s endowment which cannot be inherited except by Allah’s will. Who inherited the expansive wealth and kingdom of King Solomon? Have you not seen some money bags of yester years wallowing in abject penury today? When will you learn your lesson?
My dear ‘Honourable Ministers, Legislators and judges, search your conscience and fear God. Remember that some people had ruled this country in the past.
Among them were those who usurped the roles of the executive, the legislative and the judicial arms together, in the name of military rule, made possible by coup d’état. Where are they today?
The Limit of Governance
Governance, like elasticity, has its limit. Four years may look endless, but for the wise, it is not more than a flash of lightening which only a fool may want to rely upon to walk his way through the darkness of the night.
Service to Humanity
Honourable legislators, let it be kept permanently in your hearts that the only thing which keeps people alive in history even long after their demise is service to humanity.
Prophets Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad (SAW), had neither bank accounts nor estates to bequeath to anybody. Their heritage, after their demise, has become much more than any material wealth for the entire world today.
That heritage is service to humanity. What is your own planned heritage if only for posterity? That is a big question which only people with conscience and common sense can answer.
Remember that you are in a ship already voyaging on the high sea towards the shore. At the shore are the customs officers waiting to check the contents of your cargo.
Be always at alert. Remember that if you cultivate friendship with Satan he will favour your wish. But if he grants you one favour, he will take ten from you in return.
Be Muslims by name, conduct and mannerism. As public officers, whatever you do as Muslims will affect the image of Islam in one way or the other.
I hope you will return home as Muslims that you claim to be and not as renegades. Remember all this and adjust now that you may be able to raise your head aloft when others will be losing theirs.
Assalam Alyakum!