The Right Honourable speaker. I will come to the question of her honour in a moment, but before doing so it seems worth the delay to wonder if perhaps Mrs Etteh asserts her innocence with such singular lack of circumspection because the word “indict” is beyond her ken. For sure, it isn’t a word she was accustomed to hearing her customers utter often or at all while she fried their hair or clipped their nails as a hairdresser  —  sorry, beautician. I doubt that City People, Ovation, or any of the gossip and glamour rags that patrons of beauty salons would kill for can be said to be fond of that word either. So for the benefit of the Rt. Hon. Speaker, we should inform her that to indict a person is to charge him or her with a fault or offence, and that this needs not be through a formal process. An indictment may be no more than an expression of strong disapproval, as the Senator David Idoko investigation panel has done in its 19-page report. Without a care for rightness or honour, Mrs Etteh, the panel found, scorned due process the easier to defraud the hapless citizens of this country.

But this is not the first time Mrs Etteh has proved her inability to understand basic concepts. One of her first blusters when news of her attempt to rob the nation made the headlines was the claim that she had followed due process. Whatever she could have meant by due process, she quite obviously lacked the capacity for the sort of reflection that would have told her that  as understood by persons not seeking to hide malfeasance, it is a means to an end and not an end in itself. This means that even if she, her deputy, and their fellow gang of contract-fiends had actually followed due process to repair or “upgrade” just the leaking roof of her official bedroom with the small sum of N50 million, or to convert the National Assembly complex to their personal property, the goal of due process would still be defeated. The goal being that the public interest is preserved by ensuring that only what is reasonable and justifiable is expended on social needs, and that every foreseeable avenue for corruption is eliminated from the process of governance.

No doubt, Mrs Etteh could find the nerve to protest her innocence even this late in the day because she trusts the code of dishonour by which her Power Drunk Party (PDP) has held the country to ransom for the past eight years to rescue her. All she needs to do is buy time for the party’s enforcers to suborn representatives with threats and bags of money, and the world would be informed that the scam was “a family affair.” She waits for a formal indictment in the assurance that when the full house sits to deliberate on the Idoko panel report, she will be in charge of proceedings. But we all know that cardinal maxim of law that prohibits one from being a judge in one’s own case. The House might just wish to examine its rules regarding the suitability of its indicted speaker chairing the debate of a negative report on her conduct.

As it happened, we were already on our way to the familiar dismissal of the scandal as a PDP family affair. In the report, “Assembly, Mark clear Etteh, deputy over alleged scam” in The Guardian of 3 September, Senate president, Brigadier-General David Mark, declared that the allegations against the Speaker “lacked merit.” On the question of due process, he proclaimed, “There is a process for awarding contracts and once that process is followed, there is nothing to fault there.” In fact, Mark turned accuser on behalf of her embattled counterpart in the lower chamber. According to him, her accusers did not themselves “follow a (sic) due process.”  Mark, a retired soldier under a thick cloud of suspicion over his fabled sudden riches only after high political office  —  a cloud that grows thicker every day he fails to make public his assets declaration  — surely knows a thing or two about deflection tactics. But when asked point blank for his position on Etteh, Mark who often mistakes a grating brashness for informed opinion wasted no time in responding, “I strongly support her!” With the evidence as it is, we wait to see how much a man of his word the senate president is. Not a few Nigerians pray that when Etteh is finally swept out of office by the wind of a scandal she raised herself, Brigadier-General Mark will leave the battle field bearing his wounded comrade on the shoulders.

Now to the matter of honour, which Mrs Etteh invites us to consider with her insistence on being seen as “Right” and “Honourable” the more her conduct is questioned. By what warrant does she use these words to describe herself when she has yet to rebut satisfactorily any of the ten counts of desecration of due process found against her? Indeed, ought she to still be speaking from the precincts of the National Assembly? Just what is it that makes Nigerian politicians not merely shameless but so revoltingly unshamable for good measure? The picture of a child caught hands in the soup-pot denying that he was after the meat is laughable. The child, we know, will not carry on the pretence for long. In fact, it is his fear of the cane, the punishment sure to follow, that turns him into a pathetic liar and soon enough he would be crying and begging for clemency. But the case of the speaker of the second chamber of parliament who thinks that a fictitious due process and the absence of a court-issued charge sheet entitles her to soil the high-seat of a law-making body would be even more laughable were it not so sad and lamentable.

What hope can there ever be for this over-abused nation when a woman who considers herself right and honourable does not know that the only honourable thing for her to do in the circumstance is to go away as quietly and penitently as she can? That she ought not to have waited till a committee of the very house she is supposed to lead damned her with evidence of her kleptomania is proof of only one thing: Mrs Etteh does not know what “right” or “honour” is. It is even worse that Etteh hopes to be cleared of wrongdoing so she can retain her leadership of the house. With what moral authority does she hope to remain speaker?

But Nigeria being a country of “anything goes,” as her godfather, General Olusegun Obasanjo, declared without intending the bruising irony, she may very well survive this scandal. Yet without a modicum of self-respect or a sense of public responsibility to compel her to resign, she couldn’t possibly worry about the damage she would thus bring to the House and the country. What can she care if whenever she should be abroad cold handshakes and sniggering laughter greet her! Dear “Rt. Hon. Mrs Speaker,” the only course of honour for you right now is resignation. Do it before time runs out on you.

© Ogaga Ifowodo

Robot  Villager

# 1 Against the damning evidence collated by her peers and pointing to her guilt in the N628 mil...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 30.09.2007 13:06

Dapxin  Villager

# 2 Did you honestly think any of our politicians can sit in the same raft with the word - honour personified ? Probably since the days of that brave soldier - Adekunle Fajuyi -, honour for all intent and purposes doesn't exist on the streets of Abuja! Period. ( I said it like Will Smithyyyyyyyy :D) Posted by Dapxin| 30.09.2007 14:16

Fjord  Villager

# 3 Notes from a rotten Senate President: “Assembly, Mark clear Etteh, deputy over alleged scam” Senate president, Brigadier-General David Mark, declared that the allegations against the Speaker “lacked merit.” “There is a process for awarding contracts and once that process is followed, there is nothing to fault there.” According to him, her accusers did not themselves “follow a (sic) due process.” “I strongly support her!” The president of the Nigerian Senate strongly supports his fellow thieving legislator, Mrs. Olubunmi Etteh as things stand; there's little hope for this National Assembly; very little. . Posted by Fjord| 30.09.2007 15:00

Zanderlex  Villager

# 4 =dapxin;20915279>Did you honestly think any of our politicians can sit in the same raft with the word - honour personified ? Probably since the days of that brave soldier - Adekunle Fajuyi -, honour for all intent and purposes doesn't exist on the streets of Abuja! Period. ( I said it like Will Smithyyyyyyyy :D) Oh please don't remind me of this brave soldier called Adekunle Fajuyi, the eternal symbol of a true host and a servant leader. He brings me tears of joy whenever I read about him and coming to learn that honorable men once walked the corridors of power in this our beloved nation....... May his gentle soul rest in peace. It is unto such men that I lay my claim that together with determination we shall one day conquer evil and restore the integrity of Nigeria while defending the sacared trust bestowed on us by other Nigerians whom we have taken an oath to serve be it Yoruba, Hausa or Igbo. Posted by Zanderlex| 30.09.2007 16:34

katampe  Villager

# 5 In a decent country, it is Funke Egbemode her media spokeswoman that should be the Speaker, and Etteh , Funke's hairdresser. Unfortunately in Nigeria anything goes. How does the Funke woman feel covering this woman's arse ? It is the tragedy of Nigeria. It is part of the loss of the nation that those that the country invested so much money on, are the ones that are not fully employed to use their intellect to the benefit of the country. Instead, they are employed to serve thieves and guide shady politicians. Posted by katampe| 30.09.2007 17:59

papas  JJC

# 6 =katampe;20915330>In a decent country, it is Funke Egbemode her media spokeswoman that should be the Speaker, and Etteh , Funke's hairdresser. Unfortunately in Nigeria anything goes. How does the Funke woman feel covering this woman's arse ? It is the tragedy of Nigeria. It is part of the loss of the nation that those that the country invested so much money on, are the ones that are not fully employed to use their intellect to the benefit of the country. Instead, they are employed to serve thieves and guide shady politicians. Ketampe, I feel you bro!!!!!!! Another great angle to the issue. Posted by papas| 01.10.2007 12:25