The storm continues to brew in Ekiti, setting off a disastrous chain of events that has seen the fiasco at the state legislature quickly leap into chaos even as a new administration in struggles to come to grips with providing good governance in a state that has known no little turmoil in recent times no thanks to the unscrupulous activities of some political misfits for whom politics is a do-or-die affair.
For any democracy that is not in itself a mockery of what democracy should be, the legislature, which makes laws is often not just the legislative powerhouse, but also a stabilizing force.
In Ekiti State however, as a new administration has taken the reins of power, the legislature has morphed into a destabilizing force.
Given how much is still unknown about the the involvement of the executive in the unfolding q drama,it is safe for now to conclude that the chaos at the state legislature is driving the good people of the state to distraction.
Apparently,the winds of change are wreaking havoc in the ‘Fountain of Knowledge’ State. First, ex -Governor Kayode Fayemi completed his tenure and handed over to Biodun Oyebanji. Then death picked off the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Funminiyi Afuye. His replacement, Gboyega Aribisogan was barely seven days in office when he was fed into the shredder of impeachment.
Since then, it has been from confusion to confusion. But one thing is clearer than others: the confusion feeding on the state is clearly orchestrated by those who do not mean well for the state, but are instead content with the service of their personal interests.
The impeached speaker who has since been purportedly replaced by Olubunmi Adelugba has since fingered Fayemi as the one behind his political travails that saw some members of the Assembly impeach him as speaker and indefinitely suspend him and six others loyal to him.
It is also noteworthy that a group of prominent lawyers from the state has since denounced the circus going on in the State House of Assembly while rebuking Biodun Oyebanji who is the new governor for his silence.
It appears that as Nigeria continues to belatedly consolidate its democracy, there is no end in sight to the crises that episodically rock state legislatures around the country.
It must be said that these crises are at once odious and ominous. There was a time even Nigeria’s National Assembly was a hotbed of such crises exclusively stoked by those who in the shameful quest to serve their personal interests think nothing of trampling the law-making authority of Nigerians as expressed in the legislature.
It must also be observed that it is not always the case that it is external influence alone that it is to be blamed for the crises that engulf the legislature from time to time.
It appears that there are always members within the legislature who are always ready to rent themselves out to do the bidding of those acting from outside to destabilize legislatures around the country.
One wonders who these people represent. Themselves or their constituents.
There is very little doubt that if democracy in Nigeria is to grow even stronger, then everything must be done to protect those who make laws from themselves as well as from agents of destabilization.
Kenechukwu Obiezu,
Twitter:@kenobiezu
