IDAH FEDERAL CONSTITUENCY: CHOICE BETWEEN GRAMMAR & AUDACIOUS VOCAL LEGISLATOR IN 2019

By Odaudu Joel Minister


Over the years, the constituents of Idah Federal Constituency where I belong have been getting it wrong in the selection or rather election of representatives into the Green Chambers.

At present, we have a combo of the good and qualified, the fair and less qualified, the bad and unqualified, and the category of needless ugly, diffident, mousy and dispensable aspirants with no requisite credentials in the race to represent us in the House of Representatives.

This time, we refuse to be confused no matter the number of those in the race. The case in 2019 will be different. We shall and must employ the use of all political missiles at our disposal to politically torpedo and wipe all unqualified characters off the road to the House of Representatives.

Among the aspirants, we know those who have the combination of the required credentials, intelligence, excellent written and verbal communication skills, the requisite exposure, intimidating audacity, and the political will to make it happen and make us proud of having a representative in the Green Chambers.

Also among the aspirants, we know those who will go up there to speak English but will be interested in taking the back seat in the House where contracts are being cut for rapacious legislators and leave our people with nothing to benefit. Your intelligence and rapacity will do us no good. No be intelligence we go chop.

Worst of it all is the category of aspirants who will go up not only to murder the English language with wreckless abandon, but lack the education, mannerless in conversations, emptily arrogant, and utterly bereft of ideas to transform legislative representation into tangible benefits for the constituents. In the legislative chambers, you must be profoundly bold and coherently vocal to move a motion, sponsor a bill, and bring back home the goods for your people. The aspirant who lack the above mentioned qualities belong to the category of legislators who beat a hasty retreat in the National Assembly. House of Reps no be House of Assembly abi Local Government Councillor. If you go House of Rep, na National and International TV get you and us wey go dey watch! Semi-educated, intellectually poor, psychologically imbalanced, emptily arrogant and extremely mannerless aspirant will be a disaster of epic magnitude in the House of Representatives. Òjò ki kp'ona.

Come 2019, we shall select and push an audaciously vocal aspirant who is politically prudent with the qualified credentials for legislative functions; the one who is not just intellectually proficient but endowed with profound intellectual sagacity. For the good of our land which we want to be proud of, we shall throw off men with political insincerity and political desperados who do not possess the requisite desiderata for legislative business and whose academic qualifications were obtained on borrowed intelligence off the track to the House of Representatives in Abuja.

The legislature is a house built for good sense, a citadel of service, the soul of government, and the engine of democracy. It is meant for great men of learning and unimpeachable character, not for men who are lucid social vandals with history of utter political imprudence, political bewilderment, and lack of direction.

A roll of honour for great men of learning and character that have graced the glorious halls of various parliaments across the world would see men like Demosthenes of Greece, and Cicero of Rome. These two ancient greats may be centuries away in our memories, but other more contemporary examples like Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Winston Churchill, Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli, equally recommend themselves to our admiration. Inasmuch as we can't get men who possess the exact qualities of these classical parliamentarians of history, Idah Federal Constituency, this time, will bring on a representative close to these.

Never again will our Federal Constituency be represented by goose-bumpy political buffoons, semi-literate jesters, unmanly and panicky legislative ignoramuses who will go up into the House of Representatives to bark up the wrong tree.

Come 2019, Idah Federal Constituency will never produce a representative who will stand in the Green Chambers with unattractive comportment, break every rule in the book, and make cacophonous presentations that will stampede the entire constituency and its intellectually vibrant constituents into an abysmal pit of ignominy, a bottomless pit of shame.

Allah kiyaye musibah!

***Odaudu Joel Minister, Senior Special Assistant Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State (New Media), writes from Lokoja.