BRIBE FOR BUDGET & OTHER BILLS, STATE ASSEMBLIES NOT EXCEPTED – Opinion – Adeola Soetan

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Bribe for Budget & other Bills.

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As it is in the National Assembly so also in the State Assemblies.

I always smile when some people freely lose their heads when rightly condemning the national assembly on allegation of delaying the passage of budget (appropriation Bill) because of bribe demand.

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They pretend not to know that Bribe for Budget and other important Bills is the norm in the States. Ask your governor or any state legislator closer to you.

The only difference is that the State Honourables have not become daring ‘Ogbologbos’ like their seniors in Abuja and more so, their governors know what to do at the appropriate time and ‘do it well’.

State governors are like good poultry farmers who know the effective food rations (Layers mash) to give his birds in order to lay good eggs timely and regularly for his own ultimate advantage without wahala. In this case, Bills are like Eggs. Or have you not noticed that it has almost become a convention in our states, before or after budget passage, that honourables change their cars, their accumulated real and imaginary allowances paid, many travel abroad for holidays and almost all pending assembly welfare issues are instantly settled with juicy extras to be shared by them.

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No rumble in the poultry (House) during passage of Appropriation and Bills because many governors are ‘Customers dada ni’ to the legislators. You only hear ‘wahala’ once in a while which often lead to impeachment of their Speakers when the House leadership is considered too flippant with negotiation or too greedy to share the dividends of legislature – executive romance equitably, or when his supreme Excellency feels his boy (Speaker) has crossed the red line by becoming uncontrollable.

Before coming to Abuja as legislators, these ex – state honorables, ex – governors and other exs have become Ogbologbos because they have enough experience to know that the system is run and sustained on corruption and a free range political mercantilism of the worst type.

If Buhari wants to stop this corrupt practice, I think he should be encouraged and supported. But can he succeed and achieve much? I say No, because he himself is a product of that entrenched corrupt political system. Having been financially brought to power by a section of the looters colony, Buhari ordinarily becomes an unwilling hostage to the colony and the system that he too has bluntly refused to start the process of its restructuring by his party’s promise.

Again I wink when some ‘Baranda’ Activists daily condemn the Abuja hollow chambers tenants but conveniently leave out the political parties and the over monetized system that produced them.

Did it not sound strange to them that none of the parties (APC & PDP) has condemned and called their members in the national assembly to order in the face of jumbo salaries, bribe for budget and other corrupt practices?

That should tell the wise that the problem is not in the part alone but in the whole. The rot will continue from the state to Abuja except there is System change

Comrade Adeola Soetan.