By Ide Tony Nwaka, PhD
There is no doubting the fact that the public perception of the political class is horrendous. Much as one would wish it wasn’t so, the brazen arrogance of many politicians haven’t helped matters. And the case of the driver and the reps member is a classic illustration of it.
I know there are truly honorable members of the political class, though they may be few in number, and some of them may have genuinely won their elections with the majority votes of the people, but I do admit that the attitude of a vast multitude of politicians tends to create the impression that they are yet to fully understand the concept of leadership and public service.
When a serving member of the national assembly openly refuses to pay for services rendered, proudly affirms on record that he slapped a driver twice, and would give him a third one if he wished, boasts that he will make him disappear and nothing will happen, threatens to lock him in his generator house to be asphyxiated by diesel fumes, calls him a rat and other expletives, smashes the driver’s phone, and ridicules the office of the Inspector-General of Police, then such a character has no business occupying the highest temple of representative governance. In some other societies, such unguarded outburst would have instantly ended his political career.
It’s lamentable that the atrocities in our clime have become so commonplace that our sensibilities are now dead to such indefensible aberrations. Of a truth, these are some of the things that demonize the entirety of the Nigerian political class, making the public to look at every politician as notoriously lacking in character and capacity, even when the few virtuous ones strive to live above board.
Those who attempt to justify the actions of the representative do not seem to understand that his violent misconduct strikes directly at the heart of the virtues he was elected to uphold.
Any political office holder who mindlessly exhibits such beastiality as was done by the reps member, should be immediately stripped of any veneer of honor, and called out for the brutish character he is. An elective office, especially of the legislative vintage, is a position of honor.
The term “Honorable” is not just a symbol of authority, but a stamp of grace and dignity, more so for legislative houses at the peak of the democratic machinery. If the occupant of such an exalted office would respond to provocation in the same manner as that of an “Agbero” or street urchin, then he definitely lacks the capacity and decency to operate at that realm of civilised representation.
The political class may have fallen far short of public expectations, but such personifications of infamy as the Abia State representative don’t deserve to remain in the hallowed chambers of the national assembly and be sustained by our commonwealth, lest they continue to pollute the fountain of politics and establish the most pernicious standards for upcoming generations.
The Nigerian politician is already sufficiently assailed and smeared with a putrid identity, that we don’t need a naked amplification of that dishonorable classification. I just hope that our situation has not become so irredeemable that even the said reps member would be honored with a chieftaincy title tomorrow and re-elected in 2027 with a resounding majority vote.
*Ide Tony Felix Nwaka, PhD, former Commissioner in Delta State, is a Nigerian Writer and Public Policy Consultant.