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According to an allegation bandied by the Nigerian Senate, in December of 2003, El-Rufai paid two of his special assistants a whopping sum of N19.5 million as salaries and emoluments. Each of the two assistants the Senate claimed had been paid N9 million notwithstanding the fact that the FCT minister had circumvented the processes of civil service recruitment by recruiting the said individuals from the backdoor. The Senate therefore ordered the permanent secretary of the FCT ministry to recover a total sum of N19.5 million from the minister. Pushing further their heavy-handed indictments, the senators demanded that the FCT minister signs within four weeks what they described as the "200 audited accounts of the Bureau for Public Enterprises" where El-Rufai had previously served as director general. So far so fair, I suppose!

But on learning about the Senate's stinging indictments during a press conference he called to celebrate the signing of his pet anti-corruption program tagged Convention on Business Integrity, FCT Minister El-Rufai, according to Punch Abuja reporter, Funsho Aina, spat fire. He thundered:

I have not read about it. Somebody just told me as I went out that the Senate had indicted me. I don't care. Silence is the best answer for a fool as they say. I will not be accountable to anyone but the president and I will keep on doing my job. Since my first engagement with the Senate, I know that for the next few years, they will be trying to find something wrong with me. It is okay for them to try to write their English. But nobody can intimidate Nasir El-Rufai. I have not even received the written details of the indictment, but quite frankly, I don't give a damn (Punch, August 27, emphasis mine).

As would be expected the alleged outbursts of the FCT minister received a wide publicity in the news media mid last week. The news spread from the pages of newspapers to the chambers of the Senate. And without any hesitation the honorable senators of Nigeria pounced on the second-hand information from the newspapers and incomprehensibly proceeded to demand that the minister be removed from his office by the Nigerian president. Led by Senator David Cobina Brigidi, who made an instant dogma out of the hearsay press reports, the exalted upper chamber of the Nigerian legislature passed a motion demanding that El-Rufai be relieved of his position as minister of Federal Republic of Nigeria within 48-hours.

Such was the line of action chosen by the exalted body of the Nigerian Senate. In a proceeding that would make the most unfair court cringe, the highest legislative body in Nigeria tried, convicted and sentenced the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, on the strength of hearsay press allegation. And that tells volumes about the quality and level of intellectual activity of the men and women serving in the Nigerian Senate. In everyday thinking such an approach would be considered rash, unreflecting and unthinking. It would be in no way associated with a purely calculating and deliberative body like the Senate of a full-fledged republic. Yet that was the line of approach chosen by the Nigerian Senate. Everyone can agree that as far as political leadership is concerned, Nigeria is not by any stretch of the imagination a lucky nation. Her leaders are about the most undignified, unreflecting and perhaps the most mentally stunted set of individuals in the history of democratic politics. It is sad!

According to the Guardian, even without any interviews or corroborating information on the allegation, Senator Brigidi, basing himself solely on newspaper reports, judged El-Rufai's alleged outburst as "an unprovoked attack on the credibility of the Senate as well as individual senators." He declared: "we have worked tirelessly to ensure that this democracy works. We have also done our best to cultivate and sustain a very healthy relationship with the executive arm of government so that good governance could be achieved for our people at the end of the day. But I do not think what we deserve in return is this insult from the executive" Guardian, Sept. 01). The Guardian reported that it was Senator Brigidi who had persuaded his colleagues to regard the "insult" as directed at the Senate rather than to an individual senator. It was he also who imputed the alleged sin of one member of the executive arm of the Obasanjo administration on the whole branch of the government. Hence in the illogical world of Brigidi, the sin of El-Rufai is equal to the sin of the executive branch.

Senator Brigidi even worked hard to brush aside a legitimate inquiry from the senate president, Adolphus Wabara, on whether the accused, El-Rufai, had been contacted to verify the allegation before moving the motion to a vote and possible passage. Incomprehensibly Senator Brigidi declared that he was relaying on yet another layer of hearsay from his party chairman, Chairman Audu Ogbeh, who he claimed had reported to the PDP caucus that El-Rufai had rejected the entreaty he had made to him to retract his comments. With such double-layered hearsay information, Senator Brigidi railroaded the highest legislative body of Nigeria to pass a motion demanding that the FCT Minister El-Rufai be forced out of office. And to show the type of a senate president he appears to be, Senator Adolphus Wabara allowed his legitimate inquiry on the fairness of the process to the accused to be drowned in the rowdy chorus of mob-like and unreflecting senators demanding the punishment of El-Rufai even without a hearing. After one year in office, Senate President Wabara is making his predecessor, Anyim Pius Anyim, look like a political genius. How come a senate leader saw what was right and proper to do but could not muster the moral courage to do it? Is this leadership or what?

As would be expected, the Nigerian president did respond to the motion of the Senate. He sent a letter to Senate President Adolphus Wabara, pleading for patience while he looked into what he described as "alleged wrong deployment of language of the minister of the Federal Capital Territory on a member or members of the Senate of the Federal Republic." He announced that he had demanded an explanation from the minister and had since "noted with some concern the minister's explanation, which seemed to touch on action and reaction between a distinguished senator and the honorable minister."

The president noted that he had "cautioned the minister on the use of language in public about any member of the federal legislature no matter how seemingly provoked." He admonished: "everything should be done to maintain the very cordial and amicable relationship now existing between the executive and legislature." The president concluded his letter with a halfhearted apology: "if any offense has been caused, I apologize on behalf of the minister." And in a seemingly inappropriate equal-opportunity chastisement of the upper chambers of the legislature the president cautioned, "I hope that words amounting to alleged threat or blackmail will cease to emanate from distinguished and honorable members of the National Assembly" (Guardian, September 01).

According to reports, the reading of President Obasanjo's "letter of apology" in the senate chambers was met with gestures of disapproval and a thunderous chorus of "No!" "No!" Moreover, as the president appeared through his letter not to have appreciated the level of anger in the Senate against El-Rufai; when he seemed to be playing it both ways - blaming the FCT minister and some members of the senate on a seemingly equal footing, the Senate responded by declaring a two-day strike against the president's pending NLC liquidation bill. The striking senators promised to return only to review any further responses from the president. To demonstrate how theatrical the whole incident appeared in the eyes of many observers, a section of the Nigerian media got not a little kick from the irony that the Nigerian Senate which had convened to consider and assent to President Obasanjo's bill restricting strike actions and breaking the monopoly of the umbrella body of labor organizations in Nigeria began its day by embarking on a strike action of its own. Who says that Nigeria is not a great country?

What all this tends to show is that the history of how the Nigerian senators embarked on a strike action to protest a press allegation of calumny against them by the FCT minister is filled with irrational indignation that borders on a witch-hunt and vengeance. In fact, the whole nonsense that caused the upper chamber of the Nigerian legislature to embark on a self-embarrassing strike action was more or less the story of how one senator's blind passion and perhaps ignorance were sold to majority of Nigerian senators who bought and followed it like sheep, thereby rashly embarking on a groundbreaking legislative action without first availing themselves of firsthand information. This is perhaps the first time in the history of the world that a legislature would be passing a binding motion based solely on unsubstantiated press allegation.

It seems clear that the pedigree of legislators directing the affairs of Nigeria's fledgling democracy can hardly ever lead our nation to anywhere near a democratic Promised Land! They seem incapable of embracing the deliberative culture of the second tier of a presidential democracy. The whole El-Rufai affairs seem to expose the real fiber of the present Senate and senators. The fact that they did not first hear from El-Rufai before condemning him seems clear evidence that they are a group of people with a dubious agenda that is based on witch-hunting and gotcha politics.

However, the billion-dollar question has to be: when will Nigerian senators learn that the real duty of lawmakers, especially the senators, is to constantly apply some breaks on issues with volatile implications? When will they mature in their senatorial roles and begin to handle issues with dignity and majesty? Instead of becoming a deliberative, investigative and in fact moderating body, our Nigerian legislators seem to cherish acting out their emotions and frustrations like teenage high schools kids, who get a little rumor of some insults and start to riot. As the saying goes, if they cannot take the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. The Senate like the presidency is not a place for thin-skinned teenage politicians.

Reading the contributions of the senators during their deliberation of the motion, it appeared that many were reacting not necessarily to the allegation before them but to the long history of their sour relationship with the FCT minister. And this bad blood dates way back to the inception of the second-term of the Obasanjo administration when the FCT Minister accused Senators Mantu and Zwingina of demanding a bribe of N54 million. The multi-million Naira bribery allegation coupled with the rancorous history of the relationships with many members of the Nigerian legislature dating way back to the time when the FCT minister held the plum position of director general of the privatizing agency, BPE, that appeared to have frustrated the aspirations of many of the legislators to appropriate what they thought were their deserving perks from the privatization of Nigerian establishments, seems to form the overarching background to what happened last week. Many of the senators were perhaps reacting to the fact that the FCT minister had been a long-serving impediment to their economic interests in Nigerian politics.

However, this is not to say that the FCT minister is without blame in this regard. In fact, the perennial animus between him and the senators shows that the FCT minister is a very terrible politician. He seems to lack the political skills that are indispensable for his position as a highly placed minister in Nigeria. The minister seems annoyingly inept in smoothening or at least patching up matters along the lines of forging a good working relationship with the bruised egos of the aggrieved senators. Even though he seems to be an honest and hardworking executive member of the administration, El-Rufai seems to lack the professional touch that could help him maximize his achievements in his office. According to Vanguard, some of the senators seeking the head of the minister on a platter were reacting to another allegation against him that he claimed on a national television network program that there was "an axis of evil in the Senate" (Vanguard, Sept. 01). This kind of utterance coupled with his "I don't care," "I don't give a damn" comments reported in the press last week will get him nowhere in any political endeavors anywhere in the world.

In fact, El-Rufai appears to lack both the skills and the knowledge of how a minister operates in a democracy. He seems to be an island onto himself. There is no democracy in the world where a minister behaves in this manner. Democracy is always a game of compromise. You get some of your aspirations; your opponents get some of theirs also. It is never a game of my-way-is-the-highway! There is no room for this type of a mentality in a multi-party and multi-ethnic democracy. No matter how noble your intentions might be, a good politician must recognize and respect the right of another politician to hold a contrary viewpoint that may not make sense to him or her. This is the beauty of a democracy. Everyone is entitled to one's views and opinions. If you want your view to prevail, you have to muster the needed majority behind it and your view could become law and binding on all.

Moreover, for the minister to declare that he is accountable to no one other than the president shows that he needs to take Course 101 in presidential democracy. If he does not know, the FCT minister is accountable to the two chambers of the legislature who exercise oversight functions over his ministry. It seems complete ignorance for him to declare that he is not accountable to the legislators. Does he think that he is working for a military dictatorship or what? Somebody should remind him that he is a minister in a democracy of checks and balances. The system is set up in such a way that it is the responsibility of the legislature to check the activities of the executive, whether they are the president or his cabinet ministers.

Members of the executive serve at the grace of both the president and the legislature. If El-Rufai does not know what checks-and-balances means, he should resign his position or be fired. It sounds very insulting to the sensibility of the entire nation for one man to declare on national media that he does not give a damn and he is only accountable to only one person? Who is that one person he is only accountable to? Is he God or what? If that person is the president, he is there at the grace of the people of Nigeria represented by the members of the legislature. The Nigerian president must rein in FCT Minister El-Rufai. He should be properly schooled in the way to deal with the legislature in a democracy.

However, let us get back to the main issue of this essay. Going by press reports last week, did the minister of the FCT, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, call the Nigerian senators fools during his outburst at his press conference? Let us get something straight from the word go. If the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nasir El-Rufai, indeed called the Nigerian senators, fools, he not only went way overboard in political irresponsibility but he might have committed a terminal political blunder that potentially seals his fate as a minister under the present administration in Nigeria. There seems to be no greater blunder in politics than for a member of the executive to engage the legislature in such a personal way as to insult them as a group. But the billion-dollar question is, did he really call them fools? Did he really do that? I am not convinced he did.

A little parsing of the words of the minister is absolutely necessary here. During his infamous outburst, the minister was reported to have quoted a common English language saying: "Silence is the best answer for a fool, as they say." Ideally speaking, the minister only applied a quotation to his speech. Going by such a common application, is it fair for the Senate to conclude that the minister had insulted them by calling them fools? Such would be definitely a tremendous stretch. In our view, it needs a major mental leap to arrive at such a conclusion. And such a leap would be almost an irresponsible understanding of the English language saying here.

First, the Senate is an institution made up individuals. It seems an improper application to say that the Senate is a fool. The Senate can be made up of fools, which the minister did not say, at least explicitly. But the Senate cannot just be a fool, even as an institution. It seems a very strange way to characterize an institution that does not of itself exercise the faculty of reasoning. But the Nigerian Senate can be made up of senators who fail to exercise their faculties of reasoning properly. Even though such may be the case with regard to the present-day Nigeria, there is hardly any logical basis to conclude off-handedly that that was what the FCT minister had meant in his appropriation of the common English language saying.

Second, the minister was just quoting an English saying that is in everyday use. And he duly acknowledged that he was extrapolating and importing the statement that may be improper in his preferred location. This seems what we do most often in our essays and speeches. Many a time we import quotations intending to provide more meaning and contexts to our views only to end up creating a different impression altogether. This happens to public officials, essayists and scholars every so often. For a public official accountable to different interests in a multi-faceted institution like that of a presidential democracy, the best way to resolve such confusion is to invite the official for a restatement of the saying and its clarification. Language is the trickiest medium in human interaction. Its capacity to be multivalent usually presents the unintended consequence of creating misunderstanding among people. If the Nigerian Senate wanted to be truly deliberative in this matter, they could have invited the FCT minister for a chat. That would have been the most dignifying way to go about the whole matter.

Despite his failures in the outbursts, the FCT minister was prescient and circumspect enough to rub in a caveat: as they say, in his statement. He said that silence is the best answer for a fool, as they say. With this caveat, the minister clearly disclaimed that the saying was his. According to him, it is other people's saying, which he had appropriated for illustration's sake. As an imported illustrative statement, just like a quotation in an essay, it does not seem right to attribute the whole meanings to the importer of the statement. Yes, the minister could be accused of what the Nigerian president described as "wrong deployment of language." But that is the much one could do here. He may be incompetent in the use of the English language, so are those who understood his quotation as applying to them. Moreover, El-Rufai seems to make some concessions about his understanding of the English language when he declared: "it is okay for them (senators) to try to write their English." He seems to have nuanced his use of the saying quite well that it should have been clear to the senators that he was perhaps not buying the imported saying wholesale. He implied that the meaning of the statement belonged to the people he had alluded to in his caveat phrase: as they say.

However, it seems irresponsible for any sensible person to conclude outright from the strength of the minister's statement that he had insulted the Senate. The Nigerian Senate that embarked on a strike action because of an awful interpretation of this statement can be accused of misreading the saying. The senators made a major mental leap in their claim that the minister had insulted them. They had no justification whatsoever to embark on any action against the minister without first inviting him to the floor of the senate to repeat his statement and clarify it. With their oversight duty, they had the right to compel the minister to appear before the Senate to clarify himself. And if he had failed to make an appearance, then they would have had the right to draw any conclusions that pleased them. But absent such a personal clarification by the minister himself, it smacked of irresponsibility for the senators to have declared a strike action because they wanted him fired. And fired for what? For an unverified press allegation or rumor?

Third, as an indication that the minister perhaps did not know the meaning of the English quotation he had appropriated, when he said that silence is the best answer for a fool, he went on speaking. If he had meant that the statement should be applied to the Senate, he could have at least obeyed its command and remained silent in order that the statement would do the talking for him. But he went ahead speaking. He started saying that he would be accountable only to the president, and so forth and so on. This is not the posture of someone who believes he should keep silent and not respond to the fools of the Nigerian Senate.

The bottom line to all this is that both the FCT minister and the Nigerian Senate blundered tremendously on the issues of the last couple of weeks. Both committed errors of judgment. But it is gracious that the FCT minister had as at late last week recognized his folly and tendered an apology. As was widely reported in the news media last week, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai went to PDP headquarters in Abuja on Friday and tendered an unreserved apology for "uncomplimentary remarks against senators." The minister attributed his outbursts to "the cumulative effect" arising from strenuous work, which he described as "round the clock virtually, working a hundred hours a week." According to him, the pressure resulting from his strenuous schedule had meant that, "as a human being, one can lose one's balance." El-Rufai declared: "I did nor mean what I said and I certainly did not mean it to refer to the whole Senate, but even if I meant it to refer to one person, it was an inappropriate statement. I made a mistake and I am sorry…. We are all human beings and we all make mistakes. And Mr. Chairman, I deeply regret this and I feel particularly bad about the pain that I have caused many people, both in the leadership of the party and outside, that truly care about me" (Guardian, September 04).

With FCT minister's expression of profound apology, the ball bounces right back to the court of the Nigerian Senate. Will Nigerian senators ever realize the depth of the blunder they committed this past week? Will they accept the fact that they cheapened themselves and belittled the institution of the Nigerian Senate by passing a motion based completely on newspaper hearsay? It seems so disingenuous that an institution as exalted as the Senate could simply pick up an article from a newspaper and rush to pass a motion to begin a strike action. What type of a legislature is that? It is either that these senators do not understand their position as the sages of our democracy or they are simply immature and undeserving of their positions. Who could tell the Nigerian senators that the appropriate and legal way to go about a situation like that of the FCT minister is to invite both the author of the newspaper article and the alleged disparager of the Senate to the appropriate senate committees or to the senate floor for them to authenticate or deny the statements and in the process clarify them?

More important, what brought about the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria calling a strike action? What on earth were they striking for and whom were they striking against? It is strange that the Nigerian senators could consider themselves as employees of the executive and deem it reasonable to call a strike action against them. One can understand a potential situation where the Senate stands down a bill from the executive branch pending the time the president would meet with some of their demands. But for the Senate to declare a strike action and close its chambers against the executive is stranger than fiction. It can only suggest that Nigerian senators do not understand their place in our nation's democracy. They do not appreciate the fact that a presidential democracy is made up of three branches that must be treated as equals in every respect. For them to present themselves as junior partners to the executive, as those who serve at the pleasure of the Nigerian president, seems the main reason why democracy does not seem to work properly in Nigeria.

The Nigerian brand of senators let the president feel as if he is the sole proprietor of the nation of Nigeria. They make him believe that he is the employer of every politician in Nigeria. Hence they pretend that the only way to get him to listen to their grievances is to call a strike action and close the doors of the Senate. In other words, the exalted Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has reduced itself to the level of a trade union. This seems as irresponsible and childish as any senatorial institution could ever get. In fact, it seems a clear sabotage of our nation's democracy. The democratic system of government is not fashioned to operate that way. It seems no surprise therefore that many Nigerians reading the outbursts of El-Rufai this past week might think that he had verbalized the contents of their hearts.

The truth is, if the Nigerian senators cannot carry themselves with dignity and respect; if they cannot rise up to their duty as the brain and moderator of our democracy, every Nigerian who values the right of free speech should be at liberty to openly describe them as fools. If the senators cannot use their brains in their legislative duties in our nation, what else can any sensible Nigerian truthfully say about them beside the fact that they are a Senate of fools?