David Mark: Never again!

At the valedictory session of the Senate last week, outgoing Senate President, David Bonaventure Mark made some remarks that were clearly not casual. Of course, he gloated over his very impressive performance as leader of ‘the hallowed chamber’ but then he also went on to lament how pained he was that the senate that he had led in the past eight years could not pass several very important pieces of legislation, including the very critical Petroleum Industry Bill. Crocodile tears. Even as Mark waxed lyrically off-key, the corollary House of Representatives (which equally has been another relative disappointment) was choosing to work some more on the PIB which it finally passed on the same day that Mark had rather preferred to throw his self-adulating eulogy party!


Indeed, the putrid obscenity of that valedictory event was most depressing. It was more of an ‘Ali, Baba and the forty thieves’ (get my drift?) scenario as one ‘distinguished’ senator rose after the other rose to celebrate the grandeur of Mark’s leadership. It reminded this writer of a comparable scene in the medieval Roman senate, when the reprobate Emperor Caligula, completely overtaken by vainglory, hedonism and debauchery, allegedly enthroned his horse, Incitatus as consul!


To put the obscenity in better context, the reader will recall that only the day before this ill-fitting charade, the same David Mark had superintended over a most bewildering passage of 46 bills in ten minutes! And even as he was gloating over the fact of his brilliant leadership, the senate was also revealing that in the past four years, it had received a total of 591 bills with only 123 passed! And then 46 of those 123 were passed in one day!! Is this the great feat that Mark and company were clinking glasses over?


Getting beyond Mark’s team of in-house cheerleaders, what do we the people say about his tenures? Are we impressed? To put it in another mould, has Mark done enough in his eight year leadership of the Senate to merit the plaudits that his colleagues are flinging at him?


For us, a critical analysis of the Mark years as leader of the senate would begin from his home Benue South senatorial zone where the reports are categorical that virtually all of his recorded victories to even enter the senate in the first place have largely been Pyrrhic encounters, with each of his pre-leadership wins being seriously disputed and contested.


Our analysis goes next to value where the senate under his watch has clearly not been seen to stand robustly with the people in the critical issues of the day. Starting with the fuel subsidy protests through the mystery of exactly how much senators earn, the verdict is that the senate that Mark led was a critical under-performer in real terms. What is the value of his great brilliance and chequered leadership when for over a year after its sad occurrence, victims of the immigration saga failed to find succour in the senate? What about the constitution review charade that ended as ‘a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing!’ And to return to the crisis of PIB under reference, it is equally to Mark’s great leadership credit that he has now presided over two sessions of the Senate that consistently failed to pass the critical industry-shaping enactment.


Rather the Senate under Mark preferred to sit lamely by and be accomplices in the maladministration of a great nation and people. Rather than excoriate a criminally fumbling executive over its culpable inability to fix the fuel challenge, it is sending a lame handover note to the new administration to ensure that it fixes the problem. Oh Mark, where did we find you?
But we know the answer. We found you in a Nigeria where values had long gone askance. As Minister of Communications in the Babangida era, you had remarked that telephones were not for the poor. When Abacha came, you could not be found. You are the archetypal system player, deal maker, what some will prefer to call ‘the real trouble with Nigeria.’


On the other side, some have argued that you have represented a stabilizing force in the nation. But what is the texture of your stabilization programme and at what costs? Mr. David Bonaventure Mark, Nigeria will not miss your departure from the hallowed seat of Senate President of the republic. And here is hoping that your successor and indeed the slim band of returnee senators and the motley crowd of new Senators also get it: it is bye-bye to rege-rege.