By Debo Popoola
Parasites are organisms that live in or on other organisms for their survival. While these parasites are nourished and flourishing, their host organisms become thinner and lack nutrient. Parasites are silent killers, blood suckers and destroyers. They cannot live without the destruction of other organisms. For them to gain life, another’s life must end. Hence, the relationship between Nigerian senators and the Nigerian masses is parasitic if we judge by the activities of the senators, especially in recent times.
From the vintage point of an average Nigerian man, he believes his senators are into power to embezzle and to enrich themselves at his expense. An average Nigerian man will argue that his senators are set of selfish and self-centered individuals who got hold of power not because they really wanted to develop their constituencies but because they wanted to amass wealth for themselves and their unborn generations. Most of them cannot boast of a single project they have embarked upon to help the poor in their constituencies, in fact, the money they could have used for the good of their local communities have been diverted to their private purses. Many of them cannot boast of passing a law that has helped an average man.
An average Nigerian man sees his senator as an instrument of oppression and suppression because while the senator stores up money for himself, the average man is starved because the money that should have gone round to him has been personalized by his senator, the relationship between the senator and average man is thus parasitic. The senator is the deadly pest sucking the blood out of the average man. As parasitic relationship always leads to death of the host, an average man in
Nigeria always end up dying due to poverty and hunger at the nourishment of his senator.
Nigerian senators are known to be one of the highest paid in the world, they are paid much more higher than most senators in the developed world. It is absurd that a country where majority live below a dollar per day, its senators earn more than the president of the richest nation on earth, the United State of America. Nigeria is regarded as a country of so many contradictions and ironies.
The gap between the poor and the rich is wider than the Persian and Mexican gulfs combined. A country where many struggle to have a square meal in a day, some are feeding their dogs daily with food worth thousands of naira per day. A country where most workers are not guaranteed of payment after working for months, its senators are planning to purchase cars for a whooping some of N4.7billion.
The eight senate ever since its inception has always come up with policies that totally prove to be anti-people. Last week, the social media was buzzing with the senate’s anti-social media bill. The bill is set to regulate the use of social media against the senate.
The social media has proven to be a strong instrument being used by the most Nigerians to express their displeasure and grievances about the activities of the government, especially the senate. So the anti-social media bill if passed into law will criminalize its usage against these top politicians. This led to a strong protest against this move by the senate by all and sundry. As if that was not enough, an online medium released that the senate is planning to purchase cars for each members of the senate with N4.7billion.
All of these senators have their private cars and they have it in their numbers. A popular senator, Dino Maleya, is known for having fleet of elegant and exotic cars and he is never shy to pose with them on social media platforms.
It is obvious that the N4.7 billion naira by the senate for cars is another devilish attempt by them to rob Nigerians of their resources.
