Pass the bill!

If the bill intended to be sponsored and suggested by a current serving Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is anything to go by, then prostitutes in every nook and cranny of the beaten, but not too battered Republic will presently have something to hang their G-strings on. This current bill, as suggested by Senator Ekeremadu, the deputy senate leader of the upper legislative house, seeks the senate to assent to the legalization of prostitution in the country. Citing the legalization of world most known ancient trade in other advanced countries and harping on the facts that we can no longer pretend to be oblivious to the stakes and the means of livelihood that could be generated from such a venture.

In reality, the bill was however nought to going through,as it drew the ire of all the senators at the mere insinuation of such controversial bill during the debate of the trafficking in human bill. Other Senators armed with the axes of morality, hacked the idea of such a bill into pieces. Some even went to the extent of labeling the Senator devil’s advocate, albeit not explicitly expressed, but intently locked in their seemingly pure hearts. Women, under the umbrella of the Association of wives of officials and officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and other numerous bodies with real and non-existing cognomen, have come up with barrage of press statements against such a move by the senate. A cross-section of the society, including liberal pressmen, has lent its voice to this seemingly innocuous but volatile debate.

Personally, it is not the nature of the intending bill that is of interest to me. It is the proponent of the bill that caught my imaginative fancy. Such scorecard is not really due to any extra ordinary accumulation of advocacy credentials on his part, but on what really initiated such an idea at this crucial point in our integral history. Controversial as the bill seems, it is however radical. It addresses an issue that a chunk of the Upper Legislative House occupants will naturally eschew due to one, its controversial nature, two, its moral nature, and three, maybe, its irrelevance and untimely nature. The Senator has not only proven he is courageous but controversial as well. And In a way, will ease himself into my heart as one of the few lawmakers we can count on, or as well, not count on, to sponsor controversial but radical and potent bills to take us away from the doldrums of stagnant pool we found ourselves wading through in recent times. This is however, far from praise singing of the Senator, I should not be gotten wrong. His impertinence reinforces the general perspective of the public about our lawmakers and shows the real reason why that particular arm of government has come under increasing public scrutiny and volatile invectives. They are the real reason why the Executive arm has been under- performing all this while. Their ingenuity at time wasting, crafty tendencies at courting controversies, and self-serving attitudes, have provided the executive the gross liberty to wanton display of unaccountability as we are yet to witness.

Controversial bills might be a welcome development for a notably dormant and drab legislature like the Nigerian legislative, only if it addresses the most basic and pressing needs of the common man. Aspiring to such lofty position as the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria demands not only competence but also sagacity to turn the wheel of such moving but not progressing polity. Giving priorities to bills of no general impact or urgency, at this particular momentous period in our national history, only shows the porosity in one’s thinking hat. Churning out bills upon bills to make up numbers at the end of every Republic without its significant manifestation in public lives is a wild goose chase and colossal waste of our resources compared to units of bills, paucity in numerals but quite consuming, pervading and viable in impact.

In retrospect, Senator Ekeremadu, whoever he is, and any other Senator or serving Legislator could have literally transmute to my hero, and if not over estimating, the hero of the Nigerian masses, if he had sponsored the bill to tackle the massive rate of unemployment, gnawing his venomous jaws at more than 70% of our youths. The youths, who made up more than 75% of the voting populace, who defy natural and unnatural forces to queue up behind them during their quest for the occupation of the legislative seats, have been the worst hit. Abandoned and left to explore the not too profitable terrain of cyber crime. Not too profitable, I quipped, though others would prove me wrong. The senator, what was he thinking! For Hades’ sake, could have lobbied other senators to review the constitution. Weed out the evil seeds in the 1999 constitution which does not accommodate the present day pressing yearnings of the people. He could have lent his assent to the bill calling for a National Conference of dialogue to address the cracks which is threatening to split the embroidered lines that joined the not too fashionable, forcefully amalgamated entity called Nigeria. He will, therefore inadvertently be giving his voice to the prognostic measure that will falsify the 2015 CIA’s prediction of perdition, which we are surreptitiously moving towards like a puppet in the hand of a circus clown. He could have drafted on the same paper, which he intended to content his bill for legalization of prostitution, a creative blue print that would make mechanized farming a must for each of the local governments, numbering more than 750, which makes up the federating units. It would have boosted food production of the country from its abysmal ebb to more than 100%, employed millions of youths, increased our exports and reduced overt reliance on crude oil which is the jugular, that emerging terrorist, under the garb of militancy and religious sects are going for. It would have also, increased our GDP and therefore boost our milieu economy. The senator could have scored a major point, if he had taken the bull by the horn and sponsored the bill that will address the urgent state of security in the country. It would have taken the cast of shame from our eyes, when, we, 150million strong, watched our Commander-In-Chief scampered to the recluse of his comfy haven with his aides, at the mere threat of armed bandits, to scuttle our nation’s independence day celebration , which is supposed to be the hallmark showmanship of our existence as an independent sovereign Nation. Of course, the Senator is not the only Senator in the Upper House. Neither is he the only one who have sponsored or intended to sponsor controversial bills in the past, but a more special accolades could have been reserved for a such a man who would be the discerner of the hearts of the masses, who gradually, through the people they have reposed their trust in, are being prepared for their interment in installment.

Conclusively, much more than taking a man up much more than his actions, I may be naive to admit, I need a special resourceful enlightenment on why we need legalization of prostitution now as a matter of urgency, compared to cogent, fertile and civil-result yielding bills. Such as the one that will dissuade a graduate of 5years, unemployed, heading towards a street-corner cybercafé to pull off the most bewildering cyber heist known in human history. Maybe, a bill, that will discourage an unrepentant extremist, who no longer believes in the much touted indivisible unit called Nigeria ,from detonating an explosive strapped under his ‘’Jalameel’’, as he prowl the naked streets of Maiduguri in search of hapless citizens relaxing in a beer parlour joint. What of the bill, that will put food in the empty and unwashed bowl of a mendicant, a common place on our streets, as he shoves it to grumbling passers-by, who only this morning had been too glad to have escaped the pervasive h

unger by the whiskers? If am not cleared of this naive admittance on the need to pass the prostitution legality bill into law as the priority now. I may be forced to admit that the upper house is the shacks of juveniles, whose political prostituting have yielded nothing but exuberant penile cerebrum in search of prostitutes for consummation to satisfy their insatiable ecstatic “randiness’’.