IN most African societies, there are seasons of festivities for masquerades. For those who believe and subscribe to the ancient culture of  masquerading, such seasons, usually are full of scintillating or rather kinky moments. Masquerades are a source of blessing to the worshipers. Free food, free drinks, free money, free gifts and unequal patronage are usually common perquisites that followers of masquerades must enjoy.

Masquerade seasons usually do not last more than two weeks. Yet, the celebrants get drawn into the pomp and ceremony, as well as glittering hours that keep them thinking that such seasons must last forever. On the last day of celebration however, the reality dawns on celebrants that the season of masquerade festival doesn’t last.

Now, to go to the Dome, where legislators have been gallivanting, grandstanding, gambling and grabbing in the past three and half years, the season of the masquerade festival is about coming to a full stop. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) recently blew the whistle for political office holders to start thinking of their future.

Political parties have been following suit. Just last Friday, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the largest among political parties in the clime, drew its timetable for members. The die is cast. For the legislators, the National Assembly members specifically, January 9, 2011, represents the first day of reckoning. It is  the day in which every legislator must give account of stewardship to voters in the PDP.

The second acid test will come for the lawmakers in the month of April. The electorate on wider scale will file out at polling stations to determine the fate of the lawmakers who had earlier operated as if tomorrow never existed. The same set of electorate had written the report of past legislators in red ink, some four years ago.  When more than two-thirds of the lawmakers failed to make it back to the Dome through the 2007 elections, analysts had blamed it on the influence of godfatherism and the zoning system.

Indeed, the bad fate of federal lawmakers at polls goes beyond the influence of greedy and insatiable godfathers. It also goes beyond the retrogressive zoning system that the Nigerian politics permits. Perhaps, federal legislators are oblivious of the bad image they command outside the Dome. They seem hardly aware that those who voted them to office often devote time to watch them very closely the way a lion lays ambush for its prey. They are totally unaware that the ‘chop-and-quench’ mentality that had been their lot makes the ordinary Nigeria green with  envy that would eventually lead to hatred. They are dead to the fact that the voters know that in Nigeria, a legislator represents himself first before thinking about his constituency and then his fatherland.

Voters know the story of the legislators bit-by-bit. They know that he rides in the latest model of cars of his choice and could spend enough money to keep a fleet of exotic cars. They know that Nigerian legislators have knack for acquiring properties in choice areas both locally and abroad not minding how expensive. They know that lawmakers are the greatest womanisers in town, with burning desire to celebrate concubines and mistresses. They know that their own representatives are oppressors wherever they could flaunt their membership of either the Senate or the House.

Voters know, that the men and women they voted for are the most haughty species on earth, just as they would stop at nothing to pronounce themselves very important above any other mortal. Every attentive voter must have read reports about how senators and representatives had dealt dirty slaps on innocent individuals who failed to take into account of their hallowed presence during public outings. Voters know everything, and now they are waiting.

It is pay back time, and  by the second week of January, legislators who will not make it to the sprawling dome will have been known. And by the end of April, many more of them who will not make it back to the federal parliament would also have been known. Who says the yummy yummy, chop, chop chop, grab grab grab that legislators have addressed their minds to in the past few years would last till eternity?