It was like a melodrama, when the House of Representatives resumed from end of the year break only to adjourn for another two weeks. The reason the leadership offered for the sudden break centreed around the 2011 budget. The two weeks, as explained, was to enable members concentrate on passing the 2011 Appropriation Bill. The leadership sound altruistic and patriotic on that single excuse. That was the first time the House would abandon the primary business of legislation to attend to budget issues since 1999.

But the break had hardly taken off, when some members began to speak in low tones. As usual, every season of unrest in the House usually entails some elements of ganging-up by members with endless nocturnal meetings. The process must start with some members spearheading a push for trouble. So in hushed tones, some members made a good number of House correspondents to believe that Dimeji Bankole has outlived his usefulness to them and so, he must go!

Many of those who heard about plot to remove Bankole had expressed surprise. Why must the new conspiracy be targeted for this moment? Bankole’s traducers are angry that as Speaker, he wove the magic wand in Abeokuta South to obtain his own return ticket to the House through the PDP National Assembly primaries; he never cared a hoot to wave the same wand in their constituencies to also pick the PDP tickets. Many of the lawmakers lost woefully to people seen as innocuous, unknown, political neophytes who stood as their opponents during the primaries.

The losers had rushed to Abuja, furious and dejected. It was time to teach the son of Alani Bankole who did not bait an eyelid when his own was filing for PDP ticket some three weeks ago. Pronto, they had gathered for the kill and with sworn gusto to deal decisively with the Speaker who, they felt, chose to be selfish when they needed his assistance most.

Then, the pertinent questions began to arise. What assistance would Bankole have rendered to his colleagues to pick the PDP ticket for the April polls? Which authority would he have consulted to hold down the hands of the clock when the swords of Damocles were about dangling during the primaries on each unworthy legislator? Did Bankole really have it easy to sail through the Abeokuta’s turbulent politics, as it appeared? What about the timing for planned removal of the Speaker, how plausible, applicable and appealing?

No one is keen on playing the megaphone for Bankole here. The truth of the matter is that the Speaker only escaped by a hair’s breadth during the PDP primary in his constituency. He made it by a stroke of luck and by dint of hard work and sleepless nights. The reason he had to struggle that hard to obtain the House PDP ticket was that the House has all along been carrying a huge burden of dented image and integrity. So, Bankole too must share in the burden.

As regards the fundamental reasons many lawmakers fell by the way side during the PDP primary elections in different states of the federation, one of the foremost is the factor of Mallam Sanusi Lamido, the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The CBN governor had done some incalculable damage to the image of senators and House of Representative members just some few weeks before the election dates rolled in.

Sanusi had referred to the legislators as money monger, a big source of economic haemorrhage to Nigeria, given the enormous pays that all of them loved to earn. He told the nation that the lawmakers were carting home a sizable percentage of Nigeria’s earning to the detriment of the welfare and the well being of Nigeria. And then, hell was let loose.

They summoned Sanusi, the cantankerous scholarly boy from Kano, to recant his acerbic words. The man deplored and even spat on the faces of the legislators. The rest is history.

Now, state governors had waited for the return of many of the legislators on the basis of unfinished power tussle. The governors appeared to dislike the Abuja lawmakers and would do everything possible to bring as many of them as possible to their knees.

Legislators, who were wise, had taken the wisdom of prostrating belly flat to their respective governors in a let-my-people-go spirit and many of such legislators never had problems.

The truth is that no one should blame Bankole for the woes that struck the lawmakers during the primaries by political parties. Let the House resume, let the budget be passed, let more sound legislations be made and let every lawmaker go home to face the new reality of inability to return to the House. We are Nigerians and no guinea fowl is taller than the other, except the ones that love to operate from top of the ridges.