Two sides to a story - That time Dino Melaye and Remi Tinubu debated

It has been all they could talk about, it’s been on the radio, television and the internet, the trolls have had and will still have field days talking about the two of them, all I had to do was check the twitter trends and well I couldn’t help laughing and many times wonder if the best of us are the people that leads us, at first Dino Melaye was the butt of all the jokes I read, the words were along this lines,

Oh don’t you know Sen. Dino Melaye? He loves to fight, see that picture of his torn cloth? That happened when he turned into a pugilist and went at it with other senators. Is that all you know? I heard he was once involved in domestic violence bla bla bla.

I had to start zoning them out because I started wondering if the female senator, Sen. [Mrs.] Remi Tinubu in this mess was just all innocent and pious.

Come on, didn’t she do anything? My concern grew more as she wrote the head of the police force, and as protests were going on in her home state and even way beyond. Just in the nick of time it started to trickle in...

She called me a thug and a dog said the incensed senator, I was calm at first but had to do something when she started talking to me that way, I wasn’t going to beat her and never said I will impregnate her, come on she is too old for that, how do you beat someone and impregnate the person too?

If the senator thought this would calm the furor and indignation brimming among the women folk in the country he was wrong, see they didn’t really get angry when the senate ruined that gender equality bill but for this one involving the lioness of Bourdillon, they weren’t going to back down.

I even heard of some pockets of domestic rumblings here and there about that woman telling her husband about how disrespectful men are and if he wasn’t careful he would bear the brunt, I heard the man just looked up and smiled and buried his head back in his newspaper that had a startling headline.

‘’Senators to quash beef with prime time televised debate’’ read the headline, I managed to get a glimpse of some of the lines, it read we have decided to stop the war of words between two of our greatest and well known senators by inviting them to a debate televised in front of the whole country or the few that will be lucky enough to have electricity and the few that can power generators or inverters, it is not certain yet if they will accede to our requests but we have sent our correspondent Ayodeji Ibitoye to ask them.

Hold up! When did I start working for a newspaper? I had no time to answer that question before I was whisked into a van and I was driven to the three arms zone in the nation’s capital, am I going to really meet this senators?

In no time, we were there, it had this big sign post with the following words inscribed 'hallowed chambers when convenient'

I asked a man why does that sign post read hallowed chambers when convenient, he laughed and shook his head and said where do I start, isn’t this one arm of government that we can’t correctly ascertain their salary? Don’t they get all kind of allowances just to sit down and go on recess a lot? Weren’t they bickering about cars when people are suffering not long ago?

Don’t they reshuffle committees as a way to appease themselves? I mean some of them won’t really contribute throughout their stay but they will earn more money in a year than some people do in their lifetime, I mean look at those people fighting, they can afford to do it, I never chop this morning, why will I be fighting, but you have not told me about the hallowed chambers when convenient sign that is up there.

He looked at me like he was thinking this guy is slow sha, this place is only hallowed when a senator says it is, it is hallowed when it is convenient for them otherwise it is just a prime example of all that is wrong with Nigeria.

I decided to go look for the people I was supposed to persuade to the debate, unfortunately they were in plenary so I decided to go to their offices and drop messages for them.

As I got close to senator Melaye office I could see a throng of Nigerians, I sense they were there to beg for favours, a lot of them were speaking in dialects I perceive is of Kogi descent, as I got closer a voice stood out but I could perceive he wasn’t getting much love, he was asking people around him, when are we people going to start holding this leaders accountable, when are we going to start showing them they were elected to serve not lord over us?

Look at all the bickering over two senators fighting, we have to stop kissing this peoples behind, they should be kissing ours, I mean how does a guy that stole two packets of magi get 2 months in jail and the politician that steals billions get a soft landing and a hero’s welcome wherever he goes. Why do we treat them like gods and they in turn treat us like lepers?

He succeeded at silencing the throng with his impassioned talk and as he sat down, an older man stood up and said we the people caused it, we go to political rallies where we are given 500 Naira, rice and Ankara clothes.

In fact I have never been to a serious political rally, it is always women in uniforms and Okada men stunting coupled with the politician who comes in and bellows PDP! or APC! then abuses his political opponents to cheers from the crowd then if he is nice he will say I will do road, I will do water, I will buy car for judges, your children will not suffer, around this time he won’t know what else to say so he screams PDP! or APC!

I have never been to a rally where they asked questions, never been to one where they asked the contestant how he will increase his locality’s internal generated revenue, none about tourism, none about technology and none about plans to ascertain transparency, none about...

Before he could make his next statement the senator walked in and suddenly I could see people kneeling prostrating, hailing and screaming Senator, Oga Baba etc.

I was like wait a minute, didn’t they say they were going to be the bosses and won’t pander to politicians, I was filled with anger and wanted to shout them down when I woke up sweating.

Ayodeji Ibitoye is a freelance writer, entrepreneur and admin at , a forum that gives the internet a productive picture, it is a community that helps people especially entrepreneurs navigate a lot of obstacles and go from where they are now to the future they deserve and most importantly want.