by: Jimoh Abdullahi
The action takes place in the living room of the unpaint and unfenced bungalow house of the Senate President in Abuja. He convenes a secret meeting to caution both houses on the dispute they usually have making them to be exchanging blows on the floor of the house. The Rep. Chairman, a senator and a Rep. member were involved in the meeting.
After three of them have alighted from their Audi and Mazda cars and parked them beside a lonely problematic and dusty Lexus jeep with a faded brown colour, they meet beside the house and they begin to troop in through the balcony.
Inside the sitting-room, are three massive couches, with a small table made of glass in-between; all were placed on the red rug of the untiled floor. The one opposite the two small couches is the biggest. Up the room are two dangling ceiling fans and on the wall is a big plasma TV set positioned above a DSTv decoder and fritz DVD set with intertwined black wires. Both are place atop each other, on a small brown stool.
Just beside the TV set are two frames the first one is having the portrait figure of the posed Senate President wearing a plastic smile and the other features him and his nuclear family. Senate President and the Rep. chairman sit at biggest couch while both senator and the Rep. Member take their sit at the two other couches in front.
Senate President: Ada! Please bring water for my visitors.
Ada: (from afar) si…r ! okay sir!
Rep. Chairman: Is mummy in?
Senate President: Huh! She just left for the market. How are your families?
All: They are all fine (they answered in unison)
Ada: Here, sir (she first pours the water inside the glass cups in front of the two persons who sat together and then to the two people who sat separately in the cups she places on the small stools beside their couches)
Senate President: If anybody asks about my whereabouts, tell the person I am not in.
Ada: Okay sir (she genuflected a little and exits)
Rep. Chairman: (He sips the water in the cup and place it down) As if you do know I’m thirsty.
Senate President: This heat is too much, and that is why I definitely know you will be thirsty (Addressing the rest of the people) Ah! Why don’t you drink your water?
The other two: Haba! Don’t worry sir we are okay (in unison).
Senate President: Alright.
Rep. Chairman: President sir, (addressing the Senate President, who was about to leave) when I heard an alert tone earlier, I thought it was a salary alert I don’t know that it was an MTN message when I checked my phone.
(Exits Senate President)
Senator: I heard you talking about salaries earlier. My brother! you better forget salary this month and let us move on. Hopefully, we may get salary next month (the senator, who was busy scrolling through his phone screen in search for message, bursts out).
Rep. Member: Have we received our wardrobe allowances let alone the salary you are talking about? Have you forgotten that during the last sitting, it was only cheap wine, instead of the usual Champagne and Chicken, that was served?
Rep. Chairman: Ahh! Yes you are right.
Senator: You can’t believe that, I haven’t settled the weekly upkeep allowance of my children studying at the University in UK. I just told them to go like that I will settle it later when I received my salary.
Rep. Member: Your situation is fair. I couldn’t get the 50 gallons of fuel I manage for my cars through the back door, as always, so I had to call a friend at the fueling station to work things out. Imagine me going through all that stress.
Rep. Member: It is saddening that our constituents and the people out there would not realize that suffer this much too.
Senator: Exactly. You know ehn, that yeye ASUU is very funny. I learnt that they are on their umpteenth perennial strike again. They do not even know that, the legislators, are going through a lot in this economic downturn.
Rep. Chairman: They asked us to enact a law banning the children of public officials from schooling abroad. A bunch of jokers they are.
(Enters Senate President)
Senate President: Pardon me for the lateness, I was rummaging for my glasses in the bedroom and thank God, I have retrieved it. Can we start the meeting?
All: Ah, yes. Definitely. We can start (they said in unison).
Curtain falls.
Jimoh Abdullahi is a freelance journalist and writer base in Oyo State.
