Senator Biodun Olujimi Orders aide to Slap a national assembly staff

It rained ‘dirty slaps’ at the national assembly on Monday, January 29, 2018, after Senator Biodun Christine Olujimi, 61, (PDP, Ekiti South), ordered an aide to dish a hot one on a national assembly staffer.
Here’s a summary of what transpired:

Olujimi was taking an elevator at the national assembly to an investigative hearing on the lingering petrol scarcity, when she spotted a staff of the national assembly about to take the same elevator.

As the story goes, staff of the national assembly under the aegis of Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASAN) and ordinary Nigerians, usually do not ride in the same elevator with ‘distinguished lawmakers’. They use a separate one designated for them. The idea is not to get in the way of a senator who may be in a hurry to keep a parliamentary date or a public hearing.

However, there are no hard and fast rules to the elevator trips. You can actually take any of the available elevators as an ordinary Nigerian if it’s free at the time.

Elevator wars
An argument broke out in the elevator and Senator Olujimi who is ironically the deputy minority chief whip in the senate,“asked her aide to slap the PASAN member”,

The PASAN member was having none of it, so he slapped the senator in retaliation, instead of the aide who was ordered to slap him.

At this point, a melee ensued in the elevator with punches flying everywhere. A roughened Senator Olujimi, the story goes, thereafter threatened to bring the police into the equation.

Class wars
It’s bad enough that a senator of the federal republic of Nigeria couldn’t stand an ordinary Nigerian occupying the same elevator space with her. To now instruct an aide to dish out a slap on that same Nigerian, is simply beyond the pale.

Two wrongs do not make a right. The national assembly staff who slapped the senator should never have raised his hand against her as well.

In the final analysis, the entire episode underscores the disdain the political class or serving government officials have for the rest of the people they are supposed to be serving. This is just a sad commentary on the abominable class war that goes on in Nigeria daily and it is disgusting, to say the very least.

It is a shame on Senator Olujimi that she would allow herself to become so irate because someone is breathing the same air as her. Lawmakers in Nigeria love to be addressed as ‘honorable’. Well, there’s nothing honorable about a senator engaging in a rofo-rofo fight with another Nigerian over an elevator trip.

The Senate of the federal republic of Nigeria has a sorry reputation across the land. This fight would have made them no new friends.