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President Yar´Adua, A Political Animal Cum Brazilian Visitor

July 28, 2009

Former French president Jacques Chirac had to cancel his planned holidays abroad when a French citizen was kidnapped in Iraq few years ago. We have seen both in recent and in the past how leaders worldwide have shoved their schedules or travels when ever their citizen, citizens are in harm’s ways. There have been countless times when most leaders who put their countries and citizens first, have to re-schedule their schedules whenever their countries are tremendously troubled by violence and human deaths.


“ … I assure the nation (that) what has happened is that it is the government that has moved to nip in the bud the action of a potentially dangerous people.” Said president Yar´Adua.

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What president Yar´Adua has missed to include in his speech is that the criminality of rigging elections, looting treasury, aiding and abetting corrupt ex-governors are as well grave in its negative effect as with a bunch of Muslim faithheads holding Nigeria to ransom. If any one has to call the others a criminal, please, let it not be president Yar´Adua. He has had and he’s still having his fair share of venture in the arena of criminality both by association and by deed and the whole world is aware of this of which, our president isn’t ashamed of. If religious fanatics have to be killed en masse, election riggers and big time looters have to be killed as well for the sake of eqiuty. None of these crimes should be tolerated in a just and sane country.

In the last G8 meeting held in Italy, the Chinese leader had to cut his engagements in Italy short, in order to go home and take care of the ethnic palaver that was snowballing out of hand. This gives one the impression that had the Chinese unrest started before the G8 appointed date, the Chinese leader would’ve forgone his travel to Italy in the hope to pacify his homeland and citizens as core. If one has to compare the Nigerian leader against his Chinese counterpart with the yardstick of one, as an animal, and the other, a rational human person – there’s no doubt that we all know whom amid the two leaders qualify as an animal or human.

Political animal aside, were our president a real animal, he’d have been (1) a vulture for its characteristic of being ugly inside-out and for its notoriety in feeding on humans, (2) a dodo for its all-out lazy behaviour, (3) or he’d have been a tortoise for its legendary adept to deceive and not know when to call it quit.

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‘Scandalous’ is a very gentle word to describe that president Yar´Adua of Nigeria have to wander over to Brazil on a visit in heat of the moment in Nigeria with more than a hundred dead and the country in unseen-before fiasco. International watchers of Nigeria at the moment would be having a good laugh out of a banana republic ruled by apish and animal leaders who’ve gone bananas on the whole hog. It beats the concept of humanity silly nonsense that with so much deaths and upheavals booming in a country that her leader can be so heartless and foolish to travel abroad with the gun-ho of soldier obeying orders before complaining. It’s outrageous for Yar´adua to opine that his compulsion is aimed at not wanting to cancel the Brazil visit for the second time. What a nasty way to give reason for the dereliction of his official and social responsibility. For a sane-minded person, the pressing compulsion of sham reason given by our president as his reason would just be a window dressing to the real reason of him, wanting to satisfy his ‘material girl’ of a wife’s wanderlust for presidential visit to any where abroad. The president’s wife has a primitive compulsion for knocking about and chasing materialism and is for these reasons they’ve travelled.

Has the president of Nigeria advisers at all, and if, what exactly are they telling him? Would all his advisers swear to the Koran and the Bible or whatever that it’s the best next thing for the president to travel while the country is burning with more than a hundred deaths? This president and his handlers have surpassed expectations as well as outdoing themselves! I’ll hereby call for the president and his cohorts of handlers and advisers to resign en mass. These people are as cold as ice. Where are their human feelings for the dead and their families left behind? Labelling them as terrorist and Muslim fanatics doesn’t erode the fact that as human Nigerians they’ve the rights to worship and prosper their beliefs? Who is qualified to say that one religion is fanatical and the other, milder? For me, I’d wish that all religions were done away with. Religion is at the heart of this palaver and like always, religion has poisoned everything on its way.

Senate should brace up to start impeaching the president for choosing to opt abroad with so many dead and so much anarchy in the palms of our hands at the moment. This is the mother of all leadership goofs there are in history. How one had wished Yar´adua would use the same strive and zeal with which he made up his mind to travelling to Brazil, to implement the Uwais Electoral Committee´s suggestions on reforming our elections from riggers?

The fact that the dead are religious whatever isn’t enough reason to kill so much Nigerians in such a short period in peacetime devoid of war. There should’ve been a way to handle this issue without resulting to this huge blissful killing of Nigerians by Yar´Adua for sport. It’s the culture of rigging elections and not letting Nigerians to choose their heartfelt leaders that is behind all the problems in Nigeria. The Islamists have the rights to ask for a more radical Islamisation of northern Nigeria. And no one has the temerity to question their religious opinionatedness in a country where government itself has Sharialised that region and government is still financially sponsoring religious people on Christian and Muslim pilgrimages. It’s time government separate church or religion from state.

Yar´Adua has done his worst for his wandering abroad upon plenty deaths and problems bedevilling us presently. There’s no soothing justification however, to cover up for derelicting his official and most social responsibility in times of need. The well being of Nigerians superimposes upon any official visit. Yar´Adua owe Nigerians an apology and thenceforth resigning from office. He who had rig election by design, on his way to Aso Rock is as criminally guilty as a dead Islamist who took the laws into his hand instead of pursuing his religious expansion legally fairly. It’s the result of complacency of Nigerian masses that Yar´adua and others like him should be thankful to that they’re still alive. In most countries on earth, the misbegotten way our president and his cohorts run Nigeria, would have inspired death sentences upon them like the president has okayed the decimation of his co-citizens by death spree.

S. Njokede writes from The European Union.

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