Far from being a master spin, apology offered Wednesday in Abuja for the inability of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to meet only exposed another acute failing: shallow thinking in high places. With a straight face, Dora Akunyili would have us believe that the public holidays of Monday and Tuesday debarred cabinet members from adequately preparing ahead of what is thought the most august meeting in the land.
So, when did it become acceptable or fashionable for ministers to plead holiday as enough excuse not to prepare ‘memos’ for state cabinet meeting? That should be another novelty within living memory in Nigeria. A negation of the letter and, indeed, spirit of ‘re-branding’. If nothing at all, such ‘no agenda’ defence only reinforces this growing perception of the ‘do-nothing’ culture in Abuja.
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Perhaps, Aunty Dora would have saved herself and the government she ministers to further embarrassment had she owned up by simply confessing they couldn’t think of a new thing to discuss or task to surmount under the sun again, if only to nudge public attention to the yet unacknowledged new reality: the sheer efficacy of the ‘7-point agenda’ therapy. Or, in case she prefers to execute that communication strategy with the tactic of pure humour, she could have simply mentioned that the vice president and ministers are just as human as the rest of us who were yet to fully recover from the ‘hang-over’ of Ramadan Karrim revelry.
Joke apart, while it is surely beyond the minister’s brief to admit it, the truth is that Abuja is largely on a slow-motion mode even when the president is around. No prize for guessing what then happens in the shadow of presidential absence. Indeed, not only the ministers could, in good conscience, be said to be on extended Ramadan holiday. The impression has also inadvertently been created that Yar’Adua himself savoured an undeclared (medical?) holiday in Saudi Arabia in the past week by choosing to be guest of Saudi Arabia at a time other world leaders converged on the United Nations’ ground in New York to ponder more serious issues of mutual benefit.
By the way, isn’t it ironic that political lightweights and moral flyweights like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Madam Sirleaf of Liberia were the ones left to speak for Africa at the UN assembly Friday with over 120 world leaders present. Nigeria had already made her aspiration known for the UN security council on behalf of Africa. Indeed, a few more issues of common interest animated the debates at the UN assembly in the last few days. Like global recession and climate change. Commonsense dictated that the leaders consider how to face these daunting challenges and ameliorate the ensuing pains. But our own president wasn’t available to push the Nigerian agenda, much less wave Africa’s flag.
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Rather, Yar’Adua chose Saudi to, in his own words, attend the opening of the new King Abdullah University there. (And to imagine that, back home, public universities are gathering cobwebs after more than three months closure on account of the failure of government to reach an agreement with striking lecturers!) In terms of benefits accruable to the nation, which of the two destinations should have interested Aso Rock more? Choosing Saudi is certainly a great disservice to the fatherland. That alone is treasonably felonious enough.
Having spent some two weeks in Saudi in August, many are now left wondering as to what could be so alluring, so enchanting in that Arabian kingdom to now make Yar’Adua rush back barely a month on. (Thank God, no one is rehashing the usual cock-and-bull story of ‘foreign direct investment’ this time.) But truth be told, only a few Nigerians are still in doubt that the ‘official trip’ to Saudi isn’t a smokescreen for Yar’Adua to sneak another rendezvous with his resident physician there. Just last month, we were told the president was on a ‘medical trip’ to Saudi. The official admission then was an improvement on the mess made of a similar shuttle earlier in 2007. Then, the president virtually disappeared from the radar for seventeen days without official explanation, only for information to come from the grapevine that those unaccounted moments were actually spent under the surgeon’s knife somewhere in Saudi.
Not only Nigerians were left to wallow in needless anxiety that year; the Saudi establishment was equally bemused at the turn of event. As the story goes, the congenitally secretive Nigerian president thought he could also evade official scrutiny there by checking into a relatively nondescript hospital for the covertly plotted interaction with his physician. It took a bit of cajolery from the authorities in the host city before the Nigerian leader agreed to be moved to a more luxurious location befitting his status as the president of what is thought the most populous - if not influential - black nation on earth.
While the spirit of humanity will naturally oblige us to sympathise with Yar’Adua over his obviously suspect health, let it be noted, however, that the attendant abdication of duty, this obsessive tendency to hoard information on the true health condition of Mr. President, is no less injurious to the overall interest of Nigeria as a nation, if not contemptuous of our right as citizens. Governing Nigeria shouldn’t be a do-or-die affair. It smacks of nothing but selfishness to continue to make up when you know you’re medically ill-equipped to deliver.
It is within the context of this official dereliction that Abuja’s litany of slips and missteps lately should be situated. Without Yar’Adua being on ground to offer leadership and direction, his prefects have either resorted to self-help or gone berserk literally. Examples abound. The otherwise hallowed office of the Attorney General of the Federation is, for instance, fast turning a vast cesspool of scandals. Today, it is either the nation’s chief law officer is being implicated in overt schemes to pervert justice or, more daring, found in shady company, totally irreconcilable with the stellar sobriety and steely integrity expected of such high office.
Only last week, it was the turn of Babatunde Omotoba to further muddy the seamy waters of the nation’s aviation with a directive that a strategic portion of the Lagos airport - our national patrimony! - be handed over to a corporate scavenger masquerading as concessionaire. Available evidence clearly shows that nowhere in the sweetheart concession earlier given Wale Babalakin and his rent-seeking cartel by the last administration is it indicated that their ‘oil block’ also extends to the General Aviation Terminal (GAT).
Even more sordid is the way and manner the said ‘agreement’ reportedly came about in the first place. If a copy of the said ‘agreement’ is still being hoarded from members of public even years after the ‘concession’ supposedly came into operation, it is only because the beneficiaries are themselves probably scared that Nigerians would, after perusal, stone them on the streets in anger. Now, the workers union claims that critical stakeholders like FAAN were bypassed throughout in the deal, with the agreement terms directly dictated by none other than the beneficiary himself! Now, someone is telling us no court would be able to untie that knots of fraud!!
Penultimate Saturday, against wise counsel of experts, threat by workers union and the outrage generally expressed by the public, the Aviation minister still took liberty to send his slaves to consummate the hand-over. But afraid they might be pounced on and lynched by agitated unionists who kept vigil outside all day, agents of the two parties opted to carry out the exercise in the privacy of an office and, laughably, at night!
Elsewhere in faraway New York last Monday, it was the turn of the Foreign minister to talk himself into trouble in an attempt to impress. While receiving an American delegation, Ojo Maduekwe not only reportedly echoed Yar’Adua’a earlier admission that the 2007 polls were flawed but also hinted that Abuja is unlikely to re-appoint the man who had superintended the sham process ipso facto.
Now, while Yar’Adua may seem pre-occupied with Saudi, the Maurice Iwu people and their volunteers are already fighting back dirty from their Abuja trenches, judging by the spate of stinkers against Maduekwe in the media in the last few days in form of releases by a plethora of amorphous groups. The cat was let out of the bag by an aide to Iwu who, by way of reaction to the wire report, called the minister names in what clearly sets a new low in intra-governmental bellicosity. So much that it will no longer come as a big surprise to many to see a burst of punches were Iwu to, say, find himself facing Maduekwe at the lobby of Aso Rock this very hour.
In the final analysis, all this is yet another sad reminder of Obasanjo’s legacy of perfidy: a nation robust with a population of talents, once thought the hope of black race, but now stuck with a soporific leadership in the twenty-first century.
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