March 4, 2010
This week’s disclosure by an alleged spokesman and cousin of the Yar’adua family (one Mr. Zubai Gafai Ali), that the ailing Nigerian leader was recuperating well enough to indulge in a tea party with him, is the latest in a long line of assaults on the sensibilities of Nigerians and should be treated with the disdain it merits. It smacks of a propagandist agenda and tells us a great deal of just how much a select group in yar’adua’s kitchen cabinet is set to ridicule us some more. On a lighter note, the American tea party movement which has been at daggers drawn with Obama’s presidency now has a new member in President Yar’adua!
Nigerians are being taken for a ride (as though we didn’t know this already). It is shameful and detestable that a select few will continually attempt to rub plenty more salt into our festering sore. For the records, I think Nigerians are compassionate enough to understand that their president, who rode to power via brigandage and political malfeasance, deserves plenty of time to recuperate. Prayers are been said and good wishes have been ringing through the land for a quick recovery of the president long before he was sneaked into the country in the dead of the night in air and land ambulances. The least Nigerians deserve at the moment is an understanding from those close to him—to allow the state run at full hilt while Turai and the doctors nurse the president to good health. That should be fair enough.
But this being an unfair country made so by unfair politicians, the president’s ill health has been handled like a melodrama; something resembling a soap opera—with barefaced lies finding their way all too often into the public space with the singular objective by a cabal to hang onto power by all means necessary. The greater good of running a country which for most of its near 50 years has been rudderless is now playing second fiddle to the sinister and clandestine motives of a few hawks whose game may need a change of tactics.
News making the rounds has hinted at more underhand tactics in the days ahead. But, this time, Nigerians are ready to filter all that will be thrown at them. We had been told yar’adua was fit enough to challenge Usain Bolt in a sprint competition, but the last time we checked, he was still in an ambulance, holding onto Turai’s loins with all the strength he could muster. We had also been informed that he was alive when we were wrongly informed he was dead, the BBC putting a frail sounding voice on the air, thanks to his aides. While everything points to the fact that the man Obasanjo foisted on us is still clutching at straws for dear life and is no where near resuming work any time soon, out came Zubair Ali, self appointed spokesman of the family with a tea formula, using Al Jazeera, another foreign news organization, as a medium.
Nigerians could do with a little more dynamism in the way the country is run and less with the stories emanating from spokesmen with little more than cheap publicity to gain. Facts have emerged that close aides of the president had issued own statements purportedly from the man himself in the past. We have also learned of parallel presidencies up at the villa—one marshalled by the first lady and the other by Acting President Jonathan. Grapevine sources have hinted at orders and counter orders, a seat of government and officialdom working at cross purposes, while a people who crave for some semblance of good leadership are being relegated to the background. Power generation and distribution is still at abysmal levels, infrastructural decay is still the face of our country and the Niger Delta is still a thorny issue in our polity. Religious and ethnic crises are yet unresolved and Brand Nigeria in the eyes of the international community remains under the microscope.
Yet, across the land in Katsina, someone who has been obviously spoon fed, reels us with stories of a tea party with Yar’adua. How mundane and trivial can we get?
Nigerians are being taken for a ride (as though we didn’t know this already). It is shameful and detestable that a select few will continually attempt to rub plenty more salt into our festering sore. For the records, I think Nigerians are compassionate enough to understand that their president, who rode to power via brigandage and political malfeasance, deserves plenty of time to recuperate. Prayers are been said and good wishes have been ringing through the land for a quick recovery of the president long before he was sneaked into the country in the dead of the night in air and land ambulances. The least Nigerians deserve at the moment is an understanding from those close to him—to allow the state run at full hilt while Turai and the doctors nurse the president to good health. That should be fair enough.
But this being an unfair country made so by unfair politicians, the president’s ill health has been handled like a melodrama; something resembling a soap opera—with barefaced lies finding their way all too often into the public space with the singular objective by a cabal to hang onto power by all means necessary. The greater good of running a country which for most of its near 50 years has been rudderless is now playing second fiddle to the sinister and clandestine motives of a few hawks whose game may need a change of tactics.
News making the rounds has hinted at more underhand tactics in the days ahead. But, this time, Nigerians are ready to filter all that will be thrown at them. We had been told yar’adua was fit enough to challenge Usain Bolt in a sprint competition, but the last time we checked, he was still in an ambulance, holding onto Turai’s loins with all the strength he could muster. We had also been informed that he was alive when we were wrongly informed he was dead, the BBC putting a frail sounding voice on the air, thanks to his aides. While everything points to the fact that the man Obasanjo foisted on us is still clutching at straws for dear life and is no where near resuming work any time soon, out came Zubair Ali, self appointed spokesman of the family with a tea formula, using Al Jazeera, another foreign news organization, as a medium.
Nigerians could do with a little more dynamism in the way the country is run and less with the stories emanating from spokesmen with little more than cheap publicity to gain. Facts have emerged that close aides of the president had issued own statements purportedly from the man himself in the past. We have also learned of parallel presidencies up at the villa—one marshalled by the first lady and the other by Acting President Jonathan. Grapevine sources have hinted at orders and counter orders, a seat of government and officialdom working at cross purposes, while a people who crave for some semblance of good leadership are being relegated to the background. Power generation and distribution is still at abysmal levels, infrastructural decay is still the face of our country and the Niger Delta is still a thorny issue in our polity. Religious and ethnic crises are yet unresolved and Brand Nigeria in the eyes of the international community remains under the microscope.
Yet, across the land in Katsina, someone who has been obviously spoon fed, reels us with stories of a tea party with Yar’adua. How mundane and trivial can we get?
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