May 8, 2010
The records will show that President Umaru Yar’Adua died on Wednesday, May 5, 2010. The records ought to show that Yar’Adua was declared dead on that date. We may never know the truth. What is clear is that in the end, he was not a revered leader or statesman who died in office, but a pawn on his own chessboard in a game that he began but which was completed by others.
The records will show that President Umaru Yar’Adua died on Wednesday, May 5, 2010. The records ought to show that Yar’Adua was declared dead on that date. We may never know the truth. What is clear is that in the end, he was not a revered leader or statesman who died in office, but a pawn on his own chessboard in a game that he began but which was completed by others.
Yar’Adua came into office a sick man borne on the wings of fiction. It began with Olusegun Obasanjo, who pushed Yar’Adua into office knowing he was very sick.
Obasanjo has lied about this point ever since, but then, he has never favoured the truth over lies. If he were honest, in 2006 when he put Yar’Adua up for the presidency, he would at least have doubted whether the man’s condition could withstand the demands of the presidency. But Obasanjo saw Nigeria only as another hapless woman he was taking behind closed doors, and so it did not matter; he did not even pause to ask himself whether it was his responsibility to choose the president.
Then followed the so-called People’s Democratic Party (PDP), to which the electoral commission was but an extension of its national secretariat. Since the nation’s president is really their own partisan bank, they would have shooed a donkey or a goat into Aso Rock anyway, so they gladly put Yar’Adua into office. For three years, until last week, they never admitted Yar’Adua was seriously sick.
Then followed the Supreme Court which, unwilling to make a meaningful contribution to the growth of Nigeria’s democracy, chose to uphold Yar’Adua’s grievously flawed election.
By then, Yar’Adua had begun to grow into the legend. He offered platitudes, but never really stated how sick he was. Although he repeatedly visited Saudi Arabia to see his doctors, he never admitted the quality of the crisis. On one occasion, he said he was visiting for a religions purpose. On another, he said he was attending the opening of a university.
When SaharaReporters said he suffered from Churg Strauss syndrome, a terminal condition, it was vilified. The Federal Government never mentioned the ailment officially. Last November, when it must have been clear Yar’Adua was in the final stages of his life, the government said only that he was suffering from acute pericarditis.
The grand deception over Yar’Adua’s health found true warriors in his kitchen cabinet, which began to flourish the moment he was beyond reach in the hands of the Saudis. They continued to insist his condition was good and that he would be returning to power shortly. That baseless fiction was encouraged by Yar’Adua personally in January when he spoke to the BBC saying his treatment was working.
And the press: throughout Yar’Adua’s sickness, there were vast swathes of the mainstream media that never did an original story about him. There are newspapers in Nigeria that never identified Churg Strauss by name. They never sought to know the truth.
Worse was to come: in the later stages, some of them helped to propagate the fiction that he was recovering. Carried away, such newspapers as the Daily Trust, ThisDay and The Nation purveyed tales of the president making remarkable progress on his way back to health and to office.
Yar’Adua, we now know, must have been dying all of that time. By then, however, and even as Yar’Adua apparently lost control of time, it was too late: the fiction had taken on a life of its own. The master had slipped from king to pawn.
That was when documents were alleged to have been signed in his name even as he lay comatose in a foreign hospital. The Nigerian ambassador to Saudi Arabia swore he had seen Yar’Adua and that he was in such great shape he was watching soccer on television. They told the nation the man was exercising for 25 minutes every day. Members of the federal cabinet said Yar’Adua’s health was not up for debate.
Yar’Adua lay dying.
And then, last February, as the clamour for power to be constitutionally transferred to the Vice-President grew louder and the courts were overflowing with lawsuits challenging the standoff, he was spirited back to the country in the middle of the night by his inner circle. And that cabal, which seemed to recognize only the president but not his country, gave the impression Yar’Adua was back to assume duty.
They lied; he was not even well enough to travel. In fact, he would never be well again. Yar’Adua was dying. He was being used, crudely and cruelly, by people who saw the tool and not the person. In their desperation for continued access to power and privilege, they failed to see a man who deserved respect and kindness. They said he would resume duty in a matter of days.
He did not. He could not. He never would.
Last Wednesday, they finally admitted he was dead. The obvious truth is that even if he died physically on that day, he had been dead and humiliated for much longer. We do not know how long he had merely been hooked up to machines that offered the impression he was still breathing, but we do know how long he had been tethered to a manipulation machine.
There has been so much deception we do not know if he actually arrived in this country in February as man, vegetable or corpse.
I believe this wholesale deception of a people, subversion of a democracy and desecration of the nation’s highest office, ought to be probed.
Although we are being laughed at by historians, comedians and commentators around the world, it is not funny. To ignore it as if it never happened is to convince the world we have no standards. To ignore it is to consolidate a new dimension of the culture of impunity that has run this country aground.
The irony of this experience is that Yar’Adua was very much part of the rotten political gamesmanship that was eventually used to exploit him. In the PDP, the objective is not to do the right thing, but to stay on top.
This is why the PDP era has failed to move Nigeria forward. And it is a specter that confronts the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. The question is whether Jonathan is capable of seeing beyond himself, the sycophancy and the political greed that defines his party.
Yar’Adua used the power that Obasanjo gave to him as a present not to protect or advance Nigeria, but his inner circle. His seven-point agenda never gather traction. His affirmation of higher national principles was exposed in practice, and in the international arena, Nigeria disappeared well before he discovered Saudi medicine.
At his inauguration, he spoke eloquently about the children of independence taking over the destiny of Nigeria. But not for one moment thereafter did he look serious or capable. He rode Nigeria into a land of smoke and mirrors, never survived it, and left us in it.
As we bid him goodbye, one thing is for certain: our country deserved better . Our country deserves better.
• [email protected]
Yar’Adua came into office a sick man borne on the wings of fiction. It began with Olusegun Obasanjo, who pushed Yar’Adua into office knowing he was very sick.
Obasanjo has lied about this point ever since, but then, he has never favoured the truth over lies. If he were honest, in 2006 when he put Yar’Adua up for the presidency, he would at least have doubted whether the man’s condition could withstand the demands of the presidency. But Obasanjo saw Nigeria only as another hapless woman he was taking behind closed doors, and so it did not matter; he did not even pause to ask himself whether it was his responsibility to choose the president.
Then followed the so-called People’s Democratic Party (PDP), to which the electoral commission was but an extension of its national secretariat. Since the nation’s president is really their own partisan bank, they would have shooed a donkey or a goat into Aso Rock anyway, so they gladly put Yar’Adua into office. For three years, until last week, they never admitted Yar’Adua was seriously sick.
Then followed the Supreme Court which, unwilling to make a meaningful contribution to the growth of Nigeria’s democracy, chose to uphold Yar’Adua’s grievously flawed election.
By then, Yar’Adua had begun to grow into the legend. He offered platitudes, but never really stated how sick he was. Although he repeatedly visited Saudi Arabia to see his doctors, he never admitted the quality of the crisis. On one occasion, he said he was visiting for a religions purpose. On another, he said he was attending the opening of a university.
When SaharaReporters said he suffered from Churg Strauss syndrome, a terminal condition, it was vilified. The Federal Government never mentioned the ailment officially. Last November, when it must have been clear Yar’Adua was in the final stages of his life, the government said only that he was suffering from acute pericarditis.
The grand deception over Yar’Adua’s health found true warriors in his kitchen cabinet, which began to flourish the moment he was beyond reach in the hands of the Saudis. They continued to insist his condition was good and that he would be returning to power shortly. That baseless fiction was encouraged by Yar’Adua personally in January when he spoke to the BBC saying his treatment was working.
And the press: throughout Yar’Adua’s sickness, there were vast swathes of the mainstream media that never did an original story about him. There are newspapers in Nigeria that never identified Churg Strauss by name. They never sought to know the truth.
Worse was to come: in the later stages, some of them helped to propagate the fiction that he was recovering. Carried away, such newspapers as the Daily Trust, ThisDay and The Nation purveyed tales of the president making remarkable progress on his way back to health and to office.
Yar’Adua, we now know, must have been dying all of that time. By then, however, and even as Yar’Adua apparently lost control of time, it was too late: the fiction had taken on a life of its own. The master had slipped from king to pawn.
That was when documents were alleged to have been signed in his name even as he lay comatose in a foreign hospital. The Nigerian ambassador to Saudi Arabia swore he had seen Yar’Adua and that he was in such great shape he was watching soccer on television. They told the nation the man was exercising for 25 minutes every day. Members of the federal cabinet said Yar’Adua’s health was not up for debate.
Yar’Adua lay dying.
And then, last February, as the clamour for power to be constitutionally transferred to the Vice-President grew louder and the courts were overflowing with lawsuits challenging the standoff, he was spirited back to the country in the middle of the night by his inner circle. And that cabal, which seemed to recognize only the president but not his country, gave the impression Yar’Adua was back to assume duty.
They lied; he was not even well enough to travel. In fact, he would never be well again. Yar’Adua was dying. He was being used, crudely and cruelly, by people who saw the tool and not the person. In their desperation for continued access to power and privilege, they failed to see a man who deserved respect and kindness. They said he would resume duty in a matter of days.
He did not. He could not. He never would.
Last Wednesday, they finally admitted he was dead. The obvious truth is that even if he died physically on that day, he had been dead and humiliated for much longer. We do not know how long he had merely been hooked up to machines that offered the impression he was still breathing, but we do know how long he had been tethered to a manipulation machine.
There has been so much deception we do not know if he actually arrived in this country in February as man, vegetable or corpse.
I believe this wholesale deception of a people, subversion of a democracy and desecration of the nation’s highest office, ought to be probed.
Although we are being laughed at by historians, comedians and commentators around the world, it is not funny. To ignore it as if it never happened is to convince the world we have no standards. To ignore it is to consolidate a new dimension of the culture of impunity that has run this country aground.
The irony of this experience is that Yar’Adua was very much part of the rotten political gamesmanship that was eventually used to exploit him. In the PDP, the objective is not to do the right thing, but to stay on top.
This is why the PDP era has failed to move Nigeria forward. And it is a specter that confronts the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. The question is whether Jonathan is capable of seeing beyond himself, the sycophancy and the political greed that defines his party.
Yar’Adua used the power that Obasanjo gave to him as a present not to protect or advance Nigeria, but his inner circle. His seven-point agenda never gather traction. His affirmation of higher national principles was exposed in practice, and in the international arena, Nigeria disappeared well before he discovered Saudi medicine.
At his inauguration, he spoke eloquently about the children of independence taking over the destiny of Nigeria. But not for one moment thereafter did he look serious or capable. He rode Nigeria into a land of smoke and mirrors, never survived it, and left us in it.
As we bid him goodbye, one thing is for certain: our country deserved better . Our country deserves better.
• [email protected]
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