The killing of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in the media has been going on for such a long time that I have actually lost interest. The man from Katsina is as meek as they come, and he has made no attempt whatsoever to stem the tide of the many Nigerians wishing him cold death.
Shortly after he was nominated for the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation by no less a personage than the old emperor himself, General Olusegun Obasanjo, it was suddenly rumoured that Yar’Adua had summarily expired even before the start of campaigning. It took the drama of Obasanjo on the soapbox to make an intercontinental phone call to Yar’Adua, who had been evacuated abroad - “Umoru, are you dead?” before the confidence of Nigerians was restored that the then presidential wannabe was still alive, if not exactly kicking. Ever since then, Yar’Adua has been moving with a catlike felinity that makes most Nigerians to suspect that he is in fact a ghost, a very noiseless spirit!
Now that President Yar’Adua is holed up in a Saudi hospital bed the news is flying fast and free that the man has given up the ghost yet again. Goddamit, how many times will this man “die” to convince Nigerian journalists that he is actually dead? Or, to put it another way, how many times will the husband of Turai wake up from death for Nigerian pressmen to understand a subject known as “the impossible death of Umaru Yar’Adua?” I think many Nigerians are becoming blasphemous by making Yar’Adua enjoy more resurrections than Our Lord Jesus Christ! Death and damnation will descend like Holy Ghost fire on the heads of all the blasphemers who are spinning our heads like a yoyo with the bewildering twists and turns of Yar’Adua’s life and death. Say Amen to that! Hallelujah!
Before one could even gather breath following the news of Yar’Adua’s “death” one is assailed from all corners by calls for the man to resign his post as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Chei, can a dead man resign? With which hands will he write the resignation letter? Dead men can’t write, can they? After all, my teacher in secondary school taught me that once a man is dead he cannot hear any calls, least of all the empty shout for him to resign!
I remember reading it in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island that dead men don’t bite. Maybe it’s because we don’t think deeply or properly in Nigeria; otherwise the right thing to do is to bury our dead instead of asking them to write resignation letters. This kind of bad thinking will definitely not make Nigeria to rank amongst the 20 leading economies in the world by the year 2020. Haba! Other leading economies don’t mark time waiting for their dead to write resignation letters, or do they? I am confused. Fetch me a tough dose of Alabukun to unscramble my medulla oblongata!
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Ok, who would even collect a resignation letter from a dead man? It is also unconstitutional, for there is nowhere that it is expressly stated that somebody should collect the resignation letter of a dead President. I suspect that the activists asking for this resignation letter do not wish Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan well. Not even all the good luck on earth can save any man who beholds a ghost! Death comes on fast wings to anybody sent to collect a resignation letter from a ghost! Could this not be an ulterior motive to send poor Jonathan to sure perdition? Jonathan, beware of the ides of December!
Imagine Dr Jonathan waking up in Aso Rock and seeing before him the ghost of Yar’Adua with a resignation letter in hand! I am deadly sure the Vee-Pee will start screaming in tongues in a jiffy, hollering something like “Anwuolam-o!” that is, “I am dead-o!” in all the languages of Nigeria and ECOWAS! He will instantly bolt away from the visiting ghost with a speed that would make Usain Bolt of Jamaica look like a knock-kneed grandmother! Vice-President Jonathan will not break his run from Aso Rock, Abuja until he lands in short seconds at his Otuoke community, via Ogbia land, by way of Yenagoa in Bayelsa State! To save Jonathan from the visitation of the ghost, the elders of Bayelsa may then have the need to bring together all the prophets, herbalists, spiritualists, sorcerers, witch-catchers, demon-arresters, spiritual spooks, anybody with power, to save the great son of Ogbia land from the claws of the ghost of Yar’adua!
Meantime, after seeing his Number Two man take off in utter terror the ghost of Yar’Adua will be left with no option than to visit the Number Three man, that is, Senate President David Bonaventure Mark. As a military man, David Mark will instantly suspect foul play, and he would then suggest that there ought to be a joint sitting of the National Assembly for the resignation letter of the ghost to be “laid” like Yar’Adua’s last budget! The sad dimension of the matter is that Speaker Dimeji Bankole who heard of the visitation of the ghost of Yar’Adua via the grapevine was last seen hiding in a hole inside Olumo Rock in his native Ogun State! Akika!
Some patriotic federal forces have already patriotically uncovered a hidden Igbo Agenda in it all, for the fear now is that a diehard like Chris Ngige of Anambra State who survived the dreaded Okija shrine and thwarted that animal called “I Dey Kampe” may end up taking the resignation letter and thus inheriting presidential power to end the marginalization of the Igbo since the end of the Biafra war in 1970! See the danger Nigeria is facing as the ghost of Mr. President walks the length and breadth of Nigeria, ending his noiselessness by saying the following words: “Yes, I am dead! Anyone of you countrymen and women who has the heart and liver, which I do not have, let him come and take my resignation letter!”
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