Latest media reports on the health of Umaru Yar’Adua have revealed that the ailing Nigerian leader has been unconscious since his hospitalization in Saudi Arabia over three weeks ago. If these reports are true, it means many people have not been exactly truthful in their public comments about the President’s illness. It also means that those who have been accusing others of playing politics with Yar’Adua’s illness are the very people who are doing that. Worse still, those who have been constitutionally empowered to serve the nation to the best of their ability, those who have sworn to be truthful and honest to the people of Nigeria, have been lying to all of us just to be able to save their jobs.
* Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State and others who abandoned their jobs and rushed to Saudi Arabia in a show sympathy visit to Yar’Adua returned days later from the merry-go-round with the news that the President was responding well to treatment. But it is doubtful if Saraki and members of his entourage ever saw Yar’Adua during their visit. So, they were in no position to have categorically declared that Yar’Adua was doing well.
* Vice President Goodluck Jonathan could not have spoken to his boss, Yar’Adua, on Sallah day as he claimed because the President was not in a position to pick or make calls since arriving at the Saudi hospital. So, Yar’Adua could not have sent a Sallah message through the Vice President to the Nigerian people.
* Senate President David Mark has unilaterally declared a nine-day feast of prayers for the President but nobody knows if there is any sincerity in the declaration or if he is straining to clear his name over allegations that he is plotting a coup against the constitution to takeover as acting President in the event that the President bows out. Mark has denied eyeing the presidency but it is hard to believe given his antecedents as a soldier and an expert in power games. For effect, his wife last week rained curses, according to the media, on those who had asked Yar’Adua to resign and allow Nigeria to move forward.
* Mark’s deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, returned home triumphantly some days ago after assuring worried members of the United States Council on Foreign Relations that there was no cause for alarm over Yar’Adua’s hospitalization. He said the constitution allows the President to return to his job in the next century. Even if the constitution did not explicitly give a time limit for the President’s absence from office, Ekweremadu knows that common sense dictates that the nation cannot wait endlessly for Yar’Adua to return to his seat whenever it is convenient for him. Nigeria cannot remain in limbo perpetually.
* Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Michael Aondoakaa claimed he has been speaking daily with the President since his hospitalization three weeks ago. But we know – and the overzealous Aondoakaa knows too – that he has never got a single call through to his boss. The Attorney-General may want Nigerians to believe that he has a special relationship with Yar’Adua but he seems to rely more on Saharareporters for the most accurate information on the President’s health.
* Personal physician Salisu Banye said the President was diagnosed with acute pericarditis and that he was responding well to treatment at the Saudi Hospital. Dr Banye did not tell us what brought the pericarditis. For pericarditis is only a symptom of more serious pathologies that medical experts say could have resulted in a possible multiple organ failure.
* Nigerian envoy to Saudi Arabia Garba Aminchi seems to be “the comical Ali” (referring to the former Iraqi Information Minister Ali who kept entertaining the world about the spectacular feat of the Iraqi army even as the American-led forces were closing in on Saddam Hussein and his henchmen) in this tragic drama. Aminchi had been quoted in the media variously as saying that the President was on his way to Mecca to perform the hajj rites; that the President has been watching his favourite European soccer teams slug it out on television as part of his post-treatment relaxation; that the President was so homesick he wanted his favourite kunu for an appetiser; and that he had packed his bag and was ready to fly back to Nigeria to resume work. Well, we now know that the President did not perform the hajj, that he has not been watching European soccer on television or real Saudi soccer, that he had had no appetite for kunu, and that he is not likely to return soon to his job.
* The 55 Nigerians who want Yar’Adua to resign are wrong in their assumption that the President is medically fit to make that decision. These eminent Nigerians should address their petition to those around the President who can decide for him. An unconscious person cannot draft or sign a resignation letter. The fate of the nation is in the hands of the President’s wife, physician and close advisers who could tell the nation the truth about the President’s fitness to continue in office and then allow the constitutionally prescribed succession procedure to begin in earnest
* Most of those praying for Yar’Adua to recover from his debilitating illness are actually praying for things to get worse in the hope that they may find favour in a new dispensation. Many Nigerians never quite mean what they say publicly. Favour seekers are already looking closely at Vice President Jonathan’s family tree to determine if there is a link somewhere. Some may change their last names to Jonathan.
* Secretary to the Government of the Federation Mahmoud Yayale was not being truthful when he said that the federal cabinet has the courage to declare Yar’Adua incapacitated. Yayale, who has long been rumoured to be on his way out, tried hard to avoid the “Kingibe treatment” by over-dramatizing the readiness of the members of the Federal Executive Council to act in the interest of the nation. He seemed to be reassuring the Katsina mafia about his loyalty to the President so that if by any miracle the President makes it back he can retain his job. It is doubtful if the present cabinet can ever summon such courage to declare the President unfit to continue in office because many of the ministers may not retain their jobs when a new administration takes over.
* Information Minister Dora Akunyili was being economical with the truth to have declared that all organs and agencies of government are running smoothly. The constitution would not have created the presidency if the office has role to play in our political system. Nigeria is on auto pilot. It is rudderless. Key judicial appointments, supplementary and 2010 budgets, oil contracts and several others that require presidential approval have been kept waiting.
* Religious leaders who have declared a period of prayers and fasting have not been prompted by any special love for Yar’Adua. They have prayed and fasted for any government in power since the birth of this unfortunate country in 1960.
* Traditional rulers across the country have as a matter of routine expressed support for the ailing President. There has never been a President they have not supported.
* Members of the Katsina State House of Assembly have declared a fatwa on indigenes of the state who have called for Yar’Adua’s resignation. They have not been motivated by their love for Yar’Adua but the need to rally round a native son and to present a false image of unity among the people of the state.
* In making a case for Yar’Adua’s continued stay in office, some commentators are quick to cite some past foreign leaders who were allowed to serve out their terms of office despite their well known ill-health. But what these commentators failed to understand is that Yar’Adua does not have much in common with them. The process that threw him up was not credible. He suffers serious legitimacy deficit. And his performance since 2007 has been woeful. He does not appear to have prepared adequately for the office and he has not been able to grow in it. Nigeria under his watch has regressed terribly. Therefore, the fact that there has not been a nationwide outpouring of sympathy for him can be understood. Beloved leaders are those who are seen to have made tangible impact on the lives of their people.
* Finally, former vice president Atiku Abubakar says what Yar’Adua needs is compassion. But what Yar’Adua really needs is urgent final disengagement from public office and a return to Katsina for rest, recuperation and perhaps recovery. By so doing, he stands a good chance of saving his life as well as saving Nigeria from imminent collapse.
- Onukaba, journalist, playwright and media consultant, sent this from Accra, Ghana.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });