Now that President Yar’Adua has assured the nation, appropriately through the British Broadcasting Corporation — to hell with NTA, FRCN, AIT, Channels, or any Nigerian news medium — that he is neither brain dead nor dead in any way, perhaps we can return to the central question posed by his unilateral revocation of the constitution. In all good faith, let us assume that the voice that spoke to the BBC was Yar’Adua’s and leave alone for now the question of the patriotic fervour, in a time of turmoil, that dictated the choice of medium for squelching speculations about his true state of health.
A unilateral revocation, I say, because a constitution which a self-styled rule of law president cannot bring himself to respect is as good as non-existent, as under a military dictatorship. But right from Absence Day One, it ought to have been clear that whether the president was “sound and fit” or “brain dead” was of secondary significance in the light of the constitutional dilemma unleashed by his forced absence.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
“At the moment I am undergoing treatment, and I’m getting better from the treatment,” Yar’Adua allegedly told the BBC. “I hope that very soon there will be tremendous progress, which will allow me to get back home.” Then he added, quite thoughtfully, “I wish, at this stage, to thank all Nigerians for their prayers for my good health, and for their prayers for the nation.” At this stage! Meaning the fifty-day mark of his leaving the country rudderless and on the brink of disaster! And it took the threat of street protests combined with rumours of his death for Yar’Adua to break his stony silence! But then not a word about the anxiety, chaos and looming instability he left behind. Yet if he could speak at all, then surely he could also make known his wish on the matter of honouring the constitution so Vice President Jonathan can act pending his return. Alas, not a moment’s thought on the burning question; only a self-serving assurance that he is alive and hopes to return soon. In the interim? Oh, Nigeria can hurry on to the precipice and take the plunge. Better to be president over the rubble and the ashes than miss a day of being “executive president and commander-in-chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
Apparently, Yar’Adua has every confidence in his Attorney-General’s notion that he can govern the country from anywhere on the planet, so any talk of a power vacuum must seem to him the figment of the nation’s and the world’s imagination. But if, for the sake of argument, it is true that the president of a sovereign nation can or ought to govern in absentia, never mind if from the sick bed of a foreign hospital, it ought also to be the case that he be able to govern at the very least. Which requires that he possess a sound mind in a sound body, a condition that even Yar’Adua’s alleged phone call to the BBC proves he cannot meet while “undergoing treatment.” In my view, were he to return this very day the mortal damage he has done to the social health of the nation would still be incalculable. In short, Yar’Adua’s precedent-setting affront to the constitution poses a clear and present danger to the tottering edifice called Nigeria.
articleadslinks
This may sound alarmist to the incurable optimists, who more likely than not are just opportunists and inveterate deceivers, but the decision by Yar’Adua and his circle of self-always-and-nation-never handlers to scorn the constitution is capable of igniting a national calamity comparable only to the Biafran tragedy of 1967-70. Look carefully at the events that led to the total loss of faith in the Nigeria project by the Igbos and you wouldn’t need the oracle to discern the growing tremors caused by the crisis of legitimacy threatening state and nation at the moment. It is even literal: we have had no head of state for two months! We may have come to terms with government doing nothing to improve our lives. Indeed, with seeing government as the very cause of our troubles — from the price of yam or petrol to full-scale warfare misnamed elections. So that Yar’Adua’s government-in-intensive-care may appear as a lesser evil. But in the framework of a nation, such thinking is fatal. Suppose for a moment that an opportunistic enemy foreign, seeing the glaring power vacuum, were to attack the country, how would we fare with an invalid commander-in-chief an ocean away from the troops he should lead in self-defence?
To dismiss this claim, we can take the myopic view buoyed by the hope of a quick rectification of the illegalities, crimes and sleights-of-hand committed in the president’s absence whenever constitutional order is restored, whatever the short term costs may be. But how might we begin to restore faith in a deeply alienated, factionalised and bitter populace in the wake of this needless act of political vandalism? The rumour mill has been rife with speculations on the real reason why Yar’Adua refuses to take the simple obligatory step of handing over the government to the vice president. The Northern power oligarchy, it is speculated, will not let go of power, even for a day, let alone to a minority, and worse, a Niger Deltan. And there is ample ground for this reasoning. Would the nation have been subjected to this ordeal and shame were the vice president of a suitable ethnicity? For instance, would Yar’Adua have so obdurately declined to hand over power to a Yoruba deputy in the face of his incontrovertible incapacitation? Perhaps not to an Igbo deputy, the Igbos being an honourary majority as the power clique continues to exact war retribution from them over Biafra. But could a Yoruba president have conceived that dare with a Hausa-Fulani vice president? At what cost?
Matters, of course, may be more complicated than this, as is often the case in all questions political. But Yar’Adua’s determination, even “at this stage,” to spit on the constitution reeks of the divine right to governance that the Northern power oligarchy has publicly boasted. No less an oligarch than Alhaji Yussuf Maitama Sule articulated God’s allocation of national talent thus: to the Hausa-Fulani, leadership; to the Yoruba, diplomatic skills; and to the Igbo — of course, commerce. As for the minorities? Well, they do not exist, not even those from under whose feet the oil is drawn that made it possible for Maitama Sule to gain the prominence and perch for his gratuitous insult. And if they do not exist, how can you hand over power to one of them, to a “ghost?”
And herein the troubling portent. If such a clear-cut path to mere temporary leadership of the country by a Niger Delta minority cannot be countenanced by the Northern oligarchy, then the message is unmistakable: the Niger Delta exists only for the purpose of being internally colonised, expropriated and brutally subjugated. And this bitter truth destroys, absolutely, the spectre of trust in Yar’Adua’s or any unpopular government’s efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis festering there. Yet if that crisis lies at the heart of the National Question itself, then the North’s insufferable will-to-power lately demonstrated stands as the greatest threat since the civil war to Nigeria’s continued corporate existence. Already, some allegedly disarmed militants have made their stance on the matter known and echoes of renewed sabotage have been heard again in the creeks. Predicting the Biafran war that claimed him,Christopher Okigbo, warned: “The death sentence lies in ambush along the corridors of power.” Whether those corridors be still the hallways of Aso Rock or now of a Saudi Arabian hospital, it seems the ghost of Biafra currently haunts them. We must all rise now to banish that ghost. Before it is too late.
Ifowodo may be reached at [email protected].
articleadsbanner
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });