February 20, 2010
Without taking the reader on a ride before hitting the nail on the head, the point of this article is to argue, and hopefully successfully, that the time has come for the Nigerian government (whatever that means nowadays) to institute immediate legal action against the people who control access to president Umaru Musa Yar Adua. If Goodluck Jonathan, the FEC and National Assembly are serious about visiting and/or accessing the medical condition of president Yar Adua, I am dumbfounded as to why they are yet to seek the assistance of the legal system in compelling access to the ailing president, namely Turai Yar Adua, Yusuf Tilde, Colonel Mustapha Onoviveta and Garba Aminci; the president’s wife, Chief Security Officer, Aide-de-Camp and ambassador to Saudi Arabia respectively.
Hardly does any day go by without news of one delegation or the other heading to Saudi Arabia with the aim of searching for or visiting ailing president Yar Adua, who was admitted to the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre on November 23, 2010. Like many other Nigerians, I have become tired of counting the different government sponsored and individual delegations that have been to Saudi Arabia in search of the president. What I am not tired of is taking cognizance of the fact that every delegation has returned to country (or proceeded to India in the case of Vincent Ogbulafor) without ever setting eyes on the president. Numerous reasons, some bothering on the comical, have been given as to why the ailing president has been kept out of sight from Nigerians and its government delegations. Without attempting to give any credibility to the purveyors of some of these “taking coal to the coal-mine” excuses, one of the excuses and the individual behind it is worth mentioning here. It was Senator Abba Aji, the ailing president’s special adviser on National Assembly matters, who said that it has been impossible to see the ailing president because he is staying in a section of the hospital reserved for Saudi Monarchs. The absurdity of this excuse is that “comical” Abba Aji wants Nigerians and his other listeners to believe that once the Saudi King checks into that special wing of the hospital, he becomes incommunicado. Nothing can be further from the truth. If the Saudi government intended this medical facility to be some sort of gulag, it should named it Alcatraz.
Despite recent reports that Turai Yar Adua has prevented members of Yar Adua’s family, including his sisters, from seeing their ailing sibling, and ignoring the fact that the House of Representatives delegation had just returned from Saudi Arabia without setting eyes on the ailing president, the Federal Executive Council, working in tandem with acting president Goodluck Jonathan decided to re-enact the now endless show of shame by sending another delegation to Saudi Arabia for the purpose of seeing or checking on the medical condition of President Umaru Yar Adua. Although greed, corruption and the aphrodisiac called power have conspired to ensure that successive Nigerian governments have ended up implementing over and over again, the same policies that have failed woefully and brought the country to its knees, one would expect the government to take a different approach when the health and ultimately the life of its first citizen is on the line. It appears even that is too much to expect from politicians who equate public service with treasury looting. It would appear that the FEC and Goodluck Jonathan are determined to prove to the whole world that, despite negative results from previous attempts, it is possible to keep doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expect to get a different result.
Accepting for one moment that Turai Yar Adua has the right to “protect” the president by controlling access to him, such a right or power cannot be absolute. It is a failing proposition to argue that Turai alone or even in conjunction with the ailing president, with or without those around them can control access to the president to the point of denying the Nigerian people /government access to the president. Notwithstanding the cultural unfamiliarity of Powers Of Attorney in the Nigerian context, assuming the likelihood that such a document does exist and was validly executed by the ailing president before his latest hospitalization, and that it does include denial of access to Yar Adua by the Nigerian people/government, such a document should not stop the government from taking urgent legal steps to compel Turai Yar Adua and company to grant access to the president. Certain responsibilities to the people of Nigeria are concomitant with the presidency of the country.
Ordinary citizens can do as they wish when it comes to their personal care in the event of incapacitation and they can so document in a Power of Attorney, but Umaru Musa Yar Adua is not an ordinary citizen. Irrespective of one’s views of the electoral shenanigans that brought him into office, he is today the president of Nigeria, a country of over 140 million people. He presumably checked into the King Faisal Specialist Hospital as the president of Nigeria. Unlike most of the over 140 million other Nigerians for whom hospitals have become a place where one goes to die, the ailing president is in a state of the art hospital and his medical bills are being paid by the people of Nigeria. Should not the one who pays the piper be in a position to dictate the tunes?
Yar Adua is not an ordinary Nigerian because a presidential aircraft is sitting idle at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and accumulating huge landing and parking fees in order to be available for his benefit. He continues to spend money belonging to the Nigerian people through his alleged “signing” of the Appropriations Bill. He is not an ordinary citizen because an alleged interview with the BBC lasting about 57 seconds has now been interpreted by the National Assembly as the equivalent of the written declaration required under section 145 of the 1999 constitution of Nigeria in order to unconstitutionally transfer presidential powers to Goodluck Jonathan. Yar Adua is not an ordinary citizen because he has countless constitutional obligations to discharge on behalf of Nigeria and her over 140 million citizens. Yar Adua’s actions or the lack of it could have severe consequences for the entire country.
Umaru Musa Yar Adua is not an ordinary Nigerian and that is why the people of Nigeria have a right to know his medical condition. This is a right, not a privilege. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that the Nigerian people are entitled to know the minutest details of the president’s medical condition. All I am saying is that they are entitled to know as much as is necessary in order to decide whether the president continues to be capable of discharging his constitutional obligations and I believe Turai and company are denying access to the president in order to prevent the requisite information from emerging.
Nigerians and their government must have access to Yar Adua simply because the man is their president and therefore has no option of hiding from the people. Ordinary citizens can hide and remain incommunicado for as long as they desire, but the president of Nigeria does not have that option. This obligation to communicate and be in touch with the people comes with the presidency and its associated privileges.
Another different reason but one that is inseparable from the immediate one above is that being the president of Nigeria and appearing to have abandoned his duty post for almost three months now, it is imperative for the Nigerian people to know his medical condition in order to determine the appropriate constitutional sanctions/remedies to implement. Procedural fairness demand that the president be heard before a decision is rendered in his case, although been heard in this case may be no more than been seen.
Another reason for compelling access to the president is made of the stuff conspiracy theorists dream of. For all the constitutional, political and administrative aggravation that Nigerians has been put through shortly after the president was admitted into a Saudi hospital, it may just turn out to be an unnecessary hullaballoo created by the president’s failure or refusal to properly delegate authority and sustained through denial of access to the president by those who have kidnapped him to further their personal interests. The ailing president could have been “kidnapped” by those around him once it became clear to them that he may no longer be able to continue with the charade of appearing to be the de facto president of Nigeria discharging the duties of the presidency while in reality, those around him have been using him as their conduit to the national treasury. Yes, I am actually saying that the ailing president of Nigeria may have been kidnapped at some point after November 23, 2009. If you are still wondering why anyone would do such a thing, imagine for a moment what many people will do if they are able to surreptitiously exercise the powers of the president of Nigeria to line their bank account without having to discharge the obligations or take the political heat associated with that office.
Some analysts have argued, and others including the highly respected Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, have cautiously implied that despite his poor record of achievements as the president of Nigeria, the Yar Adua they know or have interacted with is a far cry from the person who will flagrantly violate the Constitution of Nigeria and that the manner in which he appears to have abandoned his duty post without properly handing over to his deputy does not reflect the behavior of the person they know as Yar Adua. This view is given some credibility by the claim that the ailing president actually wrote the requisite letter at some point before he left the country on November 23, 2009 but the letter got “lost” on its “long journey” between the desks of the president’s adviser on national assembly matters, Abba Aji and that of the secretary to the federal government, Yayale Ahmed.
No Nigerian can be faulted for suspecting that given the pecuniary benefits of keeping the sick president cocooned away from the public and the greed hitherto associated with Turai Yar Adua and her partners in crime, the list of which includes elements like James Ibori, Gov. Saraki and Michael Aondoakaa, members of this cabal can actually kidnap the president while doing do everything possible to create the impression that the ailing resident is in charge of the country for as long as they can. The antecedents of these elements disentitle them to any benefit of doubt when it comes to postulating that they could be holding the president against his wishes. A plethora of other reasons exist for compelling access to president Yar Adua but I think those already mentioned will suffice.
The remedy sought in the legal action against the above mentioned characters is a court order compelling them to grant immediate access to the ailing president or face arrest. The government can up the ante by requesting the assistance of Interpol and government of Saudi Arabia in implanting the court order. After all, this is the same government that sought the assistance of Interpol in arresting the former chairman of EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu for the contextually benign offence of allegedly failing to declare his assets. The Nigerian legal system that was shameless enough to grant a permanent injunction preventing the EFCC from ever investigating or arresting Peter Odili for corruption and the National Assembly/government that was ingenious enough to equate a barely audible 57 seconds BBC interview with the section 145 of the Constitution requirement of a written letter should not have a problem getting the court to issue an order compelling Turai Yar Adua and company to grant access immediate to Yar Adua.
With the exception of the CSO, ADC and maybe the Nigerian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Turai Yar Adua is practically exercising the powers of an attorney for personal care over the president and denying access to everyone, including the president’s immediate family members. Yet no one is sure if she is carrying out the genuine wishes of the ailing president. Given the circumstances and peculiarity of Yar Adua’s position as the president of Nigeria, Turai Yar Adua and her associates should bear the burden of establishing that they are carrying out the president’s wishes with respect to denying the people and government of Nigeria access to him. In the very likely event that Turai Yar Adua and her associates cannot discharge the above onus, the legal system must intervene by exercising its jurisdiction over the president, his wife, his Chief Security Officer, Mr. Yusuf Tilde and Aide-de-camp, Col Mustafa Onoyiveta to order immediate access to Yar Adua. The government has the additional option of compelling its employees (the CSO, ADC and ambassador) to give immediate account of their sojourn in Saudi Arabia. The time has come to end the intransigence of those denying access to the president. What is going on right now is a national; a play that is becoming increasingly nightmarish and difficult to watch.
It is generally believed that Turai Yar Adua and the two security details mentioned above are the only people with access to the president. The extent to which Nigeria’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Alhaji Garba Aminci, has access to the ailing president is not clear. But given the fact that he has made pronouncements about the president’s medical condition and the international law implications of the type of court order being discussed here, I would suggest that in addition to the three people already mentioned, the order should also be binding on the ambassador.
These people who control access to the ailing president are Nigerian citizens and thus undoubtedly subject to the jurisdiction of Nigeria’s courts. The federal government must now head to the court to seek an order compelling Turai and company to grant immediate access to ailing the president. At the risk of verbosity, I would like to re-iterate that I am not advocating a violation of the president’s right to privacy. What I am advocating is a court order compelling access to Yar Adua for the purpose of obtaining information relevant to the governance of a country of over 140 million people. A televised access to the president may be sufficient to make the requisite determination. In the event that such a televised access would be humiliating, demeaning or injurious to the person of the president and the office of the president, that would be enough for Nigerians to reach the necessary decision that would be in the interest of Nigerians and hopefully, the ailing president
Hardly does any day go by without news of one delegation or the other heading to Saudi Arabia with the aim of searching for or visiting ailing president Yar Adua, who was admitted to the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre on November 23, 2010. Like many other Nigerians, I have become tired of counting the different government sponsored and individual delegations that have been to Saudi Arabia in search of the president. What I am not tired of is taking cognizance of the fact that every delegation has returned to country (or proceeded to India in the case of Vincent Ogbulafor) without ever setting eyes on the president. Numerous reasons, some bothering on the comical, have been given as to why the ailing president has been kept out of sight from Nigerians and its government delegations. Without attempting to give any credibility to the purveyors of some of these “taking coal to the coal-mine” excuses, one of the excuses and the individual behind it is worth mentioning here. It was Senator Abba Aji, the ailing president’s special adviser on National Assembly matters, who said that it has been impossible to see the ailing president because he is staying in a section of the hospital reserved for Saudi Monarchs. The absurdity of this excuse is that “comical” Abba Aji wants Nigerians and his other listeners to believe that once the Saudi King checks into that special wing of the hospital, he becomes incommunicado. Nothing can be further from the truth. If the Saudi government intended this medical facility to be some sort of gulag, it should named it Alcatraz.
Despite recent reports that Turai Yar Adua has prevented members of Yar Adua’s family, including his sisters, from seeing their ailing sibling, and ignoring the fact that the House of Representatives delegation had just returned from Saudi Arabia without setting eyes on the ailing president, the Federal Executive Council, working in tandem with acting president Goodluck Jonathan decided to re-enact the now endless show of shame by sending another delegation to Saudi Arabia for the purpose of seeing or checking on the medical condition of President Umaru Yar Adua. Although greed, corruption and the aphrodisiac called power have conspired to ensure that successive Nigerian governments have ended up implementing over and over again, the same policies that have failed woefully and brought the country to its knees, one would expect the government to take a different approach when the health and ultimately the life of its first citizen is on the line. It appears even that is too much to expect from politicians who equate public service with treasury looting. It would appear that the FEC and Goodluck Jonathan are determined to prove to the whole world that, despite negative results from previous attempts, it is possible to keep doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expect to get a different result.
Accepting for one moment that Turai Yar Adua has the right to “protect” the president by controlling access to him, such a right or power cannot be absolute. It is a failing proposition to argue that Turai alone or even in conjunction with the ailing president, with or without those around them can control access to the president to the point of denying the Nigerian people /government access to the president. Notwithstanding the cultural unfamiliarity of Powers Of Attorney in the Nigerian context, assuming the likelihood that such a document does exist and was validly executed by the ailing president before his latest hospitalization, and that it does include denial of access to Yar Adua by the Nigerian people/government, such a document should not stop the government from taking urgent legal steps to compel Turai Yar Adua and company to grant access to the president. Certain responsibilities to the people of Nigeria are concomitant with the presidency of the country.
Ordinary citizens can do as they wish when it comes to their personal care in the event of incapacitation and they can so document in a Power of Attorney, but Umaru Musa Yar Adua is not an ordinary citizen. Irrespective of one’s views of the electoral shenanigans that brought him into office, he is today the president of Nigeria, a country of over 140 million people. He presumably checked into the King Faisal Specialist Hospital as the president of Nigeria. Unlike most of the over 140 million other Nigerians for whom hospitals have become a place where one goes to die, the ailing president is in a state of the art hospital and his medical bills are being paid by the people of Nigeria. Should not the one who pays the piper be in a position to dictate the tunes?
Yar Adua is not an ordinary Nigerian because a presidential aircraft is sitting idle at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and accumulating huge landing and parking fees in order to be available for his benefit. He continues to spend money belonging to the Nigerian people through his alleged “signing” of the Appropriations Bill. He is not an ordinary citizen because an alleged interview with the BBC lasting about 57 seconds has now been interpreted by the National Assembly as the equivalent of the written declaration required under section 145 of the 1999 constitution of Nigeria in order to unconstitutionally transfer presidential powers to Goodluck Jonathan. Yar Adua is not an ordinary citizen because he has countless constitutional obligations to discharge on behalf of Nigeria and her over 140 million citizens. Yar Adua’s actions or the lack of it could have severe consequences for the entire country.
Umaru Musa Yar Adua is not an ordinary Nigerian and that is why the people of Nigeria have a right to know his medical condition. This is a right, not a privilege. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that the Nigerian people are entitled to know the minutest details of the president’s medical condition. All I am saying is that they are entitled to know as much as is necessary in order to decide whether the president continues to be capable of discharging his constitutional obligations and I believe Turai and company are denying access to the president in order to prevent the requisite information from emerging.
Nigerians and their government must have access to Yar Adua simply because the man is their president and therefore has no option of hiding from the people. Ordinary citizens can hide and remain incommunicado for as long as they desire, but the president of Nigeria does not have that option. This obligation to communicate and be in touch with the people comes with the presidency and its associated privileges.
Another different reason but one that is inseparable from the immediate one above is that being the president of Nigeria and appearing to have abandoned his duty post for almost three months now, it is imperative for the Nigerian people to know his medical condition in order to determine the appropriate constitutional sanctions/remedies to implement. Procedural fairness demand that the president be heard before a decision is rendered in his case, although been heard in this case may be no more than been seen.
Another reason for compelling access to the president is made of the stuff conspiracy theorists dream of. For all the constitutional, political and administrative aggravation that Nigerians has been put through shortly after the president was admitted into a Saudi hospital, it may just turn out to be an unnecessary hullaballoo created by the president’s failure or refusal to properly delegate authority and sustained through denial of access to the president by those who have kidnapped him to further their personal interests. The ailing president could have been “kidnapped” by those around him once it became clear to them that he may no longer be able to continue with the charade of appearing to be the de facto president of Nigeria discharging the duties of the presidency while in reality, those around him have been using him as their conduit to the national treasury. Yes, I am actually saying that the ailing president of Nigeria may have been kidnapped at some point after November 23, 2009. If you are still wondering why anyone would do such a thing, imagine for a moment what many people will do if they are able to surreptitiously exercise the powers of the president of Nigeria to line their bank account without having to discharge the obligations or take the political heat associated with that office.
Some analysts have argued, and others including the highly respected Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, have cautiously implied that despite his poor record of achievements as the president of Nigeria, the Yar Adua they know or have interacted with is a far cry from the person who will flagrantly violate the Constitution of Nigeria and that the manner in which he appears to have abandoned his duty post without properly handing over to his deputy does not reflect the behavior of the person they know as Yar Adua. This view is given some credibility by the claim that the ailing president actually wrote the requisite letter at some point before he left the country on November 23, 2009 but the letter got “lost” on its “long journey” between the desks of the president’s adviser on national assembly matters, Abba Aji and that of the secretary to the federal government, Yayale Ahmed.
No Nigerian can be faulted for suspecting that given the pecuniary benefits of keeping the sick president cocooned away from the public and the greed hitherto associated with Turai Yar Adua and her partners in crime, the list of which includes elements like James Ibori, Gov. Saraki and Michael Aondoakaa, members of this cabal can actually kidnap the president while doing do everything possible to create the impression that the ailing resident is in charge of the country for as long as they can. The antecedents of these elements disentitle them to any benefit of doubt when it comes to postulating that they could be holding the president against his wishes. A plethora of other reasons exist for compelling access to president Yar Adua but I think those already mentioned will suffice.
The remedy sought in the legal action against the above mentioned characters is a court order compelling them to grant immediate access to the ailing president or face arrest. The government can up the ante by requesting the assistance of Interpol and government of Saudi Arabia in implanting the court order. After all, this is the same government that sought the assistance of Interpol in arresting the former chairman of EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu for the contextually benign offence of allegedly failing to declare his assets. The Nigerian legal system that was shameless enough to grant a permanent injunction preventing the EFCC from ever investigating or arresting Peter Odili for corruption and the National Assembly/government that was ingenious enough to equate a barely audible 57 seconds BBC interview with the section 145 of the Constitution requirement of a written letter should not have a problem getting the court to issue an order compelling Turai Yar Adua and company to grant access immediate to Yar Adua.
With the exception of the CSO, ADC and maybe the Nigerian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Turai Yar Adua is practically exercising the powers of an attorney for personal care over the president and denying access to everyone, including the president’s immediate family members. Yet no one is sure if she is carrying out the genuine wishes of the ailing president. Given the circumstances and peculiarity of Yar Adua’s position as the president of Nigeria, Turai Yar Adua and her associates should bear the burden of establishing that they are carrying out the president’s wishes with respect to denying the people and government of Nigeria access to him. In the very likely event that Turai Yar Adua and her associates cannot discharge the above onus, the legal system must intervene by exercising its jurisdiction over the president, his wife, his Chief Security Officer, Mr. Yusuf Tilde and Aide-de-camp, Col Mustafa Onoyiveta to order immediate access to Yar Adua. The government has the additional option of compelling its employees (the CSO, ADC and ambassador) to give immediate account of their sojourn in Saudi Arabia. The time has come to end the intransigence of those denying access to the president. What is going on right now is a national; a play that is becoming increasingly nightmarish and difficult to watch.
It is generally believed that Turai Yar Adua and the two security details mentioned above are the only people with access to the president. The extent to which Nigeria’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Alhaji Garba Aminci, has access to the ailing president is not clear. But given the fact that he has made pronouncements about the president’s medical condition and the international law implications of the type of court order being discussed here, I would suggest that in addition to the three people already mentioned, the order should also be binding on the ambassador.
These people who control access to the ailing president are Nigerian citizens and thus undoubtedly subject to the jurisdiction of Nigeria’s courts. The federal government must now head to the court to seek an order compelling Turai and company to grant immediate access to ailing the president. At the risk of verbosity, I would like to re-iterate that I am not advocating a violation of the president’s right to privacy. What I am advocating is a court order compelling access to Yar Adua for the purpose of obtaining information relevant to the governance of a country of over 140 million people. A televised access to the president may be sufficient to make the requisite determination. In the event that such a televised access would be humiliating, demeaning or injurious to the person of the president and the office of the president, that would be enough for Nigerians to reach the necessary decision that would be in the interest of Nigerians and hopefully, the ailing president
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