February 25, 2010
Now, picture this: people are left to keep vigil in a parlour. Then, high up the huge mahogany door opens and a familiar courtier again swaggers out to bark orders, arrogantly invoking the name of his Master ostensibly in seclusion … Elsewhere, a crucial ceremony is aborted on the strength of yet another ‘Oga says that…’ Further downtown, a critical communal rite would, in fact, be put on a pause mode in anticipation of just any sign or signal from the direction of the Invincible One…
These may resemble extracts from a fairy tale, but sadly bear a striking resemblance with the emerging picture of Nigeria today as a tiny but desperately ruthless cabal mounts a last-ditch battle for the political soul of the nation. After 93 long days of absence, Umaru Yar’Adua is thought to have landed Nigeria early hours of Wednesday unannounced and in circumstances that should intrigue as well as fill any self-respecting citizen with shame. (Just the way he had been stretchered out of the country the night of November 23 without ceremony.) It is a sad commentary on the extent man can go to feed the greed for power. It wasn’t odious enough that Mr. President was smuggled into the country in the dead of the night in a borrowed air ambulance, he was received by a company of disciples whose identities are yet to be officially declared as the supposed ‘acting president’ was not informed!
Strangely still, the air ambulance had to suddenly stop midway in the runway of the Abuja International airport to enable what is assumed to be a laborious disentangling of a gravely ill man from his sick bed on the aircraft in another furtive hour and his evacuation gingerly into a waiting ambulance truck. To erase the slightest illumination for any prying eye, headlamps of vehicles involved in the operation were switched off while it lasted.
According to reports, hundreds of Nigerian troops were deployed that historic night at the Abuja airport as well as on the road to Aso Rock where the procession terminated. The weighty question: who ordered the deployment of the troops? Certainly, it wasn’t Goodluck Jonathan, the supposed acting president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That is a grave development!
In the terse statement later read that testy Wednesday afternoon, presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi, not only began by saying ‘I was directed’ but also chose to still refer to Jonathan as ‘vice president’. Who directed Adeniyi? Yar’Adua himself or the seemingly power-obsessed First Lady Turai? Was calling Jonathan by his old title deliberate or a product of a fixation? It remains to be seen if a Born Again Adeniyi will swear by the holy Bible that he had been allowed access to his boss as well.
Curiouser is the fact that many days after Yar’Adua supposedly landed in Nigeria , Jonathan is yet to see his boss! Not even a public wave of hand by a supposedly ‘getting better’ president to a nation he hurriedly left behind 93 days earlier. Nor can anyone, other than Turai and perhaps her allies in the now infamous ‘kitchen cabinet’, disclose with certainty where exactly the Saudi returnee is in Abuja today. Indeed, a farce does not get more cynical than this. To begin with, that Jonathan still can’t see his boss leads us to three possibilities: either that Yar’Adua’s return is only a phantom or his handlers have something to hide or his relationship with Jonathan has broken down irretrievably.
Indeed, emerging circumstantial evidence seems to lend credence to the second scenario. That information pertaining to Yar’Adua’s medical absence could have been better managed is not in doubt. What is simply unbelievable – and quite tragic - is that same dereliction has been carried over to the dissemination of the news of his return. Otherwise, someone should have known by now that not sending out a photograph – however limited – of Yar’Adua in his current ‘convalescing’ state would only help give credibility to the growing story that the real reason Turai is still shy to show off her husband or allow even Jonathan see him is because the man had suffered ‘a massive stroke’ that has left him in a terrible shape. The story is told that the man is now left staring vacuously into the space, from morning to night. The implication: Yar’Adua is very much unaware of his environment and so couldn’t have been in a position to even lift a finger all this while! (Meaning someone has to explain to us how the 2009 supplementary budget then got signed in Saudi!!) That obviously sounds grim and very depressing indeed for a long-suffering nation. Are the Yar’Adua’s handlers not aware of this grave story? If they do, continued silence will be interpreted to mean confirmation. Not allowing a public glimpse of Yar’Adua’s current look will only enrich that negative profile.
In all of this, it is, however, very easy to see why Yar’Adua has to be railroaded back home even when his wounds are obviously far from healed. It is the endgame of a cynical cabal unwilling to let go of power and its spoils without a fight, not minding even if the roof collapses on the nation’s still fragile democracy in the process. They had run out of lies and subterfuge. First was the scare tactic. They wanted us to believe that Jonathan is Obasanjo’s lapdog who will grant the Ota farmer the Third Term he failed to achieve in 2006. Soon, they discovered that gimmick did not wash. Were a choice indeed to be made, it is doubtful if a clearly desperate nation won’t accept an Obasanjo sympathiser instead of pinning hope on a man condemned to a sick bed in a foreign land.
Next, their cheap blackmail to incite a North/South divide vis-à-vis the clamour that Yar’Adua obey the letter and spirit of the Constitution would fail. Instead, notable northern leaders like Gowon, Shagari and Danjuma insisted the right thing be done by making Jonathan acting president in view of Yar’Adua’s perceived incapacitation. As the Yoruba would say, no reasonable elder ever stands by and watches the head of an infant bent awkwardly in the diaper. An urgent prayer the senate under David Mark nobly granted eventually.
Thereafter, the desperadoes resolved the acting president must be demobilised in his track before he could consolidate in office. Next, Yar’Adua had to be rushed out of his sick bay in Saudi before the delegation of six ministers from Nigeria could knock at the door. Until now, Turai had succeeded in planting every obstacle in the way of anyone seeking to see her husband, to the extent that a rumour of possible hostage in Saudi was beginning to grow and a tension brewing between Abuja and the authorities in Riyalh. Had the ministers seen Yar’Adua in his real condition, the cabal was perhaps not sure they would return to Abuja with a favourable report. The cat must not be let out of the bag.
So, to these power mongers, it hardly mattered that the poor man had to be cargoed back to Abuja that Wednesday night, having to depend on another mobile clinic on land to reach his Abuja nest before being, it is believed, re-hooked to a life support machine. Today, to them, what counts is the retention of influence and privileges. Now, Yar’Adua needs to be kept (preserved?) as a monument in Abuja in whose name or memory they hope to continue their profiteering.
Sure, they want to continue to have the final say on who gets the big contracts or the juicy appointment. With the shadow of Yar’Adua in the background, Jonathan can’t act freely. In case his wife, Patience, was beginning to have some funny ideas, she will soon be made to realise that‘acting president’ does not mean the office of First Lady has to take a back seat. Indeed, in the times ahead, the nation will perhaps also have to contend with the menace of an entirely new generation of influence-peddlers whose talisman will probably not be more than bogus claims that‘Oga told me to tell you that’ or ‘Oga says that’.
But those conceiving of this big lie today could not be said to have averted their minds to the other inevitability: Nigerians will sooner than later begin to ask if they had voted a president to be on life support machine or to fix things. To invert Obasanjo’s now famous line, common-sense should dictate you know when to draw a line. As one had observed in last week’s piece, with this sordid turn of events, we no longer see the visage of a servant leader, but the shadow of a slave to power. Verily, verily, a do-or-die candidate begets a do-or-die president.
Louis Odion, The Bottomline, National Life, thenationallifeonline.com,
These may resemble extracts from a fairy tale, but sadly bear a striking resemblance with the emerging picture of Nigeria today as a tiny but desperately ruthless cabal mounts a last-ditch battle for the political soul of the nation. After 93 long days of absence, Umaru Yar’Adua is thought to have landed Nigeria early hours of Wednesday unannounced and in circumstances that should intrigue as well as fill any self-respecting citizen with shame. (Just the way he had been stretchered out of the country the night of November 23 without ceremony.) It is a sad commentary on the extent man can go to feed the greed for power. It wasn’t odious enough that Mr. President was smuggled into the country in the dead of the night in a borrowed air ambulance, he was received by a company of disciples whose identities are yet to be officially declared as the supposed ‘acting president’ was not informed!
Strangely still, the air ambulance had to suddenly stop midway in the runway of the Abuja International airport to enable what is assumed to be a laborious disentangling of a gravely ill man from his sick bed on the aircraft in another furtive hour and his evacuation gingerly into a waiting ambulance truck. To erase the slightest illumination for any prying eye, headlamps of vehicles involved in the operation were switched off while it lasted.
According to reports, hundreds of Nigerian troops were deployed that historic night at the Abuja airport as well as on the road to Aso Rock where the procession terminated. The weighty question: who ordered the deployment of the troops? Certainly, it wasn’t Goodluck Jonathan, the supposed acting president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That is a grave development!
In the terse statement later read that testy Wednesday afternoon, presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi, not only began by saying ‘I was directed’ but also chose to still refer to Jonathan as ‘vice president’. Who directed Adeniyi? Yar’Adua himself or the seemingly power-obsessed First Lady Turai? Was calling Jonathan by his old title deliberate or a product of a fixation? It remains to be seen if a Born Again Adeniyi will swear by the holy Bible that he had been allowed access to his boss as well.
Curiouser is the fact that many days after Yar’Adua supposedly landed in Nigeria , Jonathan is yet to see his boss! Not even a public wave of hand by a supposedly ‘getting better’ president to a nation he hurriedly left behind 93 days earlier. Nor can anyone, other than Turai and perhaps her allies in the now infamous ‘kitchen cabinet’, disclose with certainty where exactly the Saudi returnee is in Abuja today. Indeed, a farce does not get more cynical than this. To begin with, that Jonathan still can’t see his boss leads us to three possibilities: either that Yar’Adua’s return is only a phantom or his handlers have something to hide or his relationship with Jonathan has broken down irretrievably.
Indeed, emerging circumstantial evidence seems to lend credence to the second scenario. That information pertaining to Yar’Adua’s medical absence could have been better managed is not in doubt. What is simply unbelievable – and quite tragic - is that same dereliction has been carried over to the dissemination of the news of his return. Otherwise, someone should have known by now that not sending out a photograph – however limited – of Yar’Adua in his current ‘convalescing’ state would only help give credibility to the growing story that the real reason Turai is still shy to show off her husband or allow even Jonathan see him is because the man had suffered ‘a massive stroke’ that has left him in a terrible shape. The story is told that the man is now left staring vacuously into the space, from morning to night. The implication: Yar’Adua is very much unaware of his environment and so couldn’t have been in a position to even lift a finger all this while! (Meaning someone has to explain to us how the 2009 supplementary budget then got signed in Saudi!!) That obviously sounds grim and very depressing indeed for a long-suffering nation. Are the Yar’Adua’s handlers not aware of this grave story? If they do, continued silence will be interpreted to mean confirmation. Not allowing a public glimpse of Yar’Adua’s current look will only enrich that negative profile.
In all of this, it is, however, very easy to see why Yar’Adua has to be railroaded back home even when his wounds are obviously far from healed. It is the endgame of a cynical cabal unwilling to let go of power and its spoils without a fight, not minding even if the roof collapses on the nation’s still fragile democracy in the process. They had run out of lies and subterfuge. First was the scare tactic. They wanted us to believe that Jonathan is Obasanjo’s lapdog who will grant the Ota farmer the Third Term he failed to achieve in 2006. Soon, they discovered that gimmick did not wash. Were a choice indeed to be made, it is doubtful if a clearly desperate nation won’t accept an Obasanjo sympathiser instead of pinning hope on a man condemned to a sick bed in a foreign land.
Next, their cheap blackmail to incite a North/South divide vis-à-vis the clamour that Yar’Adua obey the letter and spirit of the Constitution would fail. Instead, notable northern leaders like Gowon, Shagari and Danjuma insisted the right thing be done by making Jonathan acting president in view of Yar’Adua’s perceived incapacitation. As the Yoruba would say, no reasonable elder ever stands by and watches the head of an infant bent awkwardly in the diaper. An urgent prayer the senate under David Mark nobly granted eventually.
Thereafter, the desperadoes resolved the acting president must be demobilised in his track before he could consolidate in office. Next, Yar’Adua had to be rushed out of his sick bay in Saudi before the delegation of six ministers from Nigeria could knock at the door. Until now, Turai had succeeded in planting every obstacle in the way of anyone seeking to see her husband, to the extent that a rumour of possible hostage in Saudi was beginning to grow and a tension brewing between Abuja and the authorities in Riyalh. Had the ministers seen Yar’Adua in his real condition, the cabal was perhaps not sure they would return to Abuja with a favourable report. The cat must not be let out of the bag.
So, to these power mongers, it hardly mattered that the poor man had to be cargoed back to Abuja that Wednesday night, having to depend on another mobile clinic on land to reach his Abuja nest before being, it is believed, re-hooked to a life support machine. Today, to them, what counts is the retention of influence and privileges. Now, Yar’Adua needs to be kept (preserved?) as a monument in Abuja in whose name or memory they hope to continue their profiteering.
Sure, they want to continue to have the final say on who gets the big contracts or the juicy appointment. With the shadow of Yar’Adua in the background, Jonathan can’t act freely. In case his wife, Patience, was beginning to have some funny ideas, she will soon be made to realise that‘acting president’ does not mean the office of First Lady has to take a back seat. Indeed, in the times ahead, the nation will perhaps also have to contend with the menace of an entirely new generation of influence-peddlers whose talisman will probably not be more than bogus claims that‘Oga told me to tell you that’ or ‘Oga says that’.
But those conceiving of this big lie today could not be said to have averted their minds to the other inevitability: Nigerians will sooner than later begin to ask if they had voted a president to be on life support machine or to fix things. To invert Obasanjo’s now famous line, common-sense should dictate you know when to draw a line. As one had observed in last week’s piece, with this sordid turn of events, we no longer see the visage of a servant leader, but the shadow of a slave to power. Verily, verily, a do-or-die candidate begets a do-or-die president.
Louis Odion, The Bottomline, National Life, thenationallifeonline.com,
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