ENDGAME IN ABUJA
On November 23, last year, President Umaru Yar’Adua left the shores of Nigeria to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia for a very deadly and debilitating illness. Since then, Abuja, the seat of government, has been enveloped by confusion of unimaginable proportion as the President has remained incommunicado, sending dangerous signals all over the land.
So bad was the situation in the country that the 2009 Supplementary Appropriation Bill had to be taken to Saudi Arabia for the President’s assent on his sick bed. Even at that, those who took the huge document there did not see him. What simply transpired was that the delegation was kept ‘sitting’ at the lobby of a hotel where the aide-de-camp to the president came, collected the document and vanished. Two hours later or so, he reappeared with a signed document and handed it over to the delegation, meaning the President had appended his signature at the peak of his pains.
Back home, not even those who went to fetch the President’s signature were convinced that it was actually Yar’Adua who signed the document. Nobody disputed the fact that the person who appended the document was not Yar’Adua, but what was not too clear to them was whether it was Umaru or desperate Turai, our own ‘Imelda Marcos’ or any other person who had cleverly assumed the role of the president, did the stuff.
When it became clear that the President was totally down and almost out, tongues started wagging that he had become incapacitated and that an acting president needed to be sworn in immediately to avoid creating a leadership crisis. At that point, the ‘Nigerian’ in the members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and the National Assembly took over, reeling out barefaced lies on a daily basis.
Going by the Constitution, FEC, which comprises ministers and some senior aides of the President, is the only organ empowered to decide if an ailing president possesses the capacity to continue in office or not, in the absence of a formal transfer of power by the President. While the debate was on, one of the prominent members of the FEC, easily the man on whose shoulders lies the greatest burden, Michael Aondoakaa, the Attorney-General of the Federation, pulled a fast one when he rushed to court and procured a ‘black-market judgment’ that pronounced Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President, as already acting as president. Nevertheless, Nigerians refused to be fooled. Rather, they intensified their clamour for a formal transfer of power until the President was well enough to carry on.
That same week, the National Assembly also came up with some funny ideas which could make professional comedians green with envy. At the lower House, the House of Representatives, which is fast becoming a feasting nest for those who seem to be representing their stomachs alone, all the rumps in　 the book of tricks were pulled to scuttle the debate. In the end, the House merely resolved to send a delegation to go and visit the President and report back. What a smart way to navigate out of a tempestuous sea!
If the debate at the Lower House ended rather rancorously, the one at the Upper House was, in fact, scorched. When the pressure became unbearable, the Senate resolved that the President should transmit a letter to it to request for ‘sick leave’. At that forum, there was a sidekick when someone asked the Senate President whether he actually spoke with the president on phone as claimed by spin doctors. The Senate President, who knew the consequence of saying either ‘yes or no’, simply allowed a smile to dance precariously around his face without uttering a word.
Just as this was going on, the jesters at the FEC passed a resolution that the President was strong enough to continue “his work”. Aondoakaa went a step further by declaring to whoever cared to listen that in fact, the President could rule from anywhere, including the Moon, Jupiter, Pluto, Mercury or just anywhere, a clear case of talking before thinking.
In the midst of this hullabaloo and cacophony of voices, Turai, who has apparently assumed ‘office’ as acting president albeit informally, was fighting to tie all loose ends. She made frantic efforts to fly her husband home to be kept on life support as a decoy to convince (or confuse) Nigerians that her husband, was healthy enough to ‘continue to rule’. It was gathered that indeed an air ambulance was procured through direct acquisition involving no less than $38 million　of taxpayers’ money, to perfect the arrangement. While the air ambulance was parked at the airport in Saudi Arabia awaiting its high-profile passenger, another obstacle crept in: how to move the man from the hospital to the airport to board the ambulance. And so, that arrangement hit the rocks.
At any rate, the game of perfidy, deceit, cajolery, tomfoolery and outright fraud seems to be cruising to its terminal point. By last week, the Governors’ Forum, an association　which comprises all serving governors of the 36 states, pulled the rug from underneath the FEC when they marched to the VP to pledge their support and inform him of their resolution to ask the National Assembly to recognise him as the country’s Acting President.
It is expected that the National Assembly would rise up to the occasion and accede to the governors’ request without further prevarication. If this is done, then the members of the FEC, who ordinarily should not have been empowered to perform any function under the constitution on such a matter as the transfer of power, would be left in the cold. One is that members of the FEC were appointed by the President and so, they will do anything to protect their benefactor and, by so doing, fortify their breakfast table as well.
Again, we are being told that the issue of oil blocks allocation is at the centre of the vehement opposition of Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet to the VP assuming office as Acting President. Some smart ministers and presidential aides are said to have concluded arrangement to capitalize on the President’s absence and allocate some of the marginal oil fields to themselves and their cronies. They are said to be jittery that the VP could truncate the deal and deny them their expected windfall if allowed the opportunity to hold political power. The same cabal is said to have earlier sidelined the VP in the allocation of oil blocks to prominent Nigerians and people in top positions in government.
However, it will be a good thing for the public to know the names of those highly placed government officials who have been allotted oil blocks and, therefore, opposed to a quick resolution of this political impasse. The public also deserve to know the propriety or otherwise of the outright purchase of an air ambulance with taxpayers’ money when Nigerians are dying of hunger. The truth is that there is a lot of stealing going on in government right now. It is these thieves that want the status quo to remain at all costs. It is high time Nigerians rose up to tell these rogues and crooks that they have stolen enough for the owners to notice. Certainly, the game is up!
By Dele Agekameh