STILL, THE IMORU DEBACLE
He stole out like a thief in the night. He sneaked back like a power ghost. Yet he insists nothing has changed.
Such tragic conceit is the tragic story of Umaru Yar’adua, the dormant president of the Federal Republic, who is truly living the do-or-die spirit of that hateful 2007 election that unleashed him on this republic.
Alhaji Yar’adua, or in any case the ruthless cabal that has held him hostage, appears not to have heard of Heraclitus, the Greek physical philosopher, and his theory of flux. Heraclitus held that life was in such flux, that you could never step into the same river twice.
But Olusegun Obasanjo’s Umoru disappeared for 93 days, reappeared in the thick of the night with airports lights switched off to boot, and yet insisted on his right to give orders as “president”! He should instead have stayed back seven more days, proudly proclaimed 100 days of presidential infirmity and, to celebrate the happy occasion from his sick Saudi bed, ordered Acting President Goodluck Jonathan fired!
Or how else would one interpret presidential spokesperson, Olusegun Adeniyi’s gratuitous statement that the “Vice President” (meaning Acting President Jonathan) would oversee the affairs of state until the president was done with his convalescence?
Is the Nigerian presidency then a hereditary title of the Yar’adua family? And Nigeria, instead of a republic, is it then some banana sultanate tethered to the Metropolitan Saudi Kingdom? How this president continues to dishonour his country and insult his fellow Nigerians to no end!
Yes, Mr. Adeniyi has since repudiated his infantile release, prompting a newspaper to lead quasi-triumphantly, that “At last, Yar’adua recognises Jonathan as Acting President”. But for the avoidance of doubt, neither the embattled President Yar’adua nor the treasonable gang that has hemmed him in, thereby causing to be issued that vexatious statement that Mr. Adeniyi had the ill fortune to sign, is in any position to recognise or de-recognise anything.
Rather, the arrogant, ill-timed release was a dumb bluff and bluster, which should never have been. But it betrayed a Freudian slip of a sort by some misguided elements who dub themselves “Yar’adua loyalists” to test the might and potency of the law of the land.
The Nigerian state – if it is really a state and not some huge joke – should seize the gauntlet and rid them of the illusion that anyone could ride roughshod over the law of the land and get away with it.
But that exactly was what that terse Adeniyi statement effaced. It purported to ignore the reality that Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution, though imperfectly invoked, has in place an acting president, who is also commander-in-chief of the Nigerian armed forces. That could be treasonable. Or could this misguided lobby have thought the reality of Dr. Jonathan’s acting presidency needed their endorsement?
But the news is not really flexing Section 145, which invested the substantive Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, with full presidential powers, as acting president. The news is that, by that ill-bred statement, the Yar’adua camp rudely spurned the charity of the National Assembly.
That assembly tried to cover the president from legitimate charges of wilful constitutional breach, after he failed to write the National Assembly about his long absence, and temporarily cease power to his deputy. It also, despite that ignoble presidential conduct, was compassionate enough to leave the door ajar for the president to walk in, literally anytime he liked. It was this compassionate opening (which really was silly in law) that the Yar’adua power-retention gang had most crudely abused. Talk of adorning swine with jewellery!
But the power gang is not really to blame, no matter how culpable they are in this running power mess. The blame lies squarely on the desk of the gutless characters running democratic institutions in this country.
It is scandalous that invoking Section 143 (impeachment), Section 144 (mandatory declaration of presidential incapacitation by the federal executive council, FEC) and Section 145 (voluntary transfer of presidential powers for prolonged absence from work) would appear beyond the ken and might of the Nigerian state.
That is clear from the wishy-washy National Assembly resolution claiming to invoke Section 145, which expediently though illegally invested Dr. Jonathan as acting president. This is even more glaring from the perpetual FEC threat to invoke Section 144, a counter rally to which led the Yar’adua camp to rashly rush back, under the cover of darkness on February 24, the critically ill president.
By the resultant cul-de-sac, that lobby appears to have played its last joker. One clear week after that dead-in-the-night arrival, Alhaji Yar’adua is not any more visible than he was in his vexed royal seclusion in Saudi Arabia.
But again, these power conspirators are hardly to blame. The fault is the effete and supine state’s.
The same spirit of impunity laced with contempt that made a president to make medical sorties abroad without fulfilling constitutional dictates, inspired the brainless continuing attempt to hide him from the same public that pays his huge medical bills; inspired the surreptitious deployment of troops without the knowledge of the acting president and commander-in-chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces; and inspired this power clique to posture to the gullible that they act in the interest of some phantom “North”, by this open and reckless subversion of the democratic order.
And the Turai insult! Who, by the way, is Turai Yar’adua? She is no official of state. Yet, she has usurped the right to determine when the president is public property (so that the state could foot his huge medical bills) and when he is an ultra-private acquisition (so she could decide who to, and who not to, see him). What monumental affront!
Many in frustration have dubbed Mrs Yar’adua the “Lady Macbeth” of the Yar’adua medieval presidential court. Others like Afenifere Renewal Group, ARG’s Yinka Odumakin, have even likened her to the Biblical Jezebel (who spared no effort to bring ruination to her husband, King Ahab). But still, would a Turai have made hay, if those charged with running the Nigerian state have done their duty by the law?
That is why jeremiads over Turai Yar’adua and her power clique should not be enough. The guilty in all of this mess must be arrested, tried and punished – and be transparently seen to be so. That is the only way to preserve the integrity of this republic and ward off future power cowboys (and girls) from causing wilful and avoidable instability.
To impose sanity, however, the federal cabinet must immediately invoke Section 144 and declare President Yar’Adua permanently incapacitated. That way, the system will be strengthened to punish the power rascals troubling the peace of the polity. It will also save the ship of state from a looming ship-wreck.
By Olakunle Abimbola