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Nigeria: Please, No Second Term for Yar' Adua

Ochereome Nnanna

1 September 2008

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FOR the fourth time within seventeen months, speculations were rife last week over the state of health of President Yar'Adua.

From the moment he emerged as the presidential candidate of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) in December 2006, the fact that the candidate of the nation's biggest political party was a sick man became apparent to all. His photographs in the newspapers said it all: a frail body and a visage ravaged by heaven knew what.

But Yar' Adua himself soon shot down rumours about his physical unfitness by challenging anyone to a full game of squash rackets, a challenge which, curiously, no one took him up on.

Then came stories that he had, in the dim past, suffered some organ challenges, but which his sponsor, then President Olusegun Obasanjo, quickly argued had been fixed by doctors. Then, in March 2007, rumours emerged that he was actually dead. But the then Secretary of the PDP, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, held a press conference where he announced that Yar' Adua was flown abroad for a "routine" medical check up.

When the presidential campaign train of the PDP screeched into Lagos, Obasanjo put Yar' Adua on the telephone to personally reassure Nigerians that he was not dead.

Since he became President of Nigeria, the only issues that have displaced his health matter from the top of public concern are the poor electricity situation, the Niger Delta crises and his administration's lack of spark on the economic canvas.

There are those who are willing to blame lack of progress on those three fronts on the same fundamental problem of this nation being led by a sick man.

The reason is simple. When a person is sick, everything else waits. Even a simple case of malaria will interfere with a person's ability to preside over a meeting or even participate in it, let alone run an administration over a country as in need of urgent attention in many complicated areas at the same time as Nigeria is.

On Tuesday, Champion newspapers carried an exclusive front page story written by its Abuja Bureau Chief, Malachy Uzendu, announcing that, contrary to the published news that President Yar' Adua was performing the lesser Hajj (Umrah) in Saudi Arabia, he was actually hospitalised in a private health out fit there. And due to this reason, his scheduled state visit to Brazil could not go ahead.

After the Federal Executive Council meeting the following day, the Minister for Information and Communications, Mr. John Odey, came out with a not-too-convincing disclaimer of the newspaper report. He said that as far as he knew, Yar' Adua was still performing his Hajj rites in the Muslim holy land.

That was not categorical enough. In fact, this disclaimer made it tacitly obvious that this was not the whole truth, especially as the Minister did not say what would happen to the scheduled state visit. In any case, we are used to having Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, the Presidential spokesman, speak on such matters. Adeniyi has become suddenly tongue-tied.

This might have further prompted The Punch newspapers, last Friday, to come out with its own further enquiries, which essentially confirmed the Champion story: President Yar' Adua is spending time at the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah. The newspaper quoted the hospital as priding itself as "the most distinguished hospital in the Middle East".

Nigerians have exhibited a lot of tolerance and good faith towards President Yar'Adua on his obvious health problem. The reason is twofold. The first part of it is rooted in our culture. We sympathise with the sick because we know that nobody wishes to be sick. Sickness is something bigger than man, and can happen to any mortal being.

You don't even wish your enemy to fall sick because your wish might come to you first. And President Yar'Adua has not given us any reason to wish him evil, even if our culture permits it.

I daresay that it is because of the very agreeable political atmosphere his reign has fostered that Nigerians have continued to harbour enormous goodwill towards him despite the fact that he has not lived up to their expectations, especially on the economic front.

And many Nigerians in their hearts are convinced that Yar'Adua's indisposition is chiefly responsible for the slow pace of his administration. It has little to do with the regime's much vaunted explanation that he is planning well to avoid the mistakes of his predecessor and mentor, Obasanjo.

He has already spent sixteen out of forty eight months. He has failed to declare a state of emergency on the power sector, address the Niger Delta problem by calling a summit or dialogue or activate concretely his Seven-Point Agenda.

On May 29th 2008, he promised that the second year of his regime would be full of "many exciting things". Three months later, no "exciting thing" is forth coming. We have only three months to December when all unspent capital funds would be called in to be rolled over to a new financial year in line with Yar' Adua's new fiscal culture. In other words, 2008 will come and go with little or nothing for this administration to show for it.

The boldest sign that Nigerians are getting fed up with President Yar'Adua's non-performing regime is the recent asinine and unconstitutional call by a group of opposition parties known as the Nigerians United for Democracy (NUD) for an "Interim Government".

The situation generated by Yar'Adua's indisposition does not call for military intervention, the only means by which an interim government could ensue. Rather, it calls for prayers by Nigerians for Yar'Adua to recover and limp through the rest of his remaining thirty two months in office. We do not wish or pray that this problem should besolved through tragedy.

WE are, however, hoping that President Yar' Adua will not seek a second term in office. We are hoping that the same spirit that drove him to pledge that he would step down if the presidential election petition tribunal nullified his election would also motivate him to announce that he would not seek a second term because of his health situation.

It is clear to all that Yar'Adua is not medically fit to cope with the rigours of running Nigeria's affairs from Aso Villa. And because of this lacuna, we have seen increasing evidence of cabal rule.

A few influential people, particularly those from the president's section of the country, have cornered powers to themselves and embarked on unconscionable reversal of some of the modest gains of Obasanjo's last four years in office which the specially hired technocrats helped achieve.

The return of the toll gates to our highways and the suicidal hounding of the Central Bank Governor are just two more indicators that the cabal will stop at nothing until they have achieved a complete ethnicisation of presidential powers in the virtual absence of the president's steadying hand.

We wish president Yar'Adua well, but we hope Nigeria will not be forced to go through this unfortunate grind for all of eight years!

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