Eni-B
1 September 2008
column
Lagos — In the last one week, the nation has been left bewildered as to the health or ill-health of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. Speculations concerning the president's true state of health began shortly after he travelled penultimate Thursday.
Yar'Adua had jetted out of the country to Saudi Arabia after his government retired all but one of the service chiefs he inherited. He was scheduled to travel to Brazil after he must have returned home from what his publicists described as the lesser hajj in Saudi Arabia.
Shortly after the president travelled, however, speculations as to the state of his health have been sweeping through the nation with supersonic speed. Such speculations have taken different versions. Although there are media reports that he may have been admitted in a Saudi hospital or made to undergo surgery, the most disturbing are those reports passed from mouth to mouth. The tragedy is that no government official has been able to speak with any authority, in the last one week on the state of the president's health. The Federal Executive Council after its meeting last Wednesday attempted to reassure the nation that all was well but Information Minister John Odey and Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe made a poor job of it. Addressing the media after the cabinet meeting, all Odey could say was that Yar'Adua was in Saudi Arabia to perform the lesser hajj, the same story presidential spokesman had told the nation the very Thursday the president travelled. Listening to the hollowness in Odey's voice, it was doubtful if the man even believed himself.
The incredulity in the 'lesser hajj' story was readily obvious to even a fool. Muslims, I understand, can go for lesser hajj any time of the year to pray in the Holy Mosque. Most Nigerian Muslims, however, prefer to perform the lesser hajj during the Ramadan period and usually for two or three days. It is improbable that the president of Nigeria would use one or two weeks to perform the lesser hajj even if he was praying for the country. The problems confronting the country are so many that they require our president to be at his desk most of the time. If Nigeria needed a prayer warrior as president, it is unlikely Yar'Adua's name would ever feature in one thousand names of Muslim and Christian clerics.
In any case, why would Yar'Adua abandon his presidential duties to stay on indeterminate days to perform the lesser hajj? Why was the swearing-in of the new service chiefs which was on his schedule of activities postponed twice? Why was his state visit to Brazil shelved and the advance party recalled home? Minister Maduekwe, while attempting to answer some of these questions, resorted to rationalisations in monumentalism (to borrow his own term). The minister said the Brazil trip was not cancelled but readjusted. Can a state visit planned over several months be simply 'readjusted' without an important reason? Could the lesser hajj have been the reason why Yar'Adua's scheduled visit to Brazil was cancelled or suspended and those on his advance party to that country recalled home? Shouldn't Maduekwe tell the nation a more believable story why Yar'Adua's visit to Brazil was 'readjusted'?
Why this self-deceit? Why the resort to falsehood? Why this disinformation on a matter concerning the health of the man who is the embodiment of the hopes and aspirations of 140 million Nigerians? Why this denial of what is so self-evident by a government that is supposedly a democracy? It must be said that there is nothing wrong in the president being a little indisposed. Like Yar'Adua himself once observed that is only an indication that he is after all human. What is wrong, indeed dangerous, is when the nation is kept in the dark on the exact nature of the president's illness. In other democracies and other climes, when the No1 man is unwell, there is usually a daily briefing on the nature of his illness, the hospital he's been admitted, the treatment he's receiving, how fast he's progressing and where he's recuperating. Such openness usually generates a feeling of sympathy and support even while at the same time prevents unwholesome speculation and mischief.
Yar'Adua is not simply the husband of Turai, answerable to his wife and children alone. He is the president of Nigeria and whatever concerns him concerns the country. He needs to direct his handlers to be much more communicative on matters of his health. We didn't see the necessary openness when he became ill during the presidential campaigns last year and had to be rushed to a German hospital for treatment. For Yar'Adua to later say he travelled to Germany in the heat of the campaigns to be treated for catarrh beggared belief. It took a dramatic phone call by then President Olusegun Obasanjo on live television to douse widespread speculation that Candidate Yar'Adua was dead. After another medical trip to Germany early this year, only another round of wild speculation forced the president to give a little insight into his medical history.
As it is, the nation needs a full disclosure concerning the president's health. We had a similar situation when the late General Sani Abacha was in power. While Abacha's skin was so obviously pale, Nigerians were kept in the dark on the state of his health. In the ensuing uncertainty and confusion, most of the governors and ministers and top military chiefs had no access to the late Head of State. Since nature, as they say, abhors vacuum, people like Major Hamza al-Mustapha, Lt. Gen. Jerry Useni and Col. Emeka Omenka carved out centres of power for themselves and did many things, most of them ugly, in Abacha's name.
We do not want a recurrence of those ugly years. But if care is not taken, Nigeria may relapse into a worse state of affairs. Yar'Adua's serial indisposition is an open book. Nobody believes whatever is said about how strong and healthy he is or how many hours he spends on the squash court. Whenever he travels abroad these days, the sniggering speculation is usually that he has gone abroad for yet another treatment. Many believe such speculations because the administration does not think it is important to brief the nation every time the man has any reason to check on his health.
The result of such veil of secrecy is evident in the manifest inactivity, if not indolence of this administration. There is little or nothing happening in the ministries. There is constant reversal in policy decisions in what I have described earlier on this page as forward and backward movements. There is no coherent economic philosophy, as the administration, while mouthing a private sector driven economy, has reversed the sale of some government agencies. The administration readily hangs its inactivity and indecision on the peg of easy catch phrases. Initially it was rule of law. When that was sounding like a broken record, somebody came up with the word, 'planning'. Almost one and a half years into a four-year tenure, the administration is still planning, even as the decay in every sector is worsening. Fifteen months after the president promised to declare emergency in the power sector, he is unable to move to the realm of realisation because his administration is still planning. Yar'Adua has made such a fetish of planning that he is unable to reshuffle his lame cabinet four months after promising to so do.
He should not make a fetish of his health. Nigerians are agitated. They want to know if their president is hospitalised or has undergone surgery or on life support. If on the other hand he is strong and healthy, they want to see him in flesh and blood. It is inadequate for Minister Odey to say that the president would return soon. When is soon? Today? Tomorrow? Friday? Or December 25? We want specifics please. This national deceit has gone on for too long. Let somebody tell the nation what is wrong with Yar'Adua.
Editor's Note: This piece was written before THISDAY's telephone conversation with the President last night.
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