Lagos — Some readers have recently wondered why this columnist has been reticent on the Umaru Yar 'Adua situation that has all but paralyzed the slow-moving People's Democratic Party (PDP) national government under ailing Yar 'Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and had induced in citizens what Senator Arthur Nzeribe recently characterized as general national 'fatigue' that could tempt the Military into forceful take over of power.

You had always replied that one had done his bit since 'Yar 'Adua-gate' erupted but had also become 'fatigued' by the surrealism of the whole saga. And that, right from when the whole bizarre drama began to take the shape of one gigantic noxious and tragic hoax, SYMPOSIUM had compared the unnecessary leadership succession bind into which the ruling class had stupidly maneuvered itself, this time around to the deceptive situations of July 1966 and June 1993.

One had recalled that when, for purely selfish cultural or ideological reasons in the past, national political leadership has been taken away from de facto successors by faceless ruthless 'cabals' just because the beneficiaries of political power had not emerged from manifestly 'destined' ruler ship clans, Nigeria and Nigerians have suffered.

The civil war 1967-1970 which consumed over two millions lives was catalyzed as much by the pogroms on the Igbo in Northern Nigeria as by the imposition of Yakubu Gowon on Nigeria by a 'cabal' over his superiors which Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu took exceptions to. Similarly, when Moshood Abiola was denied the Presidency by yet another 'cabal', the occasion had caused Nigeria and Nigerians much suffering. You had therefore observed that, so long as he was incommunicado, there was no option left for this faceless 'cabal' this time but for Yar 'Adua to be replaced by Goodluck Jonathan. Or...

And when that envisaged prospect came to fruition, you had also commended the political sagacity of the nation's lawmakers for the creative way they had side-stepped the land mine of cynical usurpation of power by the 'cabal' that today holds the President hostage ,by invoking the perfectly legally acceptable 'doctrine of necessity'.

It did not escape your notice that the two principal figures in the national assembly, David Mark and Dimeji Bankole, all have Military backgrounds and are familiar with the famed military code 'No 6' which should guide a commander in critical situations when everything else fails.

In subsequent submissions on these pages as the Yar 'Adua-gate raged, this column had even deigned to offer unsolicited advices to Acting President Jonathan asking him to be bold and resolute and not look to pander to any political group or tendency since none of them made Yar 'Adua to be sick in order to put him (Jonathan) in power!

One had even gone as far as recommending that all Nigerian exiles abroad be pardoned and welcomed back home the same way Abdulsalami Abubakar welcomed back erstwhile NADECO activists who had been chased away during the Sani Abacha era. Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC helmsman and Nasir El Rufai, top the bill in this direction. This column had not much bothered about rapscallions like Mike Aondooaka and other members of Yar 'Adua's 'chicken cabinet' whose necrophiliac notions of seizing power are plainly disgusting.

Finally, on these pages we had urged Jonathan Ebele Goodluck or Goodluck Ebere Jonathan or whatever nomenclature he hid behind all along to acquire power by stealth, to look to the collapsed economy of the nation, to the social and psychological insecurities occasioned by institutionalized corruption, infrastructural collapse and mass unemployment

So that, in a manner of speaking, one had borne witness to oneself. Besides, there appeared to be something basically decent about the ailing Yar 'Adua, even if tendentiously tilted towards his Islamic faith and region and not wholesomely aimed at resolving the nation's perennial fault lines that compelled public empathy.

For this, one had been loath to make light of, or trivialize the health travails of a fellow human being and nation's elected leader to boot.

But when last week, Senator Arthur Nzeribe of ABN fame that truncated the June 1993 presidential elections, had caused to be published views that could reasonably be construed to mean that the negatively ripe and fertile environment of dysfunction provided by the civilian ruling class, could justify a Military coup, your attention had been powerfully arrested.

The question that sprang to mind and intrigued you the most was: 'is the old axiom true that the worst civilian government is better and preferable to the best military one?' Many vagabonds in politics are wont to pull this chestnut out of the fire of critical analysis raising the bogey of military rule as though the military class were some aliens who exist in isolation from the rest of the polity.

They talk about all sorts of liberties which citizens enjoy under civil rule that are circumscribed when soldiers hold sway. For example, these demagogic sophists point at the sundry 'freedoms', of the press and so on, to even abuse their leaders whose only recourse is in the courts of law, unlike with soldiers who would simply bundle you into prison or frame you for an attempted coup and get you shot. Some of these mendacious politicians would even taunt you with the notion that at least you could periodically elect your leaders.

Now, all that is bunkum.

At no time have Nigerians been able to elect those who rule them since 1966. Also, it is not much to have the liberty to publicly shout about social injustice when a citizen has practically nothing in the stomach. Besides, in the few years they have been in power, civilian politicians have done precious nothing to consolidate the democratic structures and institutions that bring them to power but have instead wrecked them, stealing right, left, and centre and justifying their brigandage by pointing out that 'democracy' is a learning process where mistakes are made and corrected.

But these carpet-bagging rogues and psychopaths in public office are not just making honest political mistakes that are easily correctible; they are willfully uprooting the foundation stones of the nation.

If they had been making honest mistakes, do these also include omitting to follow the laws governing the nation according to the 1999 constitution? Was it a mistake that President Yar "Adua clearly ignored to inform the NASS of his forced medical sojourn in Saudi Arabia even when he was fit enough to sign the 2010 Appropriation bill?

Was it a mistake that no single political personality including Acting President Jonathan has admitted seeing the President during and after his re-entry into the Nigeria geographical space?

Was it a mistake that the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF), which should know, has foresworn to discuss the issue of determining the exact state of Yar 'Adua's health and subsequently advising him to throw in the towel in a dignified manner, or be thrown out?

Is it a mistake that elected representatives of the people and their governors are now dictating to the Acting President on the limits of his powers, a situation that is clearly presumptuous and insulting to the office of the President?

These in our view are no political mistakes needing just time to be corrected. They are simply bold-faced political mischief and power brinksmanship that are capable of inflaming passions as they currently have done, and also of setting the nation ablaze with unforeseeable consequences.

But going back to the propositions of Senator Arthur Nzeribe which indirectly endorsed a military coup, one believes very strongly that a simple-minded people that have long been overwhelmed by a fickle-minded capricious leadership may not be quite right or ripe for 'democracy' as it is practiced the world over.

All representative governments the world over derive their powers and legitimacy from the distilled choices of an informed electorate. As a monitor of Nigeria's elections since the rigmarole of Ibrahim Babangida in the late 1980s and early '90s and right down to the charade conducted by Abdulsalami Abubakar in 1999, one had observed occasions where well-educated Nigerians have been induced to vote for particular individuals or parties with instant cash! Clearly, no authentic civilian leader has ever been produced in civil elections that took place in the last 25 years. And yet, these power usurpers claim that their worst excesses in governance are still better than the best the military can offer!

Is this a statement of fact? Look around the nation today, the only infrastructure that this nation has relied on since the end of the civil war were build by the military. All that the civilians politicians and their rapacious business counterparts have managed to do is to engrave their names on Champaign bottles as Adisa Akinloye did during the Shehu Shagari days and what the present crop is doing in buying up choice properties all over the world when their country can not boast of steady supply of electric power in this 21st century!

The question is: if gold could rust, what then becomes of other base metals? In our case, one talks of the over 78% of the population that live in rural areas, are illiterate, cut off from the loop of national politics, and are unaffected by the cycles of political boom and bust that the city-based ruling elite go through?

It has never mattered to this group of the silent majority what the complexion and composition of the government at the centre is like. But the vicious, vocal city-based minority will want to persuade majority of Nigerians that there is any essential ethical difference between civilian thieves in agbada and those clad in starched khaki uniforms.

You see, one of the major problems that this column encounters on a day-to-day basis is the astonishing illogicality of the average Nigerian - meaning those with higher education and are in leadership positions in public or private lives. This is not to talk down or anything but it is simply mind-boggling how far and how passionately Nigerians can go to deny the reality staring them in the face which requires critical choices. But which they refuse to make just in order to preserve, earn or increase their creature comforts.

Personally, it is more bearable to be lorded over by an armed dictator with no pretences of representing the general interest of citizens than a civilian power usurper who tyrannizes and brutalizes citizens while claiming to be acting in their common interest.

But, given that the Nigerian Military as presently composed with preponderance of the officer cadre and rank and file coming from a dominant section of the country, a coup would invariably set the nation back to minus-square one in correcting the injustices and imbalances that plague this sorry nation. It is only on this ground that one disagrees with Senator Nzeribe's postulations endorsing military coups.

Still, it is not funny at all that Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has been forced by state governors and the Executive Council of the Federation to be sleeping with a ghost - the ghost of Yar 'Adua in Aso Rock Villa.