Sick President,sick nation

Safe Journey to Germany or Saudi Arabia?

1.Sick President,sick nation

"The veil of secrecy surrounding Yar'Adua's health can only lead to unhealthy rumours, which will in turn create an atmosphere of panic over his (President's) health status – with dire implications for the country's overall well being. As the President, Yar'Adua is the father of the nation. The health of the father cannot be kept as a secret from his children."

-Lai Muhammed. Action Congress(AC) National Publicity Secretary

The state of health of President Yar'Adua has continued to pose the greatest challenge to his ability to lead Nigeria. Yar'Adua's health has remained controversial in his 30 months in office. In the heat of the Presidential campaign last year, Yar'Adua reportedly slumped and was rushed to a German hospital. Rumours of his death followed, but he later recovered and returned to Nigeria. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo called him by phone from the stage at the ruling party campaign rally so he could confirm he was still alive after rumours spread to the contrary. As the 'anointed successor' of President Obasanjo he coasted to victory despite his poor health status. He even admitted that the electoral process that brought him to power was 'faulty'. In Western democracies, I wonder if he would have survived the rigorous intra-party primaries not to make mention of the Inter-party campaign plus a dozen and one debate with extensive media coverage. It is made “made in Africa”, that is why it is possible for him to succeed. A continent where democracy is only practiced in the volume of books where it studied,read and digested extensively by students and scholars of government while its simplest form of practice which is universal suffrage has continued to elude Africans.

We live in a country of absurdities where the medical records of the Presidential candidates are not made available to the citizens before election and that of a sitting President is treated with levity. Nigeria is in dire need of leader who is medically fit. So that he will march that fitness with the needed political will to run an effective government in order to move this nation forward and ease the suffering of the common man. Assuming Nigeria was one of the Fortune 500 companies,in Yar'Adua's current state of health can he jostle for the CEO job with healthy,strong and agile candidates?The Office of the President is very demanding and as such requires physical energy and fitness. Undoubtedly productivity can be hampered by such illness as Yar'Adua's long history of kidney-related ailment and a renal transplant years ago. Even,medical practitioners will attest to the fact that such sickness affect the patient physically thereby reducing the productivity of such individuals.

The huge task of leading the government of a big nation like ours will surely compound the state of health of a healthy individual not to talk a sick man. Take a closer look at President Obama and observe that he has grown more grey hairs while he now looks older than he was one year. That trend is associated with Offices of Presidents all over the world. The mental pressure the office exerts is heavy and as such tiring. No wonder Yar'Adua looks gaunt, tired and emaciated in his appearance. The man is a ghost of himself. Yar'Adua's straight forward motion is noticeable as he looks dull,tire and worn out as if he will faint at the next moment. I have tried to find out why the President always has to recline one-sided on the Presidential seat when he is shown on TV chairing the Federal Executive Council (FEC). Several questions come to my mind. Possibly something is responsible for it or that is his style? Is there something he is seating on? Or the seat needs to be changed? If the seat is bad,Nigeria can afford to change it. Even normal activity of walking a few yards at a time gets Yar'Adua exhausted as revealed in news reports.

However,speculations on Yar'Adua's health has surpassed speculation on Wall Street. The opposition has accused government officials of telling lies over the President's health in recent times. Media houses have made brisk business on these wild speculations. At some point Yar'Adua threatened to pursue legal actions against some media houses for speculating on his health. Moreover,the President has embarked on over 15 medicals in only 30 months in office making it 2months to one medical trip,albeit over N10billion that was used to upgrade the Aso Rock Clinic according to media reports,following the huge outcry over his constant jetting out for treatment. One of this medical trips lapsed into a whopping 8- weeks trip( two months).He has travelled to Germany and Saudi Arabia for medical trips more than he has visited every other country for national diplomacy put together. At one time on his medical trip to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia under the pretext that he was going for lesser hajj. Yar’adua was stuck in his Saudi hospital for more than two weeks. In fact he did not return until a number of People's Democratic Party (PDP) officials travelled to Saudi Arabia to warn that his hold on power could be threatened by any further absence. I have to conclude that his covert code for medical trips is hajj or lesser hajj.

It is also on record that the President has been represented in over 60% of all invitations both local and abroad while he shuns some completely. There are several programmes where the presence of the President alone can boost morale of the citizenry. One of such important events was the post-amnesty summit in Kaduna where he was conspicuously absent. He has not visited many states despite the fact that Nigeria is his constituency and not the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).How will he understand when the man in Badagry,Calabar,Opobo,Okigwe, Sokoto, Maidugiri, Akwanga, Oshogbo, Ilorin and Warri is shouting that he is suffering. The praise singers and sycophants around him can never give him a true state of the nation. He needs to see things for himself first hand so as to have a mental picture when he is taking decisions. We were witnesses to how former President Obasanjo's cronies advised him to run for third term only for him to announced to the world that Nigerians said so. We were told that Yar'Adua is an introvert' that is why he does not honour invitations. He can afford to be an introvert in his small Kastina State which constitute less than 5 percent of the population of this country. This is Nigeria, it needs urgent attention. I cannot divorce his introvert behaviour from his poor health status. The only invitations he cannot afford to miss is the decamping ceremonies of his son in-law governors and their likes to the People Democratic Party (PDP). Meanwhile he has sponsored a bill to stop it. What a contradictory sick President!

Undoubtedly, the President's health status affects his ability to give unreserved and detailed attention to every file that comes to his table from his ministers,advisers and assistants on national and international issues in a bid to ensure that they fall within his vision and goals for the progress of the nation. I must draw this conclusion because he spends long period of times in German and Saudi hospitals for medical check ups and treatments. Is Yar'Adua not like every other human being who shelves work when they are in hospital or better still reduce the work load when certain issues are inevitable? Moreover during these medical trips are abroad. I wonder if the ministers DHL the files for him to approve or brief him through on online video conferencing? Possibly when he jets out everything has to wait or the business of governing Nigeria is conducted via telephone? Does the Vice-President take charge when he is supposed to be in charge? Or better still the vice-president and ministers take decisions on his behalf in his absence and have it reversed when there is wide public disapproval on his arrival? The disconnect the health issue creates is glaring.

Although Yar’Adua’s health condition has become a drainpipe costing Nigerian taxpayers several millions of dollars annually. The funds spent on his health can save thousands of poor Nigerian children who have no access to good medical services. If the nation is making progress,we will excuse him and take solace in the fact that he performing. But the nation is on the downward slide and we have continued to pay this huge bills. However,that is the least of my worries. Do Nigerians understand and consider the security implication of having a President with a chronic kidney problem(a terminal disease)given our undesirable history with overzealous men in uniform. I wish Yar'Adua long life. Neither will I toe the line of all those people who wanted Zik of Africa dead by their constant rumour. We saw how the 'Genius of Africa' ended up outliving all of them. But when the President's health becomes an impediment to national progress and a possible threat to the stability of the nation and he fails to recognize it,someone must have to voice out in the interest of over 140 million dejected citizens. The history of the United States is as important to them as their future, Obama exposed this in his book “Audacity of Hope” by always considering the position of their founding fathers before drawing his conclusion.

In Nigeria, the reverse is the case. We tend to be too forgetful. Given our bizarre experience less than 15 years ago we must but have to admit that we are sitting atop a keg of gunpowder which can be trigger off by the slightest action. The military always intervened when vacuums were created in the the leadership of the nation using the excuse of coming to maintain law and order to perpetuate themselves in power. With the current state of the nation,it will only be good to imagine what such a vacuum if created in Aso Villa can cause. The cache of arms recovered from the militants should give us an idea of the proliferation of weapons. A percentage of these weapons can trigger off conflicts in many African countries. We have had about three cases of container load of ammunition seized by Customs in Apapa and Calabar Ports. Who knows how many have successfully slipped into the country.

With the recent trend in militancy and weapons proliferation,any military intervention will surely encounter armed resistance from the likes of Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra(MASSOP),the Odua People Congress(OPC) and the dreaded Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta(MEND) or even Arewa Youths depending on who it favours. That will signal the beginning of the end of Nigeria and possibly a fulfilment of the US prediction of Nigeria disintegrating in 2015 or a catastrophic civil war. I will deal extensively with Nigerian Unity in my next article '2015 and Nigerian Unity'.For this reason alone the President should consider these options of resigning or serving out his four (4) year tenure and quit the 2011 elections to forestall such occurrences if he believes that the unity of this country is sacrosanct and also in the interest of national progress.