Specials DIVERSITY EMPLOYERS MAGAZINE Spring 2011 - Anniversary Commemorative Issue

Nigeria in Crisis: An Ailing President and the Health of a Nation

A look at the impact of the absence of President Umaru Musa Yar Adua on Nigeria's political future

By Obi. O. Akwani
MGV Editor

Posted March 21, 2010

There was a moment there in February when it seemed sanity might prevail in Nigerian politics. The country remains perilously close to letting that moment pass.

Sanity: that certain cognizance of what is possible and what is not possible in the long-run given the different degrees and depths of consequences associated with any action that we might take and hence, the degrees of caution we must admit in deciding what actions we actually take. Insanity is the opposite; a lack of consideration and caution coupled with a belief in ones own power and invincibility in the face of opposing elements.

The prevailing insanity is marked by incongruities – these are conditions and ideas that can not ordinarily be countenanced or sustained, but are now being contended with as if they should be accepted as normal or cogent. There is a fear in the polity that not accepting and contending with these ideas and conditions would bring Nigeria crisis. This fear is what the originators of these conditions are counting on to enable them keep their hold on the polity. It is a fear based on the insanity of terrorism.

Window of Opportunity

What we had in that February moment was a window of opportunity to set right so much about our polity that had been wrongly set from the beginning. The beginning here refers to the early 1950's when the surviving features and characteristics of the Nigerian polity were set. It is a chance to meet and over-ride the challenge of this insanity. Right now there is only a fifty-fifty chance that Nigerians will utilize the current opportunity to finally put the affairs of their polity in the right order.

That window of opportunity came open for Nigeria beginning on the 23rd day of November 2009. That was the day President Umaru Musa Yar Adua was reported to have left the country for medical treatment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It remained open in the days after the president was supposedly, clandestinely, returned to Nigeria under the cover of darkness. That window may now be closing down as the insane logic which has ruled this country for the past 50-plus years appears to be re-asserting itself, while the ideals of constitutional democracy make a retreat. This is a logic that seeks to view Nigeria only in terms of its ethnic and religious components. It is the logic that prevails in the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) where leaders of the party seem to agree that the Nigerian presidency should rotate between north and south in a four or eight-year cycle. It is a logic that, in practice, runs counter to our democratic principles and attempts to defy the Nigerian Constitution.

The opportunity to move away from this insane logic and correct the many things that are wrong with the Nigerian polity arose mainly because of the weakness of the Yar Adua presidency. It is obvious -- with the way things have been going in the country since that November day when the president left the seat of power -- that Yar Adua has not been the originator or even driver of policy in Nigeria. In his absence, the real drivers of policy exposed themselves because they dared to continue running the government as if the president was still on seat. Almost immediately after Yar Asua left Nigeria, they started giving directives to other officials based on hearsay as to what the president said or wanted done. It was always, 'the president said this'; 'the president said that' or 'this is what the president wants done'. Even instructions to the executive council were delivered in this manner. They were even alleged to have forged Yar Adua's signature on the supplementary budget bill, claiming that the president had appended the signature from his hospital bed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

One may ask how it came to be possible that these people were able to carry on in this manner? The simple answer is that there is madness in the polity. The peculiar nature of this madness is that most of the ministers in the Federal government and members of the Federal legislature are afraid to challenge the 'invisible' power that keeps parodying the president. This fear is based on the "invisible" power's reputation for taking strong reprisal action against opponents. It is an unfortunate aspect of contemporary Nigerian culture and political arrangement that is considered imperative that people who hold public office must behave as timidly as the ministers and the legislators. It really does not have to be that way, but those who currently control the system do not want it any other way. The timidity of ministers and elected officials helps them protect their own interests. They prefer to protect their immediate self-interest rather than think about or protect the long-term interest of the nation.

Weakness

The first hint that the new chief executive of Nigeria lacked a strong hold on affairs came in 2008. President Yar Adua had been on the job for less than one year, and had declared his presidency as one based on the "rule of law." Nuhu Ribadu was still chairman -- if tenuously so -- of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Over the previous five years, he had stepped on many big toes. With his old mentor and boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, out of office in early 2007, Ribadu was deemed vulnerable and the big boys with the big toes were now gunning hard for their revenge on him. They raised a clamor for his demotion. The EFCC boss was taken off the job and shunted off to Kuru -- the strategic studies' institute for senior government and security personnel -- for some special course. The only person in a position to save Ribadu was the new President. But throughout Ribadu's ordeal Yar Adua remained silent. The question in the minds of a lot of Nigerians was whether it was the president himself who was directing all these things against Ribadu? The two men had met and greeted warmly at Kuru during Ribadu's graduation preparations. But within an hour of that memorable greeting, the hounds after the EFCC boss had pounced. Ribadu was told that he could not be part of the ceremony because he had failed to appear in the full uniform of a police officer. Ribadu's promotion to the rank of Assistant Inspector General toward the end of Obasanjo's second term was already the subject of considerable controversy. Shortly before his Kuru graduation, he had been hastily demoted, along (some say gratuitously) with several other officers promoted at the same time, to his former rank. Ribadu had challenged that demotion. The graduation dress uniform issue was a sort of show-down. The people goading him to appear in the regalia of an AIG at the graduation wanted to humiliate Ribadu one way or another.

What most reasonable people expected was that a president eager to show strength and determination in the continuing fight against corruption in high places would have made sure that Ribadu -- the man who had fearlessly directed that fight so far with good results -- was not humiliated or maltreated. Shielding the EFCC boss, even after his tenure, was exactly what was needed in order to strengthen and sustain the legitimacy of the anti-corruption campaign. The president had nothing personally to fear from the EFCC boss. However, many in the government and within the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and other political parties, including many former governors, certainly did. These were the people who were out to humiliate Ribadu. Ribadu had not done anything illegal. Rather, he had unavoidably offended a lot of powerful people -- the very characters who are at the core of corruption in Nigerian society -- in the course of doing his job. Without confronting these powerful elements, the war against corruption would be rendered a joke. A strong president eager to ensure the integrity of the continuing anti-corruption crusade should not have allowed them to harass and humiliate the EFCC boss. Allowing the leader of the war against corruption to be thus persecuted was a sure way to discredit that campaign and rubbish the achievements of that organization. It also signaled to all future EFCC leaders that they could not take the initiative and act boldly to tackle corruption in Nigeria without having to pay for it in a most personal way later. It was a very bad example to set by the new Yar Adua government.

And then the President fell sick, and not for the first time. It was an illness that has been with Yar Adua for longer than he had been president of Nigeria. But apparently, no one -- not the president himself nor any of his aids -- was prepared to take the right steps to, constitutionally, secure the government before the president was whisked off to a foreign country for treatment.

What these episodes suggest is that the President of Nigeria had not been truly in-charge. Yar Adua was weak beyond the mere debilitations of illness. It is arguable that if he had been a strong president, Yar Adua's illness and absence would not have become the catalyst to crisis that they are, and the crisis in which the nation finds itself at the moment would have been avoided. A strong and conscientious man would have taken the right steps and prevented the development of the kind of uncertainty and danger the country is facing today. The president's weakness stems from the fact that he is too much part of the chemistry of what ails Nigeria. As a political animal he is a pure product of that chemistry without the independent wherewithal to moderate it. He has been unable to set himself apart from it all, to direct the nation despite the proclivities of its various constituents. That lack of a strong hold is a characteristic common to all non-military leaders chosen for this country from the north. Nigeria needs and deserves better.

What was later explained as a medical leave for President Umaru Musa Yar Adua stretched from days to weeks, and from weeks to months without a single word from the president. And yet Nigerians were told to have patience; to accept that an absent, silent leader was still in charge. It is something that can make George Orwell's "Big Brother" chuckle.

The trepidations of the National Assembly legislators and ministers in the Federal Executive Council (FEC) may seem baffling when posited against their authority in the Constitution which gives these two institutions the responsibility and the power to safeguard the government and the Nigerian state against any 'invisible' powers that may seek to take advantage of any situation – such as the president's prolonged (permanent) disability – to hijack power and authority in the country. But what needs to be understood is that, both in terms of their individual members and as corporate bodies, these two institutions were responding to the imperatives of the contemporary political arrangement. The response of the ministers – where they seemed to prefer to maintain the status quo despite the abnormal absence of the president – demonstrated an innate understanding of their boss's weak position and an acknowledgement of the invisible power they were afraid to challenge for fear of getting the Ribadu treatment. In the case of the legislature, what compelled their trepidation was the threat of ethnic or religious genocide that remains ever present in Nigerian politics. The recent killings in Jos where, by some accounts, more than 512 lives have been lost, seem to be an actualization of that threat in microcosm. Even the movement of army troops and their deployment (or lack of deployment) during moments of civil disturbances are seen as reasons for the politicians to thread very carefully.

Singular Courage

It took singular courage from one minister with a conscience to overcome the equivocations of the FEC, National Assembly and Council of State -- made up of former Heads of State and Presidents of Nigeria. Dora Akunyili, the Information and Communications Minister, who confessed to having sleepless nights because of the lies the government felt had to be fed to the public concerning the president's long absence from the country, finally plucked up the courage to do the right thing. On Wednesday February 3, 2010, Akunyili presented a memorandum to her fellow FEC ministers proposing that the FEC write to the ailing president requesting him to convey to the FEC via a letter his actual state of health. This step was understood by all to be prelude to swearing in the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, as acting president. But it could also lead ultimately to the outright replacement or impeachment of the incapacitated president. And this second prospect was what worried the so-called cabal or kitchen cabinet "supporters" of the ailing president.

The Information Minister's memo created a storm in the FEC, with some of the minister-supporters of the president, especially Micheal Aandoakaa, the Justice Minister/Arthoney General, openly condemning Akunyili in very strong terms for daring to bring up the memo. But the memo did the trick. Most of the FEC ministers were soon supporting Akunyili and public opinion was solidly behind her. Even the National Assembly and Council of State came to support the action of the information minister. Everyone was anxious to see that the nation was not stagnated by the president's ill health and absence. Akunyili's memo helped push the country toward a position favored by most Nigerians as represented by the Save Nigeria Group, a civil society organization that had been organizing public demonstrations in favor of preventing a vacuum in the presidency and naming the vice president substantive leader.

Who is Professor Dora Akunyili?

Dora Akunyili is not your typical Nigerian politician. She is first and foremost an academic, trained as a pharmacologist. She lectured in pharmacology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka for many years before being picked by President Olusegun Obasanjo to head the National Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) in 2001. She has the political connections, having been secretary to the Petroleum Trust Fund, Southeast Zone between 1996 and 2000, but Akunyili never truly passed through the processes by which most career politicians in Nigeria rise. She, therefore, entered into the political arena with her "illusions" still intact. Akunyili is a woman whose actions are dictated by good conscience and fear of God. That characteristic enabled her clean up a thoroughly corrupt drug industry in Nigeria. Before Akunyili came along the business of supplying medicinal drugs in Nigeria was controlled by people who did not care much about the quality and authenticity of the drugs they manufactured or imported into the country. Akunyili not only break their cartel, she also sent many of them to jail. It was a risky undertaking. The drug lords could not bribe her, therefore, they sought to kill her. But God was on the side of this remarkable woman. Her would-be assassins were apprehended and jailed. Thanks to Akunyili, Nigeria's pharmaceutical and processed foods industry is today one of the cleanest and safest in the world.

When she was appointed Information Minister by President Yar Adua in December 2008, many thought it would become a blemish on Akunyili's, thus far, stellar political career. The information minister is regarded as the government's propaganda tsar, one who said for the government only what it wanted said. But Akunyili is an atypical politician, to say the least. She came into the office vowing to make a difference and never to lie to Nigerians. People scuffed when she began her Re-branding Nigeria campaign. But Dora was determined to reshape the image of the country for the better. She never missed an opportunity to take on the international media and movie industry who portrayed Nigeria in stereotypically negative terms. Back in Nigeria her media campaigns were designed to change attitudes; to bring Nigerians to see their country in a positive light and to make them accept that they could do better for the country and for themselves.

----

The Need for Reform

Dora Akunyili's memo seemed to release everyone from inertia. The Council of State met on Monday February 8 and advised that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan should be made acting president. Meanwhile a deadline of February 10 had been given for Yar Adua to communicate via a letter to the National Assembly to pave the way for appointing Jonathan acting president. On February 9, the Senate and the governors of the 36 states met and devised a unique solution to the issue of a formal letter from Yar Adua. They decided to accept that a radio interview heard on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) earlier in January, purportedly conducted with the ailing President Yar Adua in his hospital bed in Saudi Arabia, should suffice as a formal notification by Yar Adua to the National Assembly.

This compromise seemed to calm nerves all around, but as the FEC continued to seek an audience with the ailing president in Saudi Arabia, the cabal hiding the president from Nigerians pre-empted the ministers and secretly flew the sick Yar Adua back into Nigeria under the cover of darkness and tight security. To date no one in government has seen the president, even though his minders continue to tell Nigerians that the president is recovering and is walking around.

The crisis created by this situation not only opened the eyes of Nigerians to the illegitimate forces at work within the government and constantly threatening the peace and stability of the country, it also provided Nigerians an opportunity for finally confronting and overcoming those forces. That struggle is on now. Civil society organizations, like the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), are leading the struggle to extricate the Nigerian democracy from the strangulating hold of these forces. A force is illegitimate if its intentions and effects are counter to the stated and expected dreams and aspirations of the people. As a people, Nigerians' dreams and aspirations are embodied in the country's Constitution, in which also is outlined the practical steps needed to sustain the pursuit of our national goals.

The force in question here has been described as a cabal which has constituted itself an inner (kitchen) cabinet in the Yar Adua government. It tries to legitimatize itself as representative of the "interest of the north" in Nigerian affairs. But it has no faith in the democratic process. Its almost total control of the political system of the north and of Nigeria for most of the time since before independence has, in the final reckoning, not yielded good results for the north or for Nigeria. The north remains very poor in terms of infrastructure. The masses in the region are arguably poorer than their counterparts in the rest of the country. Everywhere else in the country existing infrastructure and other systems deteriorate. Throughout the Nigerian system, corruption is rife as the illegitimate forces fund their activities by taking over substantial parts of the revenues from rates and every other possible source. Any wonder then that Nuhu Ribadu, the fearless corruption fighter had to be discredited and rubbished? These negative results are as a consequence of the mindset of this invisible and illegitimate government behind the government.

For Nigeria to progress, the cabal must be brought under control. Its power over the nation has to be broken. The president's illness and absence is an opportunity for Nigerians to wrestle down the cabal. It also enables Nigerians to see the weaknesses inherent in the system. The Constitution provides several ways forward in a situation such as the president's country is facing now, but such is the power wielded by this cabal within the system that it was able for many months to prevent any of those measures being taken. One of the avenues for moving forward is through a resolution of the Federal Executive Council determining the president's incapacity to carry out the functions of the office. But the ministers of the Federal Government, having mostly come up through the corrupt system in question, and believing themselves beholden to the cabal, did not have the nerve to pronounce on the president's fitness to remain in office. For months they skirted that responsibility and pretended that it was business as usual and people, like the former attorney general/minister of justice declaring that the president could run the country from anywhere he chose. These conditions call for reforms in the way and manner political officers are elected. Electoral reforms should be such that the selection of people into elected office eliminates the situation where those thus selected remain indebted to narrow interests such as the cabal currently holding our president hostage.

Given the foregoing, one must strongly disagree with former US Secretary of State, Condolesa Rice, who said, during a recent visit to the country, that Nigeria did not need a strong leader, only strong institutions. We are still at a stage today in which we need strong leaders to help us build strong institutions for tomorrow. Without strong leaders, the country will be vulnerable to all sorts of cabals, both home-grown and foreign-made.