Specials DIVERSITY EMPLOYERS MAGAZINE Spring 2011 - Anniversary Commemorative Issue

Yar’ Adua: Dead or Alive?

His aides remain insistent that he is alive and recovering from illness. But no one has seen or heard from him in more than four months. He was whisked away from Nigeria on November 23, 2009, to a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for medical treatment and secretly returned to the country, February 24 in the dead of night and whisked to the Presidential villa by ambulance.

Nigeria’s President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua was a sick man even before he took office in 2007. During the intense politicking that led to him becoming the president of Nigeria, Yar’ Adua had to take time off the campaign trail to go to Germany for medical checkup. The sudden and conspicuous absence of the presidential candidate caused a stir at the time and it was even rumored that he was dead, a situation which led to the famous, “Umaru are you dead,” phone call by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Hearing the candidate’s shaky voice on the phone then was reassuring and, of course, a few days later, Yar’ Adua was back on the campaign trail.

There is nothing reassuring about his current absence despite claims by many that they had seen or spoken to him on the phone. The president’s prolonged absence from the seat of power is causing political and constitutional problems in Nigeria. His aides and “supporters” at first tried to keep his true state of health a secret from Nigerians, but two days after Yar’ Adua was flown out of the country, rumors had begun to fly that his condition had worsened and that he had slipped into coma.

As speculation and panic increased in Nigeria, the presidential aides had to own up to his true condition. President Yar’ Adua suffered from acute pericarditis – an inflammation of the surrounding membrane of the heart, which according to medical experts is a possible side-effect of kidney-transplant medication.

The president’s condition remains a touchy political issue in Nigeria. None in the political class wants to discuss it, but everyone must talk about it. The situation threatens to divide the country, but to their credit, the political leaders have been careful to avoid any split in the polity. It is as if the whole country is held hostage because of President Yar’ Adua’s illness and absence. Many urgent issues, like the Niger Delta crisis and amnesty program for militants, which the president had been handling before his illness, have been left hanging. Other problems are emerging which may not have cropped up without the absence of the president. Nigerians have witnessed paralysis in the Executive Council of the Federation – the president’s cabinet – which is constitutionally empowered to determine and pronounce on the president’s fitness to remain in power.

The president had admittedly made a mistake in not making sure that the country was in good hands before leaving for Saudi Arabia. The Constitution requires that he take certain steps to ensure continuity in government and presidential authority before going on vacation or medical leave. The president needed to have sent a letter to the National Assembly informing them of his intended trip and authorizing the vice president to assume power temporarily. Apparently, Yar’ Adua did not take any of those steps.

Only the president’s closest aides can tell what Yar’ Adua’s condition was just before he left the country in November. But no matter what his condition was, the necessary steps should have been automatic, especially given the fact that Yar’ Adua has always been a sickly leader. In any case, the president’s aides and advisers should have ensured that the necessary steps were taken within hours or days after his departure while the president was still lucid or conscious. Apparently they too failed in their duty.

What seems to concern the president’s aides and advisers, including the first lady Turai, has been protection of the president’s privacy against inquisitive Nigerians. Every official attempt to see the president in Saudi Arabia – including delegations of ministers, senators and representatives – was prevented from seeing him. The last official government delegation of Federal Government ministers that sought to see the president had spent only a few hours after landing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when Yar’ Adua was secretly taken out of his hospital bed in Jeddah and flown back to Nigeria under the cover of darkness while the delegation of ministers waited to see him in Saudi Arabia. Those same aides now tell Nigerians that their president is back in Nigeria in Aso Rock – the seat of power. They say he is improving daily, even walking about and speaking to people. Yet no one, apart from those same aides telling it, can confirm these claims.

The most recent sighting of the president comes from the Chief Imam of the Abuja National Mosque, Ustaz Musa Mohammed, who says that he, along with other Muslim clerics, met with Yar’ Adua in Aso Rock. The imam said the Yar’ Adua he saw was a much improved man who could return to the job “any day,” but he added that the president’s speech is incoherent. That probably explains why no one has heard from the president. Their Christian clerical counterparts later also went in to see and pray for the ailing president. Since emerging from that meeting, the Christians have refused to say anything to anyone. Even the clerics appear to have been co-opted into the cabal's web of lies to deceive Nigerians. The whole thing is getting more and more ridiculous with each new testimony. It is beginning to look like a calculated charade.

Someone should be answering for what has gone on in the presidency since last November. The president’s so-called supporters have openly admitted that their intention in all this drama is to protect Yar’ Adua’s mandate. The immediate question that comes to mind is: protect it for whom? One answer, certainly, is that it is not for Yar’ Adua. Because so long as he has not been able to make himself seen or head by Nigerians, the general belief is that in all likelihood the man may never be able to regain himself on time to play a self-directed role in the affairs of this country again. And because his absence and silence has gone on for this long, Ya’r Adua, himself has lost too much credibility in the eyes of Nigerians. Even if he recovers, it is going to be difficult for him to regain public confidence.

Yet the president’s “supporters” don’t want to give up. They remain confident enough about getting their way that they are willing to disregard the Constitution and its laid down procedures for dealing with such issues to take us through this charade just in order to “protect Yar’ Adua’s mandate.” According to them, it is a matter of intra-party agreement that the northwest section of the country should retain the presidency for 8 years before returning it to the south. Therefore, in order to respect this party-specific agreement the Nigerian Constitution must be disallowed. And they are threatening “fire and brimstone” if this agreement is not followed.

This is the logic of the president’s so-called supporters, and this is why Nigerians have been dragged into this deadly waiting game. President Yar’ Adua’s “supporters” – really a power-hungry cabal to everyone else – are not willing to lose power; they are willing to keep Nigerians guessing for the next 9 to 14 months in order that they might retain the PDP presidential slot in the 2011 elections. This is the mind-set that is bedeviling Nigerian politics. This is the mindset that is at the root of all the corruption, rent -taking and impunity of power in this country.

Sadly, President Yar’ Adua has been merely a pawn in the political chess game of his “supporters”. What these so-called supporters are chiefly interested in is securing their own interests against the rest of Nigeria. The president’s illness, unfortunately, has come in the way of their goal and they are determined that nothing, not even care for the president’s own reputation would be an obstacle for them. I believe that if these people could, they would prop this poor man up, pop him in a glass cage and parade him before Nigerians and if necessary, employ the services of a devout ventriloquist to mimic his voice, just so they can tell Nigerian, “see, Yar’ Adua is alive and getting better and will soon be back in office.” In the process of this charade, constitutionalism is thrown out the window.

While this great drama is playing out, the “sick but recovering” Yar’ Adua remains absolutely silent and unseen. Which begs the question: Is Yar’ Adua truly still alive?

Almost every circumstantial evidence points to a negative answer to that question. The evidence below have been cited by several different people before now. But they are worth repeating.

• If President Umaru Yar' Adua is still alive, with his faculties reasonably intact, and he is able to walk about, even for brief periods (as it has sometime been claimed), why has he not asked to see the Acting President or any of the ministers or the Senate President or the Speaker of the House or the Governor of his home state, Katsina?
• On January 11, 2010, one foreign press – the American Chronicle – reported on its website that Yar’ Adua was dead and the report was specific that he passed away on December 10, 2009.
• Even though another foreign press, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the next day aired a purported interview with the apparently “dead” Yar’ Adua on its Hausa Service radio; this interview, it turned out, was done over the telephone, which doesn’t prove or disprove anything.
• Nigerians ask: If Yar’ Adua is alive and with his faculties, wouldn’t he want to reassure Nigerians by speaking to them live via Nigerian radio or TV? Why limit himself to a foreign radio?
• The strongest circumstantial evidence that President Yar’ Adua may not ever be returning to office is the obvious fear and reluctance exhibited by his “supporters” about letting Goodluck Jonathan step in as Acting President pending when the president will be well enough to return to office.

Nigerians have been very tolerant, and they have good reason to be. People are wary about the high emotional reactions that surround the issue of power in Nigeria. In the past, doing the "right thing, no matter whose ox is gored" led to horrible reactions like ethnic death dealings and breakdown of the social order. This is why Nigerians must be careful as we move forward. It is this wariness and their own dark threats of a return to disorder that the cabal counts on to enable it push through with its agenda. But something else Nigerians are also aware of is that something so patently wrong should not be allowed to continue. And that’s the reason why Nigerians are fighting back and must fight back, unflinchingly. Our people all over, in the north and south are better educated. It will never again be so easy to stampede them into general anarchy. The attempts are being made. The recent incidents in Jos and other parts of the north are solid examples. But such will always fail because Nigerians are committed to protecting their democracy.

Without constitutionalism, democracy becomes meaningless and government becomes a matter of the whims of individuals or groups who happen to find themselves in power. Nigeria has come close to this scenario since 1999, but the current debacle brings us closest to a situation where the affairs of the government of this country are dictated by a shadowy group. Before 1999, this nation suffered the individual whims of people like General Sani Abacha. From 1999 on different groups have been vying to make it their whim that rules Nigeria. This rotational presidency thing is a whim of the PDP. It has no basis in law in Nigeria. Hence where the party arrangement conflicts with or out-rightly goes against the law, the party arrangement must be thrown out.

What we have seen played out is a game of brinkmanship between the Yar’ Adua “supporters” cabal and the democratic forces in Nigeria – within the cabinet, the legislature and civil society groups. The cabal hints darkly of dare consequences and talk of “heating up the polity” each time their choices and actions are challenged by civil society groups like the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka-led Save Nigeria Group. But the relentless pressure and reasoning of the democratic forces have gradually and consistently forced the president’s “supporters” to realize that continuing to block the emergence of Acting President Goodluck Jonathan as commander-in-chief would lead to something even more onerous to them – the outright impeachment of the ailing president. And this is something they dearly want to avoid in order not to be completely out of power before the crucial elections in 2011.

The next few months before next year's elections are going to test the political maturity of Nigeria. Is the country going to be able to steer the right course despite the “Northwest-must-rule” cabal? Will the military resist the urge to intervene to save face for the anti-democratic forces? These questions and more will be answered by the time a new political mandate begins in 2011.