Mathematicians of Mortality

Mathematicians of Mortality
On March 6, 2007, Alhaji Umaru ‘Yar'adua collapsed while on the campaign trail and had to be flown abroad. It was so serious that rumours of his death started making the rounds then. In any other country in the world, that would have been the end of his political career or at least his search for elective office. But Nigeria is not any other country; it is Nigeria! And ‘Yar'adua went on to be sworn in as president.

Since then President ‘Yar'adua had on and off been in and out of hospital, spawning more rumours of his death or incapacity; and over the months, before the nation’s very eyes, the president had emaciated and paled. So much so that people’s indignation and anger at his election and even the anguish felt at his lack of performance changed to incredulity and then pity as his pain and suffering became obvious. People forgave him and expected him to relieve himself of the burden. He didn’t and his government wasn’t doing well at all.

But since he didn’t look for the position, it shouldn’t really be surprising if he was not ready for it; or if he came to it without a blueprint; or if he stayed on in it without a plan, and will almost certainly be leaving it without a legacy. But it was this sickness that made matters worse—and he is sick in a way that cannot be veiled from the public. It took him back to hospital for intensive care.

Today he might have gotten better, and, as the very unlikely counter-rumour had it, he might have been sighted at Mina pilgrims camp or along the corridors of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital visiting his daughter who is said to be on admission there. Even if true, all these are beside the point. The point is that the nation has come to near unanimous conclusion that ‘Yar'adua can’t simply continue in office with an acceptable level of effectiveness; and Nigeria can’t afford to keep dilly-dallying because of him.

Umaru ‘Yar'adua is a human being with a few admirable qualities that, unfortunately, didn’t show during the two years of his presidency—his impassive good-naturedness, his acute sense of justice, which had now gone with the wind of the election, and his organizational capacity. These were eclipsed by his other attributes less suited for leadership—his impenetrable taciturnity; his being practically a closed book to almost everyone, open only to a few people, perhaps only three, in the entire world; his no-gift-for team play; and his always being quick on the draw for a dare. On the whole, the combination didn’t work.

And there always comes a time in an individual’s or a nation’s life when there is only one right option—and for President ‘Yar'adua and Nigeria such a time has come. If he has not benefited the Nigerian situation by his presence, he should try to do so by his absence: he should step down and allow the nation to march ahead without him. If necessary he should be forced to step down; and to say that he should be succeeded by Dr Goodluck Jonathan is so much a matter of fact that to have to say it will sound like an insult to the nation.

To be sure it was Chief Godwin Daboh Adzuana who first flew the kite a few months ago; and, as we all know only too well, by their nature, kites don’t fly high or for long. At that time Daboh said that the North would not allow the vice president to succeed to the presidency should anything happen to President ‘Yar'adua.


Daboh’s sometimes creative, often tasteless, always outlandish political humour should have been taken for what it was. But with Nigeria’s speculative, non-respectable—one could even say irresponsible—journalism and its ready whipping boy, this was destined to have unintended, or perhaps all too deliberately intended, effect, by way of a misdirected backlash. And it came.

We are in this unnecessary mess because Nigeria’s institutions don’t work the way they should. Clearly, the National Assembly is clearly not alive to its responsibilities with regard to the emergency at hand; and the Federal Executive Council seems to fear the shadow of an absent president more than it cares for the fate of a tottering nation. Falling sick and being unable to continue in office are not personal failures from which they should attempt to shield the president.

These are afflictions on account of which the whole nation feels sorry and prays for him. But they would not even allow a discussion of this in the Senate, where a motion to discuss the president’s illness could not be passed. This has told the nation a series of stories about the upper chamber. One, that it cannot be relied upon to rise to the occasion during a period of national crisis. Two, that it is not conscious of the weight of its responsibilities. Three, that instead of discharging them, it prefers to play politics.

Four, that as its president, David Mark, is the most senior Northerner in the Federal hierarchy and may therefore have been lustfully eyeing the presidency, expectantly thinking and vainly hoping that a PDP in-house private zoning formula can take precedence over the nation’s constitution. Five, that while the Senate is effectively saying that the president is not sick, the PDP is conducting prayers for his quick recovery. And by refusing to acknowledge the president’s inability to discharge his official functions, the Federal Executive Council has inadvertently just succeeded in demonstrating its inability to discharge its own.

And that partly is why we are where we are—in perfect disarray. While the nation is going east, its Senate is going west, and the whole National Assembly is going to waste. All state matters are discussed in hushed tones: the executive has become a demigod, omniscient even if absent; and subordinates have become creative kleptomaniacs, poor even if rich. The judiciary neither interprets nor applies the laws, because it is truly independent—independent even of the evidence before it. All the nation’s checks and balances have been turned into cheques and bank balances; and separation and division of powers have become a separation and division of the spoils of office—its leaders thieves, its officers keepers of stolen goods and the people mere spectators.

This is our shame—painful but true—and unlikely to change even if Goodluck becomes president. The hierarchy of the PDP must whisper the Prayer of the Atheist, for, today they are in the same boat with him: ‘God, if there is a God; save my soul, if I have a soul.’ He is not sure, but he is; they are not sure, but they are. Or, are they? And if, after the prayer, they realize that they have a soul, then they must embark on some soul-searching: ‘This power which we took in the name of the people, to what ends had we applied it? Did we take it in order to rape this nation, kill its spirit, stifle its democracy and impoverish its people—and enrich ourselves?’

Because that’s precisely what they have done during the last decade. Goodluck and his successors are perfectly at liberty to continue with this business as usual; but they won’t have another decade of pillage before the nation is engulfed in the unadulterated disaster of some national Armageddon.

He can choose to make a little history by changing the status quo. He should begin by selecting a vice president who will bring the much-needed seriousness that even many members of his own PDP seem not to see in him, someone with the kind of integrity that is absent from the party’s power structure, a technocrat who is a competent manager with a positive worldview. And it will help if he has easy acceptance among youths, within traditional circles and in the business sector so that he can carry everyone along.

But first, let ‘Yar Adua step down, Goodluck step in and see how we sort out the problem of the lack of vision, capacity and willingness to begin the task of saving the nation from the clutches of the mathematicians of mortality.

And if Goodluck doesn’t seize the initiative, the initiative will seize him; because the macabre dance over the sharing of the cadaverous cake has already begun in earnest. Each of the actors is engaged in this arithmetic of mortality and do-or-die: one plus one is equal to all. While on the one hand they deny the president’s sickness, on the other, they are feverishly calculating the square root of power and planning for life after his death. For the First Family, a homeboy will be such a reassuring contingency; just as a master puppeteer pulls the strings and gets set to anoint his pick on the hillock; and then the vultures—potent, patient and in a phalanx, six and thirty—have already anointed the baldest among them king.


BY ADAMU ADAMU
As culled from DAILY TRUST.