A Nation Without A Commander-in-Chief
by Sam Nda-Isaiah
Nigeria must be the only country in the world that currently does not have a commander-in-chief in situ. The man who is supposed to be the commander-in-chief has been in a coma for a couple of weeks and undergoing emergency treatment at a hospital in faraway Saudi Arabia. If your commander-in-chief is in a coma or has a mental problem or is in any such condition or situation that impairs his ability to command, then, you do not have a commander-in-chief. That is the situation of Nigeria at the moment. The office of the commander-in-chief is so pivotal that the occupant of that office has no deputy or assistant in that capacity. The vice president of Nigeria, just like the vice president of the United States, is not the vice or deputy or assistant commander-in-chief. That is why when the president is seriously ill or is in a coma or in an intensive care unit, the vice president is not just assumed to be performing the duties of a commander-in-chief, he is actually sworn in to do so as the acting president, and, in that capacity, he also acts as the commander-in-chief for the period that the president remains an invalid. At the moment, Nigeria’s commander-in-chief is incapacitated and the Nigerian system is so warped and so irresponsible that it has failed to swear in the vice president to act. That is shameful. The reality is frightening.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC), which has been empowered by the constitution, cannot rise to the challenge of the moment. With their tails behind their legs, last week, the FEC members lied before the entire world and said that the president, who at that time was under the needle of sundry doctors in Saudi Arabia, was fit. They certainly didn’t place the nation first.
My elder brother, Alhaji Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, looked at the nation with a straight face and declared that, after all, the president had been away for only nine days…, or something to that effect. For only nine days? Are we serious about running a nation state? In serious countries, they swear in the deputy within minutes of having the kind of situation in which we have found ourselves.
We should continue to pray for the quick recovery of the president because that is the right thing to do, but Nigeria is bigger than any individual. Michael Aondoakaa, the attorney-general of the federation, was even more barefaced. He said the constitution does not have a place for a superhuman president. Yes, the constitution does not have a place for a superhuman president, but it clearly insists on a normal president, and not a president that is perpetually sick and falls in and out of coma so frequently that his job suffers. Our president has been incessantly sick and has not had the clarity of mind to govern, and that is why the nation is falling apart and some people around him are stealing the nation dry and he is not even aware of it.
We all are very sick in one form or the other. I have read and heard very cynical arguments in that direction. But that is true. And we are supposed to pray for our leaders; we are already doing so for Umaru. But while we pray, some leaders should step down to take very good care of themselves because of the nature of their illnesses. Just because all of us are ill one way or the other does not mean we should, for instance, give the keys of a bus filled with passengers to an epileptic patient. If anything happens to the bus and the passengers, as it surely would, you would not blame the epileptic driver but those who handed him the keys.
It is not only the FEC that has displayed a crass dereliction of its responsibility. All the organs of the Nigerian state vested with the weighty responsibility of watching over the nation’s commonweal have preferred to look away. The Senate said it will not discuss the issue. The House of Reps will also not discuss the issue. So the FEC is not discussing it, the Senate will not and the Reps will not. The PDP, the ruling party to which the president belongs, and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum both of which do not have the constitutional authority to do anything have nonetheless lent their voices to the continuation of an invalid president in power. What is this thing in the Nigerian make-up that makes it impossible to remove even a lame-duck president in a coma? Those that have been asking the president to resign or write to the National Assembly have not even thought it through. How can a president in a coma resign? He is not in a position to do that. It is the system and the structures of democracy that would swear in an acting president. And this should happen as a matter of course. It would be like asking Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel, to resign when he suddenly went into a coma, or asking former President Ronald Reagan to resign after he had been shot. But as it is now, Nigeria has been left at the mercy of the winds.
Those who insist Umaru should remain president at this time are not only enemies of the nation, they are also arch-enemies of Umaru himself. The president must also know that such people only want him in Aso Rock so that they can continue to fleece the nation. The truth is that even if Umaru came back from Saudi Arabia now, he would not be in the required state of mind to continue as president. It is this sickness that has impaired his total concentration on running the country. We have a president that does not attend functions. He could not even go to the stadium to watch the last FIFA Under-17 World Cup finals in which Nigeria was both host and participant. He has not been able to attend the last two United Nations General Assembly meetings in a row. He does not inspect projects, especially his electricity projects to ascertain whether his promised 6,000 megawatts is on course. He has not implemented any budget since he was sworn in as president nearly three years ago. He does not have the capacity to verify all the lies some of his advisers and ministers daily feed him with – and that is for the very few privileged ministers who get to see him one-on-one. More than three quarters of the ministers have not been able to see their president one-on-one. They see him only during Federal Executive Council meetings.
Nigeria is too big and far too important for this kind of situation. Yes, we should be praying for Umaru; we can even constitute a team of prayer warriors to continue to fast and pray for his speedy recovery. But, meanwhile, Nigeria is bigger than any single individual. Nigeria needs a new president.
E A R S H O T
Where Do We Now Stand On Electoral Reform?
It appears that the events of the last weeks have blunted our compulsion for free and fair elections in the future. Much more important than the president’s health is the need for free and fair elections. We should continue to pray for the president, but we must also continue to discuss how we must ensure that all future elections conform with standards of a democracy. If that had happened in 2007, we probably would not be in this confused state today. Free elections must be the future of our nation.
December 6, 2009
Tags: fec, health, Nigeria, Yar’Adua Posted in: Sam Nda-Isaiah
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