A president without charm
by Sam Omatseye
Death skulked all of us as though we were reptiles wild-eyed in the dark. We wanted to pounce. We craved blood. Some wanted the terminal face of Yar’Adua on newspaper front pages, heralding a mournful nation, or a nation in quiet joy over the passing of quiescent president.
It came as a rumour. The grill sizzled with whispers of analysis and rumbles of scenarios. Some of the analysts hissed with apocalyptic visions of Nigeria.
What was clearly lacking in all this was a collective humanity. Where was our human recoil from the spectre of death? Is it not somebody’s life we are talking about? Someone, ailing like anyone in our families? Someone breathing, with a sense of touch, taste, smell, sight? A living being buffeted by the inevitability of human frailties?
Yet as one contemplates this burst of savagery, we are not unmindful of the bungling of his handlers, their own share of insensitivity to the general public. If they did well at the beginning to tell us he travelled out for medical treatment, they failed by letting it all stop there.
In their silence, they gave birth to a rash of opinions as facts. Rumours fester in the ambience of absences. In this case, the absence of facts.
Goodluck Jonathan, a Vice President with a limp heart calling for a psychological surgery, acted as though not aware of the urgency of things. His handlers allowed all of us to wallow in ignorance.
So, it was a case of official insensitivity meeting with a civil death wish. A fatal collision.
Whatever is clear, Yar’Adua ought to learn something from all that has transpired. One, he should know that his love among Nigerians are not so deep. If he won the 2007 elections, he should have more love than we have seen in these past days. Or maybe, the love has diminished. If it is the latter, it shows that he has not translated that electoral goodwill to food, shelter, education and power to the people.
This is a far cry from the case of the Brazilian President Tancredo Neves who decades ago took seriously ill during a presidential election just like Yar’Adua. He said if he got enough votes to win, not even God would stop him from serving as president of Brazil. He did win, but the illness aggravated.
The whole of Brazil soared into a mammoth prayer session. Everyone invoked heaven. But Neves, in spite of his irreverence, could not survive the depredation of an illness. He died.
We have not seen much of this for Yar’Adua except symbolic calls from a secular and sometimes cynical elite.
What we have seen in this moment of his health travail unveils his presidency so far. There has been a manic lack of information. He is a taciturn leader who does not have actions to speak for him. His information managers too are left with little to work with.
He has a minister of information who is more interested in her photos on the pages of newspapers parroting her official garrulity. This empty cymbal of a woman got away with that as NAFDAC czar. Not now when she is perpetually exposed.
Times of illness betray our friends and enemies. It reminds us who wants us dead and those who care little for us. But the case of a president is not that easy to define. A group of many prominent Nigerians called for the man to resign, and it is easy to conclude that these men want him dead anyway. Some of them may. Some of them may believe that it is the case of one man whose infirmity is standing in the way of the sustenance and progress of millions of human beings. You cannot blame them for their concern. But it was surely candour carried too far to call for a man to resign while still writhing on sick bed.
It all boils down to a lack of communication. President John F. Kennedy took a cocktail of drugs while in office. He had so much charm and brought elan and pride to office as senator and president of the United States that the people did not worry too much about his infirmity as the “leader of the free world.”
Which tells us that Yar’Adua does not have the charm factor. You need it, if not in personal magnetism, but at least in action and communication. JFK had plenty of charisma, perhaps the best in the country’s history. They forgave his illness the same way they forgave his philandering.
No one in Guinea, I believe, will pray for the Guinean butcher, Moussa Dadis Camara, on Moroccan sick bed today. In his bloodlust, he would not apologise for the rapes and killings of innocents.
Josip Broz Tito, the last leader of charisma of old Yugoslavia, fell ill. The people pined for him to live. Even in Nigeria, we followed the progress of this man in hospital. His illness was in his leg. Disease was eating it away. Doctors had to amputate it. The announcement was made in public even before then. He never survived. Our tears followed him to his grave.
Empathy followed him because, in the words of poet G. Pole, he did “bear brash witness and prepared the path for change.” Even though it was not the change we wanted. Bloodbath and division destroyed what he built.
Here at home, IBB had radiculopathy. The military president who suffocated free speech did not hide his ailment. It brought a peculiar softness to a ruthless dictator.
When Reagan was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, the media kept the world updated on his state of health. Reagan turned it into humour when he told his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”
Franklin Roosevelt hid his polio from public face when it was still in fashion to preserve the mysticism of the presidency. But many knew about it. The media saw it, but they would not take his photo from his waist down. If he was a bumbler in office, it is hard to imagine that his political rivals would not have made a capital out of this.
History has abundance of cases, including the four-day anticipation of the death of Stalin after his interior minister poisoned him. Half his body was paralysed just as Herod’s half-body rotted away. He saw worms roil in his flesh as he faded.
What is important is not what afflicts Yar’Adua. It is what he is inflicting on us in the shabby way he handles this matter. He forces everyone to ask an important question. If we can live with this in all of his first term, does it make sense for him to contemplate another? Not in my book.
December 7, 2009
Tags: Goodluck Jonathan, governance, health, Nigeria, Yaradua, Yar’Adua Posted in: Sam Omatseye
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