Yar’Adua: To save this glass castle…
By Kayode Idowu
There is more than a passing comparison to make between world golf phenomenon, Tiger Woods, and our own UMYA – I mean, President Umaru Yar’Adua. They are both public figures (certainly, not on the same scale) and have in the past week or so been invaded with intense public attention in matters that, for other mortals, are best sorted out under the smothering cloud of privacy. That, obviously, is the price to pay for being in the public’s eye; but that may well be where the similarity ends. While one situation is hapless and unwitting (i.e. President Yar’Adua’s health condition), the other is self-inflicted and retributive (namely Wood’s public image disaster resulting from his hyperactive libido that has made him cheat on his wife and threw up multiple claims of extra-marital sexual liaisons). In any event, the much that is at stake for Tiger Woods is the survival of his five-year-old marriage to Swedish former model Elin; but the fate of this country seems to hang on the resolution of the latest debilitating turn in the President’s health condition.
Truth be told, it is apparent that the Presidency was keen to minimise controversy over President Yar’Adua’s health troubles this time around. But its strenuous efforts just didn’t pay off. Remember that in August 2008 when the President had to be shuttled off to Saudi Arabia on a similar health emergency, the country was merely told he was going on lesser hajj; only for news to filter back that he was under medical care. Then, all hell burst lose, and that hell knew no better fury than rumour mongering. At that time, even officials of government had scant information on details of the President’s ailment and medical schedule; thus they dished at best hazy and at worst conflicting updates to the public. There was never a more perfect fuel for the vigorous rumour mill, which swirled giddily and ultimately threw up that dummy line about the President’s alleged resignation – the stuff that eventually got Channels Television momentarily in the slammer and its key editors in a grilling fresh-up with security agents.
I suspect too well that the Presidency, and I think, commendably, learnt some bitter lessons from that episode and wanted to make good this time. And so, last month, it stated up-front that the President was off again to Saudi Arabia for medical attention. Prompted by a fresh round of rumour of his death, the Presidency came clean, announcing that Yar’Adua had acute pericarditis (an inflammatory heart condition) and was responding to treatment. Quite uncharacteristically, the Presidency indeed shot down a make-good item of information by unnamed Saudi hospital sources that Mr. President would be fit early enough to join the hajj rites; presidential spokesman Segun Adeniyi categorically stated that nothing of that sort was in the plan. If playing cult with information was the problem the last time, the Presidency apparently was willing to go the hog this time with the facts – of course, according to it.
But that, again, has obviously backfired now; throwing up the question as to whether the President is healthy enough to continue in office. ‘So, what do Nigerians want?!’ You could almost visualise the President’s image managers asking that question in exasperation. (Well, that must be because they miss the lesson from Tolstoy’s War and Peace that leaders are at the centre of such a wide web of circumstance and, in many ways, have less power than the most ordinary of people.) Ever since, there have been vigorous calls from high quarters in the citizenry that the President should resign; met with equally vigorous ripostes from government quarters that he will not. Yet, if you asked me, the controversy ego match is the very trouble this time around. Incidentally, the hype not only puts the polity on the boil, it sorely threatens this glass castle that we all live in: namely our young democracy. You would think the country has reached a critical and terminal pass; and some hotheads may just get some funny ideas of the need for a rescue mission. But believe me, that would be the utmost misadventure; because there nothing to the seeming crisis than the resilience of our democratic space in the search for a stable polity.
Strictly speaking, it is doubtful that the intense controversy is really warranted. For one, the medical condition said to be suffered by Yar’Adua is itself attested to by all medical authorities (local and foreign) as treatable and curable, and so not necessarily terminal. For another – and as it has been serially pointed out by many other commentators – health impairment in a sitting ruler is neither new nor peculiar to Nigeria. Researchers say since 1908, 11 out of 13 British premiers and six out of 10 American presidents had illnesses whilst in office that incapacitated them to some degree. And their countries survived those glitches. Strictly speaking, it isn’t much as if Nigeria would go under without Yar’Adua; and neither so with him in office, even with his unfortunate health troubles. So, what is the desperation on both sides of the divide really about – other than politicking, that is?
Now, the obviously real issues at stake in the President’s health troubles are the nation’s interest, on the one hand, and his own interest, on the other. It is only integral to human civilisation and culture that every Nigerian should genuinely wish the President well in his health battles. After he recovers, is it in his interest to continue in office? That is a question which, as Prof. Itse Sagay aptly said in a press statement last week, is best left to Yar’Adua’s family, doctors and advisers to decide. However, it is equally important that the President is true to himself by drawing the line on his real limit – independently, if need be, of the counsel of friends and family. Whatever way the pendulum swings, the nation’s interest is paramount in the preservation of the sanctity of the constitutional order. There are stipulated conditions and procedures for the President to relinquish office, and there equally explicit procedures of succession. None of these, in my view, should be preempted or short-circuited by any means in precipitate power calculations.
In all of these, one area that this country’s interest is certainly not served is the regular recourse of the nation’s Number One citizen to medical exile in health emergencies. Besides that this underscores the wholesale ineptitude of our own healthcare system, it also signposts its hopelessness; because no one is in half a vantage position to redeem the system than the President who has apparently given up on it. See where that leaves those who can’t afford medical exile?
December 7, 2009
Tags: Leadership, Nigeria, Yar’Adua Posted in: Kayode Idowu
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