Daily Trust - the online edition

Before you question my sanity let me hasten to add that I am not about to write the president’s will as the title of this piece might suggest. Make no mistake about it also, like many good natured Nigerians, I actually wish President Umaru Yar’adua long life and prosperity and maximum recovery from whatever his present ailment may be.

That aside, every practising Muslim is conscious of the fact that there is something over which no human being has any control or leverage whatsoever, and that is the important matter of life and death. For that material reason, even the president will agree with me that every Muslim is taught by his or her faith to live and think as if tomorrow would never come. They are drilled to believe that even contemplating life beyond the present is an illusion of monstrous proportions.

It is of course obvious from the conduct of many of our politicians that given the slightest opportunity, they could try to rig themselves into office in perpetuity, but if we are to accept the authentic teachings of Islam, it teaches that death, that eternal scourge of numerous prophets, eccentric potentates, presidents and emperors, could just be around the next corner.

If I sound a little bit like a preacher, it is because today, more than at any previous time in recent times, I actually have a compelling need to be. Like millions of concerned Nigerians, I cannot understand the perpetual hide and seek being played out presently over the matter of the president’s health by people who, ordinarily should know better.

Like the good Muslim he is, the president, more than anyone else, should know that death has never been anything less that the necessary end it is, which could come at any time, at any place, and with few protocols! That is precisely why I consider the current half-truths and blatant lies being dished out about the status of his health so much of an oddity and well, absurdity as well.

So the president is ill and needs a kidney transplant? What else is new? Does the fact make him less or more human? Why conceal the fact from Nigerians? Why deceive God as well by pretending to be on the lesser Hajj? Why must we be forced to endure such a prolonged period of anxiety? Should Nigerians expect more disclosure from their leader? I certainly think so!

Like the good natured and forgiving people Nigerians are renowned to be, millions would have matched to our churches and mosques to pray for his quick recovery had he not chosen to play games with our collective intelligence over his health. Many animists could also have found a way to slaughter their idols if only they could will the president to stay alive long enough to deliver on his much vaunted 7-Points agenda. He is mortal after all, despite his status and pedigree! Is there any suggestion to the contrary here?

Make no mistake about it, the president’s health has become a subject of intense national discourse today only because he is our leader at this material epoch of our evolution. Another undeniable fact is that many fellow Nigerians with far greater faith in their maker could die unceremoniously even before I finish writing this.

Therefore, what the president must come to terms with is that his health ceased to be a private matter the moment he was sworn in as the president on the 29th of May last year. The other unflattering fact we cannot run away from is that the issue of who the president is and what he does with the presidency is itself a reflection of the imperfection and impotency of our democratic institutions.

Had former President Olusegun Obasanjo not turned our bicameral national legislature into such a pathetic horror chambers where our collective aspirations could be traded for a few, were the Appeal Courts not the joke of the land, Nigerians could go to bed at ease even if a robot succeeds President Yar’adua in the event of his incapacitation.

But we know that the reverse is now the case. More than any other leader in our history, what Obasanjo proved more than anything else in his eight roguish years in Aso Rock was to prove that whoever becomes president could practically do as he pleased with the country due to the overwhelming concentration of power and resources in the center.

His excesses were defined by the massacres of Odi and Zaki-biam, the tragedy of the gubernatorial sweepstakes in Anambra state, and crude manner he conjured the impeachment of several state governors. His judiciary was accentuated by the antics of the disgraced Justice Egbo-Egbo. His parliament was marked by the mediocrity of the Evan(s) Enwerem and Adolphus Wabara who lived to pay the price for his folly.

To be fair to President Yar’adua, he has done his bit to restore the honour and dignity of the presidency since Obasanjo mercifully vacated the scene. But then, that is how far Nigerians are willing to push their luck obviously. If we have been taking in by his barely consistent allusion to the rule of law, there are few guarantees today that whoever succeeds him will toe the same line.

The situation is further aggravated by the fact of our geo-politics. For the hopelessly impoverished people of the north who also had to bear the brunt of keeping the country together while others were thinking of themselves, the future remains bleak and somewhat uncertain. For people accused of parasitic tendencies by the South-South with the tacit encouragement of the South-East and the South-West, it bears little comfort in knowing that the man constitutionally assured to succeed President Yar’adua is Jonathan Goodluck- an authentic son of the Niger Delta!

Therefore, if the president should die tomorrow, it will only trigger a chain of events which nobody in his right senses can fore-tell, certainly not even those allegedly shopping for a suitable Vice-President. The only assured thing is that the president will be buried in an unmarked grave within hours if he dies before sunset, or the morning after if it occurred in the dead of the night. Thereafter, it will be left to the legendary resilience of Nigerians themselves to make sure the country stays glued together.

If the South-South, aided by the much of the south, elevates its parasitic allegations against the north to point of provocation, it will ultimately lead to a backlash and the hardening of positions even possibly the tensions of 1966! If there is decorum and responsibility in their agitations for resource control, it will lead to mutual understanding because only a blind man can deny that the situation in the Niger Delta is a national embarrassment even if its own leaders have not helped matters.

But one thing we can be sure of is this: as a genuine son of the soil, if Jonathan Goodluck succeeds Yar’adua, he will come under tremendous pressure from his own people to deliver. A lot will depend on how he goes about the process. Whatever he eventually does, the people of the north in particular have every reason to be apprehensive.

When Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and his assassins wiped out the Tafawa Balewa-led government in the First Republic, the Acting President of the country at the time who was also the Senate President Dr. Abyssinia Nwafor Orizu had the option and indeed the constitutional responsibility of inviting Bukar Dipcharima, the senior surviving Minister from the ruling NPC to form the next government but failed to do so. Instead his kinsman General Ironsi was invited to usurp our first democratic experience. The rest, as they say, is now history.

It is also a fact that Obasanjo’s third term plot was also a clear breech of the power sharing arrangement of his party before he was elected president in 1999. Many have also believed that even the choice of Yar’adua was his way of hitting back at the north for not having his way over the matter although I need to stress here that the fight against the third term infamy was not a regional affair by any stretch of the imagination because Obasanjo’s debauchery was not restricted to any clearly defined borders.

Therefore, let me in conclusion wish the president a very speedy recovery. But even he will affirm that the surest thing today is like yours truly, and any Nigerian for that matter, he could die at any time. It is a fact backed by the force of nature and affirmed by my faith. What remains hazy is what becomes of the polity thereafter, but the signs are ominous. On that score, permit me to conclude in Pidgin English: me I no know book o!

Justice for Abuja’s red Indians!

The Gwari’s may be the original natives of the FCT, but as far as its economy goes, the Forex traders who made the demolished zone 4 corner shops their home before the arrival of Nasir el-Rufai should also share the rostrum with them for their early adventures in the territory. This highly organized informal traders successfully took full advantage of the deregulation of the foreign exchange market in the late 1980s and 1990s to the extent that by the time democracy returned to these shores in 1999, many of them not only owned successful Bureaux de Change outfits but owned a total of 95 corner shops at the location in between them.

When el-Rufai’s bulldozers put paid to their dreams along with their investments totalling 850,000,000.00, they quickly formed a common front called the Neighbourhood Center Allotees and Tenants Association which was fully registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission in the hope that the plots will be shared among them under the new policy. They were promised much but in the end nothing materialized, that is, until they woke up one day to discover that the plot was allocated to a Savings and Loans company of no known pedigree.

I may have disagreed with the incumbent Minister of the FCT Dr. Aliyu Modibbo Umar, but one area where he has impressed me a great deal is in the protection of the rights of the injured and deprived in the lopsided revocation and reallocation of plots undertaken by his predecessor. Here is hoping that he weaves his magic once again by restoring hope to the original owners of the zone 4 corner shops.