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nairaland.net • View topic - How Well is Our President?

How Well is Our President?

For the most part, Nigerian presidents are figureheads. They all come and go with nothing to show for their terms in office.
We would love to track accomplishments of our Presidents, so credit can be given where credit is due.

How Well is Our President?

Postby Richard Akindele » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:42 pm

As incredible as it may sound, the true state of Yar'Adua's health is increasingly becoming a good theme for a doctoral thesis. Just how well is our president? Is he: very well; not too well; sick and needs regular treatment; or sick and needs persevering prayers? Suddenly, Yar'Adua - a president not known to turndown photo-opportunities with famous world leaders - skipped the celebrity-loaded opening of the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly just to "devote more time to his seven-point agenda"! One respectable elder statesman was even quoted as lambasting those discussing the "over-flogged" issue of Yar'Adua's health as "wicked Nigerians" who should rather be praying for him. I beg to disagree. The real "wicked Nigerians" are those who embark on prayers without focus since nobody has told them the president is sick talk less what ails him. The "wicked Nigerians" are the prayer-worriers (not warriors!) that are sycophantically attempting to shave Yar'Adua's hair in his absence and without his consent!

Those who peddle the monstrous hypothesis that Nigerians should keep their concerns about the president's health to themselves (or vilify us for making a "mountain of a mole-hill") - because the president is entitled to be sick like any other human being - miss the point entirely. Yar'Adua is not plain Citizen Adamu. If he was, nobody, except his inner circle of friends and family members, would be bothered. He is President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the nation's armed forces. Apart from the imperative of ascertaining whether Yar'Adua still has the capacity and capability to govern this nation and lead her armed forces in a most effective and efficient manner, he is also being catered for from the public purse and the Nigerian people have the right to know the burden they are carrying at any point in time.

Something else makes my skin crawl with apprehension. Nigeria has cultivated a high profile in African and global affairs. Have you watched the movie titled The Manchurian Candidate? No? Get a copy and watch it today. You'll understand why no right-thinking nation allows her military, political and intelligence leaders to be treated in foreign hospitals. Just imagine the amount of havoc an undetected remote-controlled microchip embedded in one or several of them can wreck on our national interests - especially with so much at stake in the murky world of international oil politics!

How can I also ignore Babagana Kingibe's dismissal for allegedly trying to upstage Yar'Adua? Kingibe's ouster was doubtless designed to kill two birds with one diversionary stone: get rid of an over-ambitious 'friend' and cast Yar'Adua in the mould of a born-again action hero. But Sai Baba's alleged high-wire maneuvers to must also be viewed from another perspective. As Secretary to the Government of the Federation and ranking member of the president's kitchen cabinet it can be deduced that Kingibe knows Yar'Adua "inside-out." Now, clearly, Kingibe won't have embarked on such a high-risk venture as supplanting Yar'Adua - as alleged - unless the privileged information at his disposal convinced him beyond reasonable doubt that the president's 'infirmity' would make him constitutionally incapacitated (if not dead) to perform his executive functions. He miscalculated; the president 'recovered' and then fired him. But that doesn't soothe my burgeoning anxiety over what Kingibe apparently knows about the nature of the president's sickness that the rest of us don't know - something that is still inexplicably shrouded in secrecy. Something too that necessitated the recent unprecedented administration of an oath of secrecy on about 70 presidential aides!

My initial reaction went from disbelief to rage when the news broke that Yar'Adua had sneaked into the country like a thief in the night at the unholy hour of 3a.m. I mellowed down with the passing of time. After all, who knows the kinds of reports the security agencies and other confidants fed the president. With the alleged involvement of a political survivalist like Kingibe can anyone blame the president for fearing the worst? Arriving unexpectedly at the wee hours of the morning might have been an effective ploy to steal the alleged conspirators' thunder.

But I don't intend to be so forgiving of the president's refusal to soothe our frayed nerves by making a nationwide radio and television broadcast shortly upon arrival. He certainly would have attracted much sympathy and support by doing so because no one in his right senses can malign the president for falling sick. He won't be the first world leader to fall sick in office but none of the others in recent memory used their illness to play who's-in-the-garden with their countrymen. "Silence," wrote the English novelist Samuel Butler, "is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence." The president's tactless silence is nothing short of a contemptible disdain for Nigerians - one which must never be repeated in the future.

Vice-President V NIPSS

Director-General of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Yakubu Sankey and Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan are reportedly at daggers drawn over an allegation of stealing brought against one D.A. Briggs, a NIPSS Assistant Director (AD). A missing camera was found on Briggs during a training program in China and the NIPSS instituted an Administrative Panel to probe the allegation that he stole it. Briggs petitioned the VP on the basis that he's the victim of a witch-hunt. He admitted that the camera in question was found in his possession but that he picked it from the floor with the intention of returning it to the owner but didn't because - wait for it - he has "a medical history of memory loss"!

How a man ravaged by such a malady attained the high office of AD in such a sensitive institution is mind-numbing. But I'm angry that the VP deemed it "fit and proper" to overrule the NIPSS on the basis of a "due process, which is a cardinal point of the (Yar'Adua) administration." Knowing how the Nigerian nepotistic political ecosystem works, it is quite logical that Briggs cried to a garrison commander in the ruling party who knew someone that knew the VP. Some 'due process' indeed! I advise Sankey to discretely secure the standby services of an attorney adept in the pyrotechnics of 'aggressive litigation.'

Dumb Ass Award

This week's award goes to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). Firstly, it failed to provide recorded tapes of the national anthems of Nigeria and Sudan during the recent U-20 Africa Youth Championship qualifier in Abuja.

Secondly, it couldn't present the players' international passports until after the first half, when a taxi driver rushed the bag containing the documents to the stadium (remember how Magaji Abdullahi, a NFF staffer attached to the Flying Eagles, falsely claimed it was snatched from him at gunpoint!).

Doubtlessly, queries and warnings will start flying a dime a dozen as part of defensive maneuverings by underperforming bosses, ignoring a maxim of French aviator and author Antoine De Saint-Exupery: "A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I'm beaten' and not 'My men were beaten...'"
Richard Akindele
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