Nigerian Cabinet and Senate is a Babel but Fact Remains: Umaru Yar’Adua is Too Sick to Lead!

Nigerian Cabinet and Senate is a Babel but Fact Remains: Umaru Yar’Adua is Too Sick to Lead!

The saying ‘there is always something new coming out Africa’ has been modified in Nigeria to read ‘there is always something silly coming out of Africa’. The fact that Umaru Yar’Adua is incapacitated is as clear as daylight but the Nigerian cabinet is blind to this fact.

The Cabinet insists that just because Umaru Yar’Adua is not in the country does not mean that he is not leading the country! This an answer to a court order that the cabinet decide within fourteen days whether Umaru Yar’Adua is fit or not to lead.

The Senate is reading on a different but equally wrong script too, the constitution clearly stipulate that the president should furnish parliament with a written letter that he intends to take a medical vacation. Umaru Yar’Adua did not do it. And he obviously broke the law. But the Senate is treating him with kid gloves.

Just because Umaru Yar’Adua has not been pronounced dead does not mean he is alive. If Israel was Nigeria, (with due respect to Sharon) the cabinet would have the comatose former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon as president. The late President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia was branded a cabbage by the opposition owing to his ill health prior to elections and he went on to die in office. Is it not time the health of a leader be a factor on his capacity to lead?

A nation cannot be held hostage by the ill health of one man who happens to be the president. The Nigerian constitution cannot be that stupid not to cater for such eventuality. It is only that some self seekers would rather sink a country rather than have a new political dispensation. That is why there is a lot of debate and convoluted interpretations of the constitution on an obvious issue.
The cabinet has declared that he is still capable of governing the country! Somebody who has been bedridden for two months is not capable of running a stall of yams leave alone a nation of 140 million people.
The Senate, however, has called on him to provide a letter saying he is sick, which would allow his deputy to take power, as acting president! Please, to know that Umaru Yar’Adua is sick, go to state house and ask for him. If he aint there, then he is elsewhere and that elsewhere is Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, not eating foo foo but sick and he is been there for the last two months. Do you still need a letter to prove it?
The fact that the north has a tacit rotating presidency with the south is not pragmatic at the present circumstances. What if he dies (God forbid), will his corpse rule Nigeria till another northerner is elected president? Desperate times calls for desperate measures.
Nigeria should not burn any more energy on a dead cert. Umaru Yar’Adua is very sick and cannot lead Nigeria now and for some months to come if he survives. He is probably so sick that he is not fully aware that he is a president. So, don’t ask him anymore for a written letter conferring Gudluck Jonathan the power to act as president.

Not even juju can alter the fact that Umaru Yar’Adua is sick and may even die! Unfortunate as it may, we cannot change this and it is only fools who relish in wishful thinking.

The cabinet and the senate are paid to lead Nigeria not to confuse it, if they cannot, then the courts of Nigeria have an obligation and the mandate to interpret the constitution and give the way forward. If the courts fail, then it is incumbent on the people of Nigeria to demand new elections.

An offshore president is a no show president!