Nigeria: Rough Seas, No Captain

Op-ed, West Africa  |  12.22.09   By Kingsley Ewetuya

I remember a humorous tale I read some time ago. On the eve of a naval battle, a captain and his aide-de-camp were reviewing strategy. It was obvious to both of them that the battle would be lost since they were outgunned and outflanked.

With fear and tension in the air, the captain said to his aide “I don’t want to wear my white shirt, bring out my red one.”

With the aide looking on inquiringly, the captain said, “Should I be shot tomorrow, the shirt would camouflage the blood. I don’t want the men to see me bleeding and be disheartened. I want them to give it all they’ve got.”

The aide complied and then proceeded to go to his room. “Where are you going?” the captain asked and the aide replied, “To lay out my brown trousers.”

As I look at the current state of affairs in Nigeria, I cannot but ponder the words of William Butler Yeats: “Things fall apart and the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Nigeria is a rudderless ship swaying from port to starboard in the tempestuous waters of corruption and mal-governance while proceeding head on to the iceberg that is a failed state. As if that isn’t precarious enough, this ship is without her captain.

Since November 23, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has been hospitalized in Saudi Arabia leaving the affairs of state in limbo.

Very little has been said or done to assure the citizens that their leader is alive.

Cuba’s Fidel Castro, despite his incapacitating medical situation, had the courtesy to release videos of him reading newspapers while clad in athletic gear in order to reassure Cubans that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. When it became clear that he could no longer juggle treatment and dictatorship, he handed over power to Raul Castro, his younger brother.

Even a dictator who stole power in a bloody revolution knows when enough is enough.

The President’s ill-health and lack of vitality is no secret. During the 2007 presidential campaign he released a propaganda video that showed him playing squash to assure skeptical Nigerians that he was up to the rigors that the top job demands. Yet, we find that this is not the case.

In the two years since Yar’Adua has occupied the presidential villa at Aso Rock, he has left the country several times for “medical check ups.” An opportunity that an overwhelming majority of Nigerians cannot afford.

What does it say of our country when even our president cannot rely on Nigeria’s medical infrastructure? If there is no hospital capable of treating our president, what should the poor masses do?

What began as a political parlour game has now turned into a constitutional crisis. Yar’Adua’s refusal to formally hand over power even if temporarily to his immediate deputy has created a power vacuum and a political free for all.

Who if anyone is in charge of the most populous country in Africa?

Since the president’s hospitalization in Saudi Arabia, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has chaired over Federal Executive Council meetings. However, since only the president can approve FEC resolutions, the validity of those deliberations is in question.

With inflation at 12 percent according to the National Bureau of Statistics, abject poverty, epileptic power supply, fuel scarcity and chief among all, the Niger-Delta crisis, the issue piquing the intellect of those in the corridors of power is if Jonathan, who is Christian and hails from the Niger-Delta state of Bayelsa, can replace Yar’Adua who is Muslim and is an indigene of Katsina, a Northern State.

According to an article in the Sunday Punch newspaper on November 28, some have pressured Vice President Jonathan to resign:

”They are saying that it is the only way to preserve the peace and unity of the country. The North would not accept a Southern President so soon after former President Olusegun Obasanjo and that the powerful elements in the region believe that the former President set up the North. They believe that Obasanjo knew that Yar’Adua was too ill to complete his term, so he foisted him on the region so that power would return to the South.”

It is said that adversity brings out the best or the worst in people and clearly in Nigeria, the latter is the situation. If we cannot move beyond petty ethnic differences even in times like these, our goose is cooked and we are monumentally screwed.

According to Spencer Swartz of the Wall Street Journal, Royal Dutch Shell wants to get rid of its onshore oil-production outlets due to the lack of security in the Niger-Delta region.

Shell is essentially giving up on Nigeria’s lack of leadership on the Niger-Delta issue, as Angola has silently upstaged Nigeria as Africa’s top oil producer. Neighboring Ghana’s newly discovered field also gives foreign investors a reason to leave Nigeria and move to greener pastures.

In addition, the Associated Press reports that “even militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta, whom Yar’Adua brought into peace talks only weeks ago, now worry they have no ‘good faith partner’ to negotiate an end to attacks that have cut into Nigeria’s oil-dependent economy.”

How long can we continue like this?

Ominously still, Nigeria’s security and cohesion is not only threatened by the Niger-Delta conflicts, but in my opinion more so by a military waiting with bated breath for another opportunity to return from the barracks to the villa.

We have seen this movie before and know that it ends badly. When politicians are bickering and not solving problems, our military feels the onus falls upon them to bring change.

In 1966, just three years after Nigeria became a republic, Colonel Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu in an address to the nation said the military seized power because of “the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent, those that seek to help the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those who have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Exactly forty years later, in January 2006, former Army General Victor Malu (rtd.) in a speech to the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) said because of his loyalty to President Obasanjo and respect for democracy while still in service, he refused to overthrow his boss.

In his words: “Maybe because I was loyal to Obasanjo, I would have done what I was supposed to do; but I believed in democracy. So, I did not organize to overthrow him. Because I am a principled trained officer, I insisted on the principles being applied. For that, I disagreed with Gen. Obasanjo on certain issues. I told him that if he thought that he made me Chief of Army Staff as a favor, I think he should tell me who to hand over to. I think it was a blessing that I was kicked out, otherwise, I might have changed my mind from being a democrat to something else.”

Obasanjo, being first a military man and a former military dictator was able to keep his generals in line. They owed him their loyalty and gave it.

On the other hand, Yar’Adua has no such luck and does not possess the unending loyalty of the armed forces despite his title as Commander-in-Chief.His perceived weakness only gives them the impetus to do that which they seek an excuse to do, which is to seize power and return Nigeria to its dark junta days.

Our “democrazy,” in the words of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is too fragile to withstand another coup. It would be the final nail in our coffin.

The remedy to this power vacuum is staring us in the face.

Regardless of the wanton disdain for it, Nigeria does have a constitution and Chapter VI, Part I, section 144 states:

“(1) The President or Vice-President shall cease to hold office, if -

(a) by a resolution passed by two-thirds majority of all the members of the executive council of the Federation it is declared that the president or vice-president is incapable of discharging the functions of his office; and

(b) the declaration is verified, after such medical examination as may be necessary, by a medical panel established under subsection (4) of this section in its report to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

(2) Where the medical panel certifies in the report that in its opinion the president or vice-president is suffering from such infirmity of body or mind as renders him permanently incapable of discharging the functions of his office, a notice thereof signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall be published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation.”

What in heaven’s name are we waiting for? If two-thirds of the majority of the Federal Executive Council cannot see that the President is incapable of governing the country, they themselves belong in an asylum.

For the sake of Nigeria, the Executive Council should rise above their lack of testicular fortitude and act accordingly by declaring the president incapable, as he obviously is, so he and Nigeria can both peacefully recover.

Nigeria’s ship of state has been rocking for forty nine years and the people are seasick, and have had enough.

In the name of decency, restore stability before we all sink

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