Not The President But The Man

Op-ed, West Africa  |  05.06.10   By Kingsley Ewetuya

The reactions have begun to pour in. The politicians armed with their penchant for clichés are “greatly saddened and pray that almighty God grant the family the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss.”

Others are already determining the place of President Umaru Yar’Adua in Nigerian history and wondering about his presidential legacy.

I can only wonder if anyone has even spared a thought for Umaru Musa Yaradua, the man.

I can recall the funeral of Coretta Scott King, the civil rights icon and widow of the slain Martin Luther King, Jr.

Public figures far and wide came to eulogize her and spoke eloquently of her struggle for civil rights.

They spoke of her politics and her interactions with the movers and shakers of policy, while some used the occasion to assail the policies of President George W. Bush who was also in attendance.

During the ceremony, President Clinton was invited to speak. Pointing to the casket bearing her body, he simply said, “I don’t want us to forget that there’s a woman in there, not a symbol — not a symbol — a real woman who lived and breathed and got angry and got hurt and had dreams and disappointments. And I don’t want us to forget that… We’re here to honor a person.”

Let us not sugarcoat the issue. President Yar’Adua did not have the right policies and execution to move Nigeria forward.

I for one described his governance as lethargic and I stand by that.

Yet, one must make a distinction between the President and the man.

To paraphrase the words of Robert Kennedy, President Yaradua “need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; he should be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

To say otherwise would be the apogee of hypocrisy.

The man Yar’Adua to the core of his being was honorable and was taken advantage of by dishonorable men and simply did not have the constitution to fight them all.

From former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who foisted the presidency on an ailing man who only wanted to return to teaching chemistry, to the notorious cabal of self-serving ministers led by a certain over-ambitious relative unworthy of mention, who milked his comatose body for all it was worth,  the man Yar’Adua from quarters far and near was robbed of his dignity.

A friend of mine aptly remarked that, “They allowed the dignity of his name to be turned into a byword for confusion, they caused his personal integrity to be forever called into question, and he was in no position to protest his plight.”

Let the man Yar’Adua now and for all eternity rest from the tumult of life in Nigeria.

Let him indeed find repose from hurt, lost dreams, and disappointments while a doubtful nation tries to pick up the pieces and find closure.

Let those who used him as a tool for their ignoble purposes remember that the evil that men do lives after them.

And let Nigerians through the death of the man Yar’Adua, come to terms with the sad reality of the nation as stated by the late Bola Ige, shortly before he was killed:

“Nigeria is worth living for, but is not worth dying for.”

Indeed

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