PERSONALIZED PRESIDENCY, THE CASE OF YAR'DUA'S INDISPOSITION?

A case of the chicken and the egg, or does the president mean the same thing as the presidency in Nigeria? Is there a unity of person in the president and the presidency or are the two entities separate and different? In a military dictatorship, may be; but definitely not in a democracy. This question has become imperative as the continuously ailing Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, sidelined by sickness for over three weeks since November 23, 2009, in a hospital bed in far away Jeddah Saudi Arabia, apparently took the presidency with him to his hospital bed; leaving no one clearly identifiable person firmly in charge and running the affairs of Nigeria in his absence?

The lacuna in authority has now gone on for a solid 24 days; and who says there is nothing wrong with a constitutional arrangement that made it impossible for a duly co-elected vice president Jonathan Goodluck to carry on and function effectively in the absence of the president? To make matters worse, no one within Nigerian government circle, including the vice president, the senate president as well as the speaker of the House of Representatives has had the privilege of speaking with the 'quarantined' ailing president of Nigeria, ever since he assumed his sick vacation from the shores of Nigeria? Icheoku asks, how does such a government, in the absence of its chief executive, a chief executive who stubbornly refused to hand over the reins of power to his vice president, function? What guarantees do the people still dealing with what is left of the quasi-executive council of the government have, that contracts reached now will be obliged and enforceable, assuming the sickly president ever recovers enough and returns to call for rendering of accounts of what transpired while he was gone? Who will the sick president get his briefings from upon resumption of duty, assuming he ever recovers, since it is on records that his so called vice president did not get his nod to stand in for him; nor has he been in contact with the sick president ever since the past three weeks he was rushed out of Nigeria in a medical emergency SOS to Jeddah Saudi Arabia?

Icheoku asks, what use therefore is the office of the vice president if a situation as this, which was probably anticipated as a possibility and which most likely induced the creation of the office of the vice president; which situation have now arisen and yet the vice president could not step in to act while the president remains indisposed? The office of the vice president is redundant and should therefore be discarded and election thereto discontinued. Why Nigerians are not numerously asking the tough questions baffles this writer; which unsettling situation of power devolution buttresses the need to urgently accelerate the amendment of the constitution; its slow-crawling through an inept legislature now made unacceptable by the new circumstance! But Icheoku disagrees and emphasises that no amount of sycophancy or selective amnesia will be capable of infusing the president with the presidency, so inseparably that the vice president cannot act in absence of the president? The two positions are not two Siamese twins yoked together beyond medical intervention and are capable of independent co-existence?

What is the wisdom of the fusion of the two different entities - office of the president and the institution of the presidency in the same sick President Umaru Yar'Adua? Why not correctly isolate and separate the two so that the government of Nigeria can continue functioning properly under the full authority of the vice president while President Umaru Yar'Adua recovers and recuperates from his illness? However, it would appear that the National Assembly are collaborators in this political fork on the road, a quagmire of some sort; otherwise why have they not seized this God given opportunity to truly amend the constitution that forced this sick man on Nigeria in the first place and now seems to have 'barred' him from yielding his office on grounds of illness, albeit temporary? He can always ask for it anytime he recovers enough to continue functioning in that capacity. If there is a militating clause in the constitution, expunge it; if an ameliorating one is required, insert it; but the truth must be told that any constitutional democracy which indulges its president so much powers including power to hijack, confiscate and abscond with the presidency and for this long, needs urgent surgical intervention to streamline or curb such excesses! Nigeria's presidency is not President Umaru Yar'Adua's exclusive preserve alone, as he is but the alter-ego and not the whole institution. But unfortunately, Nigeria is not a real functioning society of citizens but a grouping of tribal allegiances society where the people are more loyal to their individual tribes than the country at large; hence the more galvanized resistance from northern Nigeria to scuttle the call for Yar'Adua to step aside. To them, it is their turn to rule and an Umaru Yar'Adua in coma is better than a southern vice president taking over so soon after another southern Olusegun Obasanjo finished his eight years term? Parochial and absurd, you bet.

A functioning country would have had this sickly president formally hand over powers to his vice president ever before he checked into the intensive care unit, of a foreign hospital, in far away Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. What if the president went into irreversible coma while undergoing a battery of tests, and transits from there to the land beyond with unshared state secrets and information? What if the bellicose and continuing belligerent Cameroon sends across their gendarmes to invade Nigeria, may be over some still unsettled Bakassi matter, without a commander-in-chief around to order the military into battle? What if there is a major disaster or emergency requiring the president to marshall out resources or declare a state of emergency? Why are the constitutional lawyers in Nigeria not livid and shouting on top of their lungs over this humongous aberration? Imagine a country's president is away and indisposed for three weeks and counting; and the number three citizen in Nigeria, the senate president, does not even have access to him and have not spoken to him ever since?

Imagine a functioning country where a president's sickness and health is being made a private family matter and not the country's business; and yet the medical bills and the cost of constantly flying him to so many different hospitals around the globe are being borne by the countries tax-payers and supplemented with the country's scarce foreign exchange? And Turai Yar'Adua alone is calling all the shots and making all decisions as to a Nigeria's president's medical needs and treatments? Imagine a situation where Turai does not allow or wilfully refuses any government official access to their president, including the senate president who had to go through the president's wife to get whatever snippets of information that she is willing to release on the president's condition; and give also possible directives as to the continuous running of the government? Say it ain't true Nigerians! Even in the United States of America, before a president goes to his routine annual physical checkup, he is required to sign over the presidency to his vice, pending his re-emergence? How then can a nation's number three citizen be taking directive from an unelected woman, just because that woman is married to a weakling president who is medically indisposed in a distant foreign land's hospital? The vice president too, it is alleged have not heard nor spoken with the president, for three weeks now since he was rushed off to Saudi Arabia in a medical emergency; that Icheoku wonders, if the Nigerian experiment is working at all?

Thankfully though, Femi Falana has filed a suit for the court to adjudicate on this constitutional aberration, which inextricably and inadvertently fused the office of the president with the institution of the presidency, such that an elected vice president cannot act in his stead as he was supposed to in the absence of his ailing president? Icheoku prays that the court will find the courage to resolve this situation before it turns into a conflagration that might as well be the final 'nunc dimitius' of Nigeria? And to compound matters, various insider reports has it that President Umaru Yar'Adua “will not be returning to Nigeria anytime soon, if he does at all;” and so does the tension continue to pervade and envelope the land over the rightful leader to pilot the ship of state. Other sources said that were he to ever make it out alive to Nigeria, that he would be effectively incapacitated to function ever again as Nigeria’s chief executive? Grave and fearful indeed, is the situation. Another source said that President Umaru Yar'Adua's health condition is so messed up and his kidney too deteriorated that he is not even a viable candidate for a transplant, otherwise an kidney would have been fished out from somewhere, even if Chinese?

Icheoku also disagrees with the fantasy-theory of Attorney General Micheal Aondoakaa that "the President was constitutionally empowered to exercise his power from anywhere in the world," and challenge him to produce such document! No, the president has a territorial area of authority called Nigeria and it behoves on him to be present where his authority resides; and not while still confined in another President or King's land, sequestrated in a bed in a hospital built by that sovereign, magically preside over the affairs of Nigeria through telepathy? If he must continue to rule Nigeria, he must by necessity first return to be with the Nigerians he intend to rule and in Nigeria, period! Further, Icheoku says to Madam Information Minister Dora Akunyili that we shall continue to talk about the president's indisposition and if she brands it 'over-emphasis', so be it; but Nigerians deserves to know the health condition of their president and when he is returning to Nigeria from a foreign country's hospital bed? Is it not shameful that Nigeria's president is a patient in a foreign hospital, the like of which, he could not establish in Nigeria but shamelessly absconds to each time and every time he has a medical crisis? Anyway, the best way to resolve what is, is for the president to recover and return to his duties at Aso Rock asap; it is the only magic silver bullet that could kill off all these rumblings in the land, so please dear God, heal President Umaru Yar'Adua for the sake of one Nigeria!