Prologue
By Ikeddy ISIGUZO,  Chairman, Editorial Board

IF Matthew Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, got better career counseling,  he could have been one of the best dramatists in the traditional genre, dusting the likes of Hurbert Ogunde Baba Sala and Zebrudaya.

“Umaru, are you dead? They say you are dead”.  Obasanjo had put a call through to Yar’Adua at a campaign ground. This drama was staged on live television to refute rumours almost three years ago, that Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, then presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had died in the German hospital where he sought medical succour.

A croaky Umaru was heard on the background as more aides drew microphones closer to pick the voice off the telephone. Applause rent the air – he was alive! At the heat of the campaigns for the 2007 election, Yar’Adua was flown abroad, his publicists said, to treat a chest infection that resulted from the dust and stress of the campaign.

Concerns about the President’s health have assumed new dimensions since then. We have not ceased wondering where Umaru is. Obasanjo’s question has become a refrain in the past 50 days or so when orchestrated confusion has been dramatised to run Nigeria without a constitutional head.

The Nigerian leader missed two UN General Assemblies. On each occasion he was seeking medical attention in Saudi Arabia. Other international engagements are going without effective Nigerian presence, especially sessions that are only for Presidents.

From blatant lies about the President’s health to the purported interview on BBC radio, it is obvious that those who know where the President is, and how he is have a lot to hide. Several subterfuges have been deployed to this crumbling enterprise.

Why did the President speak to a foreign medium? Why did he speak in Hausa, and not English, the official language? Were the issues he discussed sectional and not for the entire country? Were these the latest additions to the numerous insults we have endured since his trip last November?

Debates about the authenticity of the voice those who understand Hausa heard on BBC has done more damage to attempts to assure anyone that the President was recovering. How ill is the President? Who has been wielding his executive powers?

The President we were told would be back soon. We were later reminded that he was human and was entitled to be ill. He was not too ill to run the country from his hospital bed, and he was not the first leader of a country to run his country his sick bed (abroad?).

Aba Aji, the President’s Senior Special Assistant National Assembly Matters solemnly informed Nigerians that the President, as Governor of Katsina State, was away for six months tending his health. He returned, sought another tenure and completed his eight years as governor. Aji concluded that the President’s health challenge would be conquered and he would complete a second term.

When Nigerians ask questions, they are warned that the health of the President was none of their business. The innovative appropriation of constitutional provisions that assigned duties to the President has kept the President’s closest aides busy.

Each day, a new situation reminds us that there was a reason for Section 142 of our Constitution, which outlines how the President should cede powers to the Vice President when the President is ill or on vacation.

Yar’Adua and his acolytes, in their quest to cling to power, spare no thoughts for the dangerous constitutional precedents they are setting. The presidency is now the personal affair of whoever grabs it. No matter how ill he is, even if he has to run the country from a sickbed or leave it rudderless for two months, we have to let him be.

Their attitude has cost Yar’Adua every sympathy that his illness should generate. Nigerians watch expectations blurred in the absence of a president who even when he was around was too vitiated to  provide leadership.

For once, our President is ill and we are staging protests asking him to leave office. Soon his own people would be on the streets too, praising his seven point agenda, restoration of peace in the Niger Delta, patriotism and rule of law.

An apostle of the rule of law cannot miss this opportunity to re-affirm his belief in the Constitution. My assumption is that he is healthy enough to miss anything.
We can’t empower Jonathan — Shehu

Yar’ Adua/Jonathan divide the North:

Yar’Adua must hand-over – FALANA