By Dele Sobowale
“To sleep all night through beseemeth not one that is a counselor to whom peoples are entrusted and so many cares belong”.Homer, 900 B.C.
(VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, p.49).

The president of Nigeria is asleep. What we don’t know is if he temporarily asleep or permanently asleep.
Exactly this week last year, I started the two part series titled “OPEN LETTER TO TURAI YAR’ADUA”.

Exactly this week last year, the President of Nigeria was in Germany for what his family and the spokespersons for the Federal Government said was “routine check-up” which lasted longer than any such check-up known to history.
Last month, as the President headed for Saudi Arabia, Nigerians again received the usually conflicting reports.

First, it was announced that he was going for Holy Pilgrimage; then he was reported to be undergoing another routine check-up from which he would soon return. The January 2009 series of articles were reprinted in December when the present unfolding calamity was still in its infancy.

What was the message to Mrs. Turai Yar’Adua? Please take your husband home to Katsina; get him to resign his appointment as President and leave Nigeria to pursue its destiny.

There was no doubt in my mind that the message would be ignored. But, all the same, in the series of essays entitled “ADVENTURES IN PROPHECY”, I had written as follows. “But anyone ignoring my warnings almost always comes to grief”.

Even the village idiot knows now that Mrs. Turai Yar’Adua is in grief; the family is in grief; the President (if he is still conscious enough to show emotions) is in grief and the grief has extended to the entire nation.Irrespective of which stand you take regarding Yar’Adua’s failure or refusal to hand over to Vice President Jonathan, you must be saddened by the sudden turn of events.

Those who supported Yar’Adua for not handing over or writing to the National Assembly have, in the last 50 or more days, had to concoct more lies than can possibly fit into the NIGERIAN BOOK OF OFFICIAL LIES –if ever such a document is published. At least one minister, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, has so devalued that highly respected office on account of this, it is difficult to imagine how he will go about redeeming his integrity.

What lies have Nigerians not been told; which laws or sections of the constitution have not been twisted out of shape to serve dubious ends; who knows for sure if the President actually signed the Supplementary 2009 Budget or his signature was forged; to what level of ridicule has our nation not been subjected around the world?

Finally, as this piece is being written, there is a protest on in Abuja by Nigerians demanding to know the where about of our president against the background of an obscure American newspaper’s report that our president died as far back as December 10, 2009.

According to American Chronicle the death was kept secret from Nigerians on the orders of Mrs. Yar’Adua “for personal reasons”. I  hope that is not true because it would have confirmed some of the damnable information I received about Mrs. Yar’Adua after publishing the warning in January and December 2009.

True or false, one thing is now undeniable, so much so even the government’s top spin doctors must feel overwhelmed – the president’s absence has become a national embarrassment which can no longer be tolerated nor ignored. When the great Mark Twain, 1835 –1910, was reported dead by the Associated Press, he cabled from Europe, “The report of my death was an exaggeration”.

Twain was not even a Head of State. When presidential candidate Umoru Yar’Adua collapsed on the podium (a signal we all missed regarding the disaster that was ahead of us) and his death was rumoured, a crude message from President Obasanjo woke him up, “Umoru are you dead?” Now a president, the same Yar’Adua is pronounced dead and the response is silence. What does that tell us; because to me it speaks volumes?

If we assume he is dead, then those lying to us have done this country an irreparable damage; they might even have committed indictable offences.

They certainly have been unpatriotic. If he is not dead, then they have treated 140 million or more Nigerians with contempt we don’t deserve for honouring their family with the custodianship of the Presidency of our country. They have disgraced the office; they have disgraced the nation and above all they have disgraced themselves.

A few people are “alive” in the world today but who are on perpetual life support systems. They cannot leave the hospital and are virtually vegetables. The former Prime Minister of Israel, Sharon, has been in coma since 2006; so are about 200 people worldwide. None of them, however great will ever be allowed to govern their nations from their sick beds. As General De Gaulle had said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable people”. Yar’Adua and nobody else born of woman in Nigeria is indispensable.

If our president is alive but functionally dead, yes dead, then let it be known. We shall sympathise with him and his family, because Nigerians are very understanding, we shall stand by them to the end but we have to move on as a nation. One thing is now beyond dispute – he cannot on his own powers walk out of the hospital. The first question is what can he do?

The next question is will that be enough for a national leader? Certainly nobody who is being fed intravenously can undertake the job of a clerk not to talk of a president because the president’s job breaks the health of previously healthy people. It is not an assignment for the already sick.

Finally, we must ask the most critical question –what if he is dead or has been dead since December 10, 2009 as the American paper proclaimed? First, power has automatically passed to the Vice President Jonathan –at least for now. Second, we must now start the process of cleaning up the mess he would have left behind by refusing to be statesman enough to hand over power to the VP on his way to Saudi.

And if you think there is not a lot of mess to clean up, let me start by reminding you that some people, who could be criminals, had told us that the President signed the Supplementary Budget –after December 10, 2009. Some people should be getting ready to change their designer suits or babanriga for ill-fitting Kirikiri suits on this one alone.