PRESIDENTIAL QUALITIES
“Men of ordinary physique and discretion cannot be Presidents and live, if the strains be not somehow relieved. We shall be obliged always to be picking our chief magistrates [presidents] from among wise and prudent athletes – a small class”.
President Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States, New York: Columbia University Press, 1908, pp 79-80.

Last week, I started with Jos and ended with Warri; this week let me reverse the approach. In the end we are looking at the same impending catastrophe from two different ends of a prism.

A modern philosopher has also added his own list, the stomach which demands food everyday and the sea into which all rivers flow, yet never seems to have enough.

All of a sudden, the language changes to suit the new situation. Fortunately, the matters involved are very simple and straightforward to people who are not shackled by demands of office.

After that he hurdled over three Boeing 747 planes, two Airbuses and a Boeing 787 Dreamliner taxing for take-off almost hitting his back foot on the tail fin of the aircraft. He claimed another record in the highest hurdles.

“But history sometimes indulges in jokes of questionable taste”. Joseph S. Schumpeter, 1942. We gained international disrepute by having the largest pool of ghost workers in public service in the world.

There are at least three reasons Jonathan will not be on the ballot in 2010; and if he forces himself on it disaster will follow. One reason, and one reason only, dictates this letter to Mrs Jonathan. She can ignore it if she likes. But, at least half a dozen people (Mustapha, Ekwueme, Obasanjo, El-Rufai, Ribadu, Soludo etc ) who were warned on this page and who ignored the warning are now licking their wounds –including her predecessor in office. I don’t want her to join them in “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. The choice however is hers.

To be quite candid, not being a lawyer and after reading what various lawyers have said about the senate action, I don’t really know. This is one of those matters on which the majority might not even be right. What has been done is certainly expedient but whether it is constitutional or not will eventually be determined by the courts because there is little doubt in my mind that the action will be challenged. Yar’Adua is to blame.

Indeed what went wrong, as the text message asked? Interestingly, that text message represents perhaps the mildest form of dishonour attaching to the person of Yar’Adua that I have heard people voice across the land since the man and his wife departed to Saudi 69 days ago today Sunday, January 31, 2010. Many of the other insults that have been hauled in the direction of the presidency are totally unprintable.

“All men like best to join up with the power that is the first to show its strength”. Xenophon, 430-370 B.C.
(VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS p. 197).