Sunday
January 3, 2010 |
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Nigeria is in danger of entering an
unprecedented stage as a hijacked entity. In fact, the polity is in the
throes of what ought to be called its proper name, a coup-in-progress. A
small but desperate cabal is surreptitiously consolidating its
illegitimate power grab.
Nigeria has been reduced to Umaru Yar’Adua’s private toy, a plaything
reserved for the sole pleasure of the man and his cronies.
As I write, Mr. Yar’Adua (whose self-appellation as servant-leader has
become the cruel joke it was designed to be) has been away from Nigeria
for more than forty days. Apart from his wife, and a tiny circle of
associates, few Nigerians can swear that they know for certain where
Yar’Adua is. All we know for sure is that he’s not in Aso Rock, the
official residence of the Nigerian president. Most Nigerians imagine, of
course, that the man is in a hospital in Saudi Arabia – not because it’s
proven fact, but it’s simply the official line. It’s impossible to vouch
for any information that comes from a government that’s raised duplicity
and deception to the level of art.
Forget, for a moment, that Yar’Adua’s “presidency” still reeks – despite
the shameful verdict of the Supreme Court – of illegality. Worse, before
our very eyes, a cabal hitched to Yar’Adua is usurping the sovereign
will of Nigerians. That group is acting in the name of an enfeebled man
who (at this writing) has absconded from his post.
Michael Aondoakaa, Yar’Adua’s Attorney General, may not be at the center
of this usurpation, but he strikes me as chief coordinator of this
orchestrated conquest of Nigeria. Yar’Adua’s wife, Turai – who’s perhaps
the most ambitious “presidential” spouse in Nigeria’s history – appears
to be the chief engineer.
It no longer startles Nigerians to hear it said that Aondoakaa is the
worst attorney general in his country’s history. Nigeria has had some
pretty unimpressive attorney generals, but Aondoakaa stands in a class
all his own for mediocrity and crassness. Now he’s adding something even
more dangerous and troubling to his resume: a facility for defending the
degradation of the Nigerian constitution.
It is a constitutional anomaly when a man who presumes to be Nigeria’s
president disappears indefinitely to a foreign address without handing
over the instruments of governance. If an American president has to be
sedated briefly for a medical procedure, he usually hands over to the
vice president for as long as he is under sedation. The business of a
nation-state demands adherence to such scrupulous standards. But this is
not the case in Yar’Adua’s notion of statecraft. He and his handlers
appear contemptuous of the idea that the nation’s interests are
paramount. Here is a “president” who seeks, above all, to subordinate
Nigeria’s interests to his desire for self-aggrandizement. That’s why he
routinely bottles the “presidential” seal and steals away with it to any
hospital he visits, usually for prolonged treatment.
If Yar’Adua doesn’t know better, it’s Aondoakaa’s job to tell him that
it’s not permissible to proceed on open-ended medical trips without
inviting his deputy to act in his absence. Yet, it’s either that
Aondoakaa knows just as much as Yar’Adua does, which is little, or –
scary as it is – knows even less than the man he’s supposed to be
advising on legal and constitutional matters. That, or Aondoakaa’s
personal interests are served by encouraging Yar’Adua to affect disdain
for the Nigerian people and their constitution.
At any rate, when Nigerians began to bemoan the vacuum created by
Yar’Adua’s absence (a vacuum, by the way, that is just as pronounced
even when Yar’Adua is embedded in Abuja), Aondoakaa remained nonchalant.
When he stirred at all, it was to tell Nigerians that Yar’Adua remained
able to govern from any location in the world. That’s how little the
attorney general thinks of governance; if it pleases Yar’Adua and his
cohorts, he may govern from a hospital where, for all we know, he may be
on life support.
Then, in a curious twist, the attorney general reportedly forwarded a
letter to Goodluck Jonathan asking him to act as “president” under a
rather shady, even illegal, arrangement. Several Nigerian newspapers
reported that Jonathan suspected a nefarious plot, and refused to be
entrapped.
It appeared that the concession that Jonathan rejected was necessitated
by two looming crises. One had to do with the signing of N353.6 billion
supplementary budget; the other with the swearing-in of Justice Aloysius
Katsina-Alu as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Those who mistake Nigeria for Yar’Adua’s private possession soon
discovered that they didn’t need to cede control to Jonathan, however
briefly, in order to avert what appeared to be imminent constitutional
perils.
In a stunning maneuver, the cabal that’s gradually perfecting its hijack
of Nigeria caused it to be announced that Yar’Adua had “signed” the
budget from his hospital bed. Pronto, one constitutional headache was
erased by that signature stunt performed by a political magician who
once threatened to thrash those doubting the vibrancy of his health in
rounds of squash. In another act of dubiety, Yar’Adua’s resourceful
cabal persuaded outgoing Chief Justice Legbo Kutigi to break with
convention and swear in his successor.
Here, then, is how things stand. It’s looking good – very good, even if
temporarily – for the cabal that’s bent on stealing and then ruining
Nigeria. With the supplementary budget “signed,” they have secured the
cash to operate as they wish – for the next two or three months. If
anybody needs to be bought or intimidated, there’s the cash to do it.
They have also established a precedent, namely, that future budgetary
requests could be sent from Yar’Adua’s unknown hospital address and
“signed” in the same manner, in perfect secrecy.
In effect, a physically and morally sickly Yar’Adua and his cartel have
morphed into a foreign power, with Nigeria as their conquered outpost.
No Nigerian need set eye on Yar’Adua any time soon; his inner circle has
proven that the man can govern with the same effectiveness quotient as
when the man was ensconced in Aso Rock. Since he has always been a
disaster even when resident in Abuja, odds are that he would continue to
rule with the same aptitude for ineptitude from his secret foreign
fortress.
The new arrangement will permanently silence those (disgruntled)
elements demanding that Yar’Adua pass the baton to Jonathan. Aondoakaa
and his sponsors need never break a sweat from now on. Even if Yar’Adua
becomes incapacitated, that fact would be conveniently withheld from
Nigerians. He would continue to rule – that’s the operative word, rule –
by the say-so of his trusted confidantes who best understand Yar’Adua’s
seven-point agenda and who know what’s good for the subjugated colony
called Nigeria.
Given the new set-up, it would be possible, if not easy, for Yar’Adua to
blitz the competition and win a second term without making one
appearance at a campaign rally. All that’s needed to secure him a
victory is to exercise his right, under his notorious electoral “deform”
plan, to appoint the new chairman and commissioners of the electoral
commission. Then the coast would be clear for staging another electoral
“moon-slide.”
With the cloud hanging over Katsina-Alu’s investiture as chief justice,
the Yar’Adua cabal may well have paved the way for the entrenchment of a
spineless judiciary, one willing to rubber stamp any electoral verdicts,
however disreputable in the eyes of domestic and international
observers.
It’s safe to say that Nigerians have never had it quite as bleak as
under the Yar’Adua dispensation. Until now, we’ve had a succession of
rotten rulers, but never one surrounded by a coterie of such primitive
mindset, animated by a determination to hold on to power even from a
hospital’s intensive care unit.
It’s heartening that many Nigerians are speaking up, and taking legal
action, against this imposition. Yet, one worries that Nigerians are, on
the whole, still far from recognizing the nature of the challenge before
them. We are, it seems to me, witnesses to a coup-in-progress. The
choice before Nigerians is a simple one: decide whether to let a small
bunch complete its hijack of a nation, or stand ready to resist the
cabal intent on designing a peculiar hell for the rest of us.
