One Year With President Yar’Adua—Kanayo Esinulo

Some honest Nigerians easily admit that the last 12 months under Umar Yar’Adua’s administration have been boring, uneventful and sluggish. Should the assessment be any different from the position above, then the assessor is merely being extremely polite or unnecessarily diplomatic. Or, quite likely, both. The simple truth is that we are gradually moving from bad to worse. Someone poetically described it the other day as “fast-tracked presidential sluggishness”, but I think it is something more than that. Now, we hardly feel that we have a President. Nigerians are getting somewhat confused: is it better to have an overbearing, ubiquitous and all-knowing President or a genteel, unassuming but unperforming, sluggish servant leader?

Why have the last 12 months been so dull and so uneventful? I have heard the argument that Mr. President should be left alone and be allowed do develop his own style and pace. I have also been told, to my face, in an argument at a colleague’s home in Enugu, that Yar’Adua does not have to be a bulldozer like his predecessor. There are points in the two positions. But the point I made, which my discussants preferred to shy away from, was that our President is not well. No one wanted to talk about that, and I didn’t see any reason why. In all democracies, both new and old, citizens discuss their leaders without let or inhibitions. Americans and the world knew when former President Bill Clinton checked into a New York clinic for minor surgery. When President W. Bush caught cold and had to see his doctors, the world knew. So, sometimes I can’t understand the turgid argument by some people that it is un-African to openly discuss the ailment of our leaders. What is often forgotten or ignored is that the moment Yar’Adua accepted to be drafted to contest the highest office in the land, he at once became public property and available for all sorts of scrutiny.

Yet, there is another school which strongly believes that the slow pace which we easily associate with this administration could be traced to the manner of Mr. President’s ascendancy. In the reckoning of this group, he came to power as an underdog of a group that is uncompromising in its determination to continue to hold this country hostage. To get his dying seven-point agenda resurrected, he needs to first liberate himself from these elements that call the shots. Those are valid points. But to me, the single most important reason why nothing is happening, and may never happen for the next three years, is that our President cannot handle two critical situations simultaneously: his failing health and an ailing economy. The grandstanding of Mr. President challenging whoever could play 12 straight games of squash with him to come on, remains what it was then – grandstanding. If someone’s health is bad, it deserves all the attention, concentration and priority it can get, and I see that as perfectly normal. Our President is human, after all.

Those who closely followed the President’s tenure as governor of Katsina State say that as honest as Umar is or is assumed to be, and as committed and devoted to his duties as he would wish, his health has always been a painful impediment. As an executive governor for eight years, Umar was hardly in the office beyond 5pm, and was rarely available on weekends. The man’s schedule as governor was not loaded, and was deliberately designed to accommodate his fragile health and lean working regime. The story today is that this soft and generous schedule remains in place at Aso Rock Villa. To me, the man’s full recovery and prolonged life should be considered more important than the temporariness of political office.

In our country, there is always the temptation to dismiss those who speak or write this way as heartless, callous and mischievous. Well, I see them as patriots. Gani is one great patriot that God gave Nigeria. If only General Sani Abacha had read some of the things that were written or said at seminars soon after the Guinean President, at African Heads of State summit in Abuja mid-1998, advised him to give greater attention to his health. The Abuja political establishment chose to misunderstand the Guinean leader as wishing tragedy for Abacha and for Nigeria. We know what happened some weeks after. That is certainly not what anyone would wish for a leader fondly described by those who know him fairly well as “a good and considerate man”. But Nigeria certainly needs just more than “a good and considerate man” to fight and overcome the many problems inflicted on it by a succession of bad governments. We need a performing leader who can dream dreams, and work tirelessly for the realisation of the dreams.

Nigeria in the past 12 months has remained largely at a standstill, sometimes appearing to be sliding backward. Of particular worry is the continuing deterioration in the already notorious performance level of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, also known as NEPA. It has never been this bad – in a very long while. Two, coming from the academia, many Nigerians had expected Yar’Adua to give special attention to education and to also fiercely tackle the increasingly frightening graduate unemployment in our country. These are not being addressed. Three, our roads have continued to be in very bad shape, and the rains are here with us again. Nigerian governments are known not to tar or work on roads during rainy season; yet in those countries where our leaders constantly travel to on holidays or for medical treatment, roads are worked on steadily - even during winter. Four, we are not registering successes in the areas of agriculture, health, industrialisation and the continuing underdevelopment of the Niger Delta is developing to a national tragedy. Why is this so? Where is one landmark that I can point at as the great achievement of our President in the last 12 months? It must not be forgotten that the man has only one and half years more to make a mark, after which the tumultuous election period sets in.