When we hold our editorial meetings, some of our editors know how to crack jokes to break the ice. In fact, last week was a pure glacier for us because President Yar’Adua’s illness drama was (and still is) so fluid that we were careful not to agree on a theme that could become stale the second day, or even the next minute! This is because, only God knows what stratagem Yar’Adua’s men would adopt to keep their man in public reckoning.
That was the reason that we had to continue our meeting the second day. As we settled for business, information filtered in that the President might be flown into Nigeria last week. That was when one of our editors cut in: “Will he be brought in a show glass?” Everyone bent double with laughter.
Like a judge, banging his gavel to maintain order in a court room, I waved my hand for silence. It was at this point that the idea struck me like a stiletto: Yar’Adua’s men would do anything and go to any length to present him as fit to continue in office. That formed the focus of our cover, written by Senior Editor, BABAJIDE KOLADE-OTITOJU, this week. That is, the desperate moves to keep Yar’Adua in office.
The matter is so terrible and embarrassing that it has become an object of derision and jokes on Facebook, Twitter and other fora on cyberspace. For example, one of our friends posted an article, written by Frederick Kennedy, entitled “Corpsology: Umaru’s Gift To The Modern World” on Facebook last week.
Corpsology, as Kennedy put it, is when a country is ruled by a leader who is half dead, who is on a life support machine, who is in a coma, who is permanently on a kidney dialysis machine or who is suffering from dementia and chronic heart and liver failure. Under this new system of government, the leader does not ever have to leave his bed, does not have to speak to his people, he does not have to sign or approve any memos or treaties, does not have to abide by the constitution, does not have to lead the military, does not have to give day-to-day directives on the economy, foreign policy and the running of his government and does not have to see or be seen by his ministers and staff, let alone the people that he is leading. All he has to do to sustain his mandate and to continue to legitimately and lawfully lead the country is to ensure that he maintains a weak pulse whilst he is in his vegetative state.
Kennedy argued that this form of government would soon be established and made fully operational when Yar’Adua returns to Nigeria to his newly-built, designer and specialist ground floor hospital bed––with state-of-the-art and modern life-saving and sustaining machines et al––in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja. Enjoy reading.
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