Nigeria Content Online

On
May 5, President Umaru Yar’Adua ended all speculations about his health
by dying, and I am reminded of a lunch I had three years earlier,
shortly after his nomination as the presidential candidate of the
Peoples Democratic Party.

The food was good,
and the Taiwanese embassy was paying. Mr. Chan, who called to invite me
to the diplomatic lunch, only had one request, “Sheraton or Hilton?” So
to the Hilton we went.

The place was
filled with senior civil servants mostly, and some like me, top aides
to political office holders. I was then the senior special assistant to
the chief whip of the House of Representatives, Abubakar Bawa Bwari, a
man of singular integrity – which is partly why he is not the governor
of Niger State today. As Mr. Chan was to tell me that evening, in
halting but impeccable English, “You do not find fish in clean water.”
Anyway, a few minutes into the meal, two men from the embassy walked up
to me, introduced themselves and asked how I was enjoying the food. As
they were the sponsors, I obliged them with a reply and thanked them
for their kindness. And then in that humble, long-suffering manner of
the Chinese, the leader of the two asked me a question. “Why does your
President Olusegun Obasanjo need a sick man to succeed him?” It was
late2006, the heady days after the defeat of Mr. Obasanjo’s Third Term
Agenda, and shortly after his revenge (?) choice of Mr. Yar’Adua as the
PDP flag bearer. So I gave him the PDP answer: “ It is just rumour,
this sickness. No one really knows how sick the man is.” “We know,”
said the man from the Taiwanese embassy, blandly. “We have seen the
medical report. He is too ill.” I was stunned. Not so much by the fact
that for the first time I was meeting a man who was dead sure that Mr.
Yar’Adua was too far gone to function as president, but by the words:
we have seen the report. Was that possible?

And who were these
people who seemed to know so much about the medical history of my
anointed leader, something we had been told was sacrosanct?

Suddenly, the meal
wasn’t so free or sumptuous anymore, and while my colleague was giving
them the stock reply – Oh, Obasanjo just needed someone he could
control, someone who would do less than him so that it would seem that
he had done more than he really did – I was otherwise preoccupied with
divesting the fish of its bones.

“Mr. Jacob,” said
my host, “ Why ‘re you quiet, suddenly?” “Mr. Chan,” I said, “ I am
just enjoying the fish.” But all through the campaigns, I watched Mr.
Yar’Adua struggle on the stump, skirting states and events, leaving Mr.

Obasanjo and Dora Akunyili to do the loud part of his verbalisation for him.

When the rumour that he was dead started, I was scared until Mr. Obasanjo made that famous phone-call.

A man with a
secret, I waited in horror for its validation. But when two years into
his tenure nothing serious happened, I concluded that Mr. Obasanjo had
no diabolical plans, at least nothing worse than his usual megalomania
A few months before the PDP primaries, he had given hint of his
intentions at a midnight meeting held at the Aso Rock villa. Shortly
after the meeting, attended by party stalwarts, National Assembly
leaders, and the ubiquitous ‘stakeholders,’ began, the then president,
apropos of nothing, announced: “The governor of Katsina is doing very
well. He has N3 billion in his coffers when his colleagues are crying
that they are broke.” As usual, everyone nodded in support, shaking
their heads in flagrant amazement, smiling inanely. Then Mr. Bwari
asked, “Sir, does that mean that he had taken care of all the health
and education needs of the people? Because if he had not, wouldn’t it
be better to-” “Shut up,” said Mr. Obasanjo, shutting him up. “Haven’t
you people heard about saving for a rainy day?” Nobody talked
afterwards, and like most meetings with Mr. Obasanjo, it began and
ended with the sound of his voice.

Truth is, Obasanjo
was always worried that if he did not succeed himself, whoever does
should not be one capable of squandering the huge foreign reserve he
had accumulated. By this token, Ibrahim Babangida, Atiku Abubakar, and
Peter Odili who were the strong contenders, did not qualify. He chose a
little known governor with debilitating illness and the ability to
leave N3 billion in government coffers. He didn’t, as his critics
prefer to believe, do that so that Goodluck Jonathan, a man from the
South-South can by this way become president.

“What I need to say
is that nobody picked Yar’Adua so that he will not perform. If I did
that, God will punish me,” he said a few months ago.

Well, for very many reasons, God may yet punish him, but it will not be because of Mr. Yar’Adua.