For the past several weeks, the state of health of the nation's number one citizen, the President and Commander in chief of the nation's armed forces has been a matter of intense public debate and justifiably so.
As the nation’s first citizen is maintained in office at public expense, his personality, actions (and in actions), affairs including his state of health are veritable items of public scrutiny and comments; though this column will not go so far as to argue like some commentators are apt to do that as a public officer he has lost any claim to privacy. But there can be no denying the fact that as the nation’s president he is above all things – number one public property, so concerns about his health is not only legitimate but constitutional.
In the case of President Umaru Yar Adua what has tended to raise perhaps undue interest in his state of health is the general knowledge that Mr. President has peculiar health challenges: at his introduction to the nation during the campaign for the April 28, 2007 President elections, the would be president had taken seriously ill and had to be flown abroad for medical treatment. Speculations had been rife in the aftermath of his treatment abroad that the worst had befallen the then Presidential hopeful. It had taken the melodramatic Obasanjo/Yar Adua widely broadcast monologue “Umoru, Umoru, are you dead? I see Umoru, he is laughing ke ke ke” to re-assure the anxious nation that all we was well with Obasanjo’s ‘anointed’ successor. Even after the hurly-burly of the flawed April 2007 election, there had been one or two instances that troubled the health of our beloved President only that this time around there were no theatricals to re-assure worried nation. A few weeks ago, when Mr. President who reportedly undertook the lesser hadj-Umra for two weeks neither returned on schedule nor undertook a much planned and advertised trip to the land of football, samba and cocoa-Brazil, there were many speculations about the President’s well being, which speculations were worsened by the shroud of silence and secrecy surrounding the exact state of the President health from official quarters.
In defence of the President and his supporters it must be said a substantial amount of the concerns about the President’s health are neither genuine nor charitable but inspired by destructive partisanship, mischief and malice.
The ‘concerns’ in this category will include the utterly irresponsible and seditious even treasonable call for an Interim Government – a clearly unconstitutional arrangement, a mere step away from a full blown military government. It is in fact distressful to know that any Nigerian in his right mind will call for the return of an illegitimate system of government roundly condemned by a larger majority of Nigerians 15 years ago even before Justice D. Akinsanya, then of the Lagos High Court declared the same illegal and unconstitutional. That some of our political elite are now clamoring for a return of illegality shows how desperate our politics and politicians have become. Thus, when viewed from the prism of desperado politicians, the cult of secrecy mounted by officialdom in the matter of Mr. President might appear to be justified.
The major problem with this rationalization however is that it offends the express words of the constitution – the supreme law of the land that – “Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this constitution derives all its powers and authority”. Therefore there can be no justification from keeping from the Nigerian people fair and accurate information about the true state of health of the President. But since the whole nation is left to speculate on the true state of Mr. President’s health judging from the ‘face-saving’ busy schedule maintained by the President in recent times it might be safe to assume the exact state of Mr. President’s health is somewhere in between the perfect state of health being touted in official quarters and the dying man trumpeted among opposition politicians.
In any case until the provisions of Section 44 of the Constitution are set in motion, the President must be presumed to be sufficiently fit in body and mind to continue to discharge the duties of the office of the President, Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
The relevant provisions are as follows: 144 – (1) The President or Vice-President shall cease to hold office.
If (a) by a resolution by two third majority of all the member of the executive council of the Federation it is declared that the President or Vice-President is incapable of discharging the functions of his office and (b) the declaration is verified, after such medical examination as may be necessary, by a medical panel established under subsection (4) of this section in its report to President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
(2) where the medical panel certifies in the report that in its opinion the (President or Vice-President is suffering from such infirmity of body or mind as render him permanently incapable of discharging the functions of his office, a notice thereof signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representative shall be published in the official Gazette of the Government of the Federation
(3) The President or Vice- President shall cease to hold office as from the date of publication of the notice of the medical report pursuant to subsection (2) of this section.
(4) The medical panel to which this section relates shall be appointed by the President of the Senate and shall comprise five medical practitioners in Nigeria-
(a) One of whom shall be the personal physician of the holder of the office concerned and
(b) four other medical practitioners who have, in the opinion of the President of the Senate, attained a high degree of eminence in the field of medicine relative to the nature of the examination to be conducted in accordance with the foregoing provision.”
Outside of the terminal issue of death these Constitutional Provisions remain the only legal way by which Mr. President can cease to hold office on medical grounds.
One last word on this delicate issue of health and death; we must all resist the urge to play God with any one’s health for the simple reason that both life ad death are not in our hands. History is replete with men (including women) with supposedly terminal ailments who soldiered on for several years after while otherwise healthy men were cut shorts in their prime.
Talking about leaders with health challenges Franklin Roosevelt readily comes to mind. This was a man who fought the second world war from his wheel chair and led the Allied forces to defeat Adolph Hitler and his formidable German War machine. There are also examples like the American Senator Hubert Humphrey who was diagonised for terminal cancer at the age of 36 years and given only 9 months to live. Yet he was to have a very distinguished and long service in the U.S Senate dying at the ripe age of 88 years. Yet another example is the former racist Governor of Old Alabama who in the dark age of racism in the U.S said defiantly said he would rather sit with dogs at his table then dine with niggers (offensive name for blacks). Yet after he was shot and paralysed from waist down, he became changed in his racist ways and started promoting causes that helped the Blackman’s cause and outlived many of his contemporaries. The “Greatest Boxer” Mohammed Ali continues to battle his Parkinson disease while many younger and healthier athletes have since passed on. Only the Almighty God gives and takes life at his unchallengeable discretion.
The closure of Channels Television
One very said aspect of Mr. President’s health saga is the closure of Channels Television over an alleged erroneous broadcast by the said TV station of the speculated resignation by the President from office on health grounds: This episode shows beyond any shadow of doubt that the much trumpeted rule of law mantra of the Yar’Adua administration is not only a ruse but a mere political slogan. That an administration that makes pretence to bring an apostle of the rule of law will resort to Gestapo – style tactics of closing down a democratic dispensation shows how much military mentality the Yar Adua administration possesses. It is all well enough that Nigerians from all sides of the political divide have denounced this military era act of unconstitutionalism. Yet the aggrieved channels TV ought to promptly take appropriate steps to redress this violent infraction of its fundamental human right taking a cure from the celebrated case of Ministry of Internal Affair V Shugaba (1982) 2 NCLR 915. The government appears unrepentant justifying its illegality on vague grounds of national and security’. In this act of constitutional defiance it has as willing collaborators the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission NBC. It will be interesting to see whether these claims of national interest and security will stand up to constitutional security, if and when Channels Television decides to ventilate his grievance in court.
At another level, the closure of Channels Television may yet prove politically suicidal for the Yar’Adua government which is still enmeshed in a crisis of legitimacy being product of a manifestly flawed electoral process, that is still subject to judicial scrutiny before the Highest Court in the land.
The bedrock of the modest credibility it enjoys is simply the longsuffering benevolence of the Nigerian people to accept the existing the legal order subject to judicial review rather than give place to anarchy and chaos that will certainly arise if all the potentially valid claims to the presidency are mutually accommodated. A good reason for the Yar’Adua government to have continued to tread softly in the political space instead of riding rough-shod like a bully through the highly slippery public space with grave danger of a destructive fall. The government is well advised not to behave like the proverbial dirty cook in local folk lore who not appreciating the magnanimity shown him in patronizing his watery cuisine resorts to dishing out miserly portions to patrons. Anroju je e ko obun, obun tun pon eko re kere.
Also odious is the preferential treatment meted out to the News Agency of Nigeria NAN in this unfortunate episode. This yet a tell tale carry over of military rule when Government Agencies and Public could do no wrong. Assuming, for the purposes of argument that Channels Television was wrong in broadcasting the offensive material is its source the NAN not more liable or guiltier? But in a manner typical of the untouchable public officer of the military era NAN has been left undisturbed while the hapless channels TV is now the scape goat. By way of a small but relevant digression, it must be said this double-standard cannot but persist, when even the courts – the famed last hope of the common man – continues to uphold pre-action notices which allow public agencies or public officer to maneuver in the face of clear cut liabilities instead of striking them down as done by the venerable Justice Kayode Eso J.S.C in Alhaji Teliat Bakare V AG Oyo State (1990) NWLR (Pt 152) when the erudite jurist struck down as unconstitutional the requirement of the Attorney-General’s fiat before an action could been instituted against the government of a State or federation. It is submitted that it is only such judicial activism on the parts of the court that can demystify the image of the untouchable public officer or agency.
Finally, this ‘epistle’ may remain at the end of the day a mere academic exercise, if the Channels Television adopt the usual Nigerian solution, already there is the talk of the closed media house resorting to “an amicable settlement” of a brazen violation of its fundamental and constitutional right of freedom of information. Yet someone will tell me the next minute why the freedom of information FOL Act must be passed at the earliest opportunity.
In the case of President Umaru Yar Adua what has tended to raise perhaps undue interest in his state of health is the general knowledge that Mr. President has peculiar health challenges: at his introduction to the nation during the campaign for the April 28, 2007 President elections, the would be president had taken seriously ill and had to be flown abroad for medical treatment. Speculations had been rife in the aftermath of his treatment abroad that the worst had befallen the then Presidential hopeful. It had taken the melodramatic Obasanjo/Yar Adua widely broadcast monologue “Umoru, Umoru, are you dead? I see Umoru, he is laughing ke ke ke” to re-assure the anxious nation that all we was well with Obasanjo’s ‘anointed’ successor. Even after the hurly-burly of the flawed April 2007 election, there had been one or two instances that troubled the health of our beloved President only that this time around there were no theatricals to re-assure worried nation. A few weeks ago, when Mr. President who reportedly undertook the lesser hadj-Umra for two weeks neither returned on schedule nor undertook a much planned and advertised trip to the land of football, samba and cocoa-Brazil, there were many speculations about the President’s well being, which speculations were worsened by the shroud of silence and secrecy surrounding the exact state of the President health from official quarters.
In defence of the President and his supporters it must be said a substantial amount of the concerns about the President’s health are neither genuine nor charitable but inspired by destructive partisanship, mischief and malice.
The ‘concerns’ in this category will include the utterly irresponsible and seditious even treasonable call for an Interim Government – a clearly unconstitutional arrangement, a mere step away from a full blown military government. It is in fact distressful to know that any Nigerian in his right mind will call for the return of an illegitimate system of government roundly condemned by a larger majority of Nigerians 15 years ago even before Justice D. Akinsanya, then of the Lagos High Court declared the same illegal and unconstitutional. That some of our political elite are now clamoring for a return of illegality shows how desperate our politics and politicians have become. Thus, when viewed from the prism of desperado politicians, the cult of secrecy mounted by officialdom in the matter of Mr. President might appear to be justified.
The major problem with this rationalization however is that it offends the express words of the constitution – the supreme law of the land that – “Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this constitution derives all its powers and authority”. Therefore there can be no justification from keeping from the Nigerian people fair and accurate information about the true state of health of the President. But since the whole nation is left to speculate on the true state of Mr. President’s health judging from the ‘face-saving’ busy schedule maintained by the President in recent times it might be safe to assume the exact state of Mr. President’s health is somewhere in between the perfect state of health being touted in official quarters and the dying man trumpeted among opposition politicians.
In any case until the provisions of Section 44 of the Constitution are set in motion, the President must be presumed to be sufficiently fit in body and mind to continue to discharge the duties of the office of the President, Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
The relevant provisions are as follows: 144 – (1) The President or Vice-President shall cease to hold office.
If (a) by a resolution by two third majority of all the member of the executive council of the Federation it is declared that the President or Vice-President is incapable of discharging the functions of his office and (b) the declaration is verified, after such medical examination as may be necessary, by a medical panel established under subsection (4) of this section in its report to President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
(2) where the medical panel certifies in the report that in its opinion the (President or Vice-President is suffering from such infirmity of body or mind as render him permanently incapable of discharging the functions of his office, a notice thereof signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representative shall be published in the official Gazette of the Government of the Federation
(3) The President or Vice- President shall cease to hold office as from the date of publication of the notice of the medical report pursuant to subsection (2) of this section.
(4) The medical panel to which this section relates shall be appointed by the President of the Senate and shall comprise five medical practitioners in Nigeria-
(a) One of whom shall be the personal physician of the holder of the office concerned and
(b) four other medical practitioners who have, in the opinion of the President of the Senate, attained a high degree of eminence in the field of medicine relative to the nature of the examination to be conducted in accordance with the foregoing provision.”
Outside of the terminal issue of death these Constitutional Provisions remain the only legal way by which Mr. President can cease to hold office on medical grounds.
One last word on this delicate issue of health and death; we must all resist the urge to play God with any one’s health for the simple reason that both life ad death are not in our hands. History is replete with men (including women) with supposedly terminal ailments who soldiered on for several years after while otherwise healthy men were cut shorts in their prime.
Talking about leaders with health challenges Franklin Roosevelt readily comes to mind. This was a man who fought the second world war from his wheel chair and led the Allied forces to defeat Adolph Hitler and his formidable German War machine. There are also examples like the American Senator Hubert Humphrey who was diagonised for terminal cancer at the age of 36 years and given only 9 months to live. Yet he was to have a very distinguished and long service in the U.S Senate dying at the ripe age of 88 years. Yet another example is the former racist Governor of Old Alabama who in the dark age of racism in the U.S said defiantly said he would rather sit with dogs at his table then dine with niggers (offensive name for blacks). Yet after he was shot and paralysed from waist down, he became changed in his racist ways and started promoting causes that helped the Blackman’s cause and outlived many of his contemporaries. The “Greatest Boxer” Mohammed Ali continues to battle his Parkinson disease while many younger and healthier athletes have since passed on. Only the Almighty God gives and takes life at his unchallengeable discretion.
The closure of Channels Television
One very said aspect of Mr. President’s health saga is the closure of Channels Television over an alleged erroneous broadcast by the said TV station of the speculated resignation by the President from office on health grounds: This episode shows beyond any shadow of doubt that the much trumpeted rule of law mantra of the Yar’Adua administration is not only a ruse but a mere political slogan. That an administration that makes pretence to bring an apostle of the rule of law will resort to Gestapo – style tactics of closing down a democratic dispensation shows how much military mentality the Yar Adua administration possesses. It is all well enough that Nigerians from all sides of the political divide have denounced this military era act of unconstitutionalism. Yet the aggrieved channels TV ought to promptly take appropriate steps to redress this violent infraction of its fundamental human right taking a cure from the celebrated case of Ministry of Internal Affair V Shugaba (1982) 2 NCLR 915. The government appears unrepentant justifying its illegality on vague grounds of national and security’. In this act of constitutional defiance it has as willing collaborators the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission NBC. It will be interesting to see whether these claims of national interest and security will stand up to constitutional security, if and when Channels Television decides to ventilate his grievance in court.
At another level, the closure of Channels Television may yet prove politically suicidal for the Yar’Adua government which is still enmeshed in a crisis of legitimacy being product of a manifestly flawed electoral process, that is still subject to judicial scrutiny before the Highest Court in the land.
The bedrock of the modest credibility it enjoys is simply the longsuffering benevolence of the Nigerian people to accept the existing the legal order subject to judicial review rather than give place to anarchy and chaos that will certainly arise if all the potentially valid claims to the presidency are mutually accommodated. A good reason for the Yar’Adua government to have continued to tread softly in the political space instead of riding rough-shod like a bully through the highly slippery public space with grave danger of a destructive fall. The government is well advised not to behave like the proverbial dirty cook in local folk lore who not appreciating the magnanimity shown him in patronizing his watery cuisine resorts to dishing out miserly portions to patrons. Anroju je e ko obun, obun tun pon eko re kere.
Also odious is the preferential treatment meted out to the News Agency of Nigeria NAN in this unfortunate episode. This yet a tell tale carry over of military rule when Government Agencies and Public could do no wrong. Assuming, for the purposes of argument that Channels Television was wrong in broadcasting the offensive material is its source the NAN not more liable or guiltier? But in a manner typical of the untouchable public officer of the military era NAN has been left undisturbed while the hapless channels TV is now the scape goat. By way of a small but relevant digression, it must be said this double-standard cannot but persist, when even the courts – the famed last hope of the common man – continues to uphold pre-action notices which allow public agencies or public officer to maneuver in the face of clear cut liabilities instead of striking them down as done by the venerable Justice Kayode Eso J.S.C in Alhaji Teliat Bakare V AG Oyo State (1990) NWLR (Pt 152) when the erudite jurist struck down as unconstitutional the requirement of the Attorney-General’s fiat before an action could been instituted against the government of a State or federation. It is submitted that it is only such judicial activism on the parts of the court that can demystify the image of the untouchable public officer or agency.
Finally, this ‘epistle’ may remain at the end of the day a mere academic exercise, if the Channels Television adopt the usual Nigerian solution, already there is the talk of the closed media house resorting to “an amicable settlement” of a brazen violation of its fundamental and constitutional right of freedom of information. Yet someone will tell me the next minute why the freedom of information FOL Act must be passed at the earliest opportunity.
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