YAR'ADUA'S SACRED HEALTH

YAR'ADUA'S SACRED HEALTH
As a Muslim if there is any subject I want to avoid discussing is the issue of someone's health or the way he was created, that is his physical features. One of the reasons is that, am trying to avoid challenging the Almighty. We Muslim believe God has purpose for everything. Therefore, when the issue of the president's health came up I kept mute, even among friends untill last Friday. I was in Kaduna for the weekend and to meet someone and on that day around 4pm, I came out of the house after a long nap to just have fresh air and stretch my legs. As I was passing I heard the maiguards saying that it was on evening news that the president is dead.
Confused, I don't know where to start. Throughout that day I avoided news, I quite often do that, especially when in weekends to free myself? from the rigorous weekdays of journalism stress. But the attitude often has its negative consequences. I could remember the dead of Abiola came to me through same rumour channel, likewise Sultan Maccido's. I instantly believed their story, I tried making calls unfortunately that day MTN network was very poor in Kaduna. Then I decided to rush back into the house so as to catch the remaining news items on BBC's Focus on Africa. I know it could be the leading story of the day. However, the only thing I heard was the issue of Angolan parliamentary elections.
I decided then that this is another rumour like the one before it peddled in Abuja on the first day of fasting. But there are many lessons to learn from all these incidences. First, we have to understand that information is very vital to the survival of people and whoever tries to undermine it, the resultant consequences is for the people to device a means of narrating their own version of it. The secrecy of the recent illness of the president has been kept as a serious national security which gave every Dick and Harry to become a mobile reporter by speculating on what was happening.
Again, the way the issue was handled by the media is not good. The President has publicly admitted few months ago that he is a human being like any other, he can fall sick and even dies, if that is so I see no reason why the issue is so much over flocked as if this is the first time the President is falling sick.
The reality of the whole issue is that whether the President is healthy or sick, that does not concern an ordinary farmer in a little village who fetches water from the pond for domestic purposes or the one who has to treks 73km to reach the main town to buy salt or maggi. Of the 12 head of states we had since independence only two were offically confirmed ill, that is late General Sani Abacha and President Umar Musa Yar'Adua. Tell me what the healthy Presidents did to change the lives of Nigerians during their stewardship?
It is unfair to criticise Yar'Adua or start castigating him for non-performnce due to his ill health. That argument as they say does not hold salt. We've seen healthy Presidents who inflicted so much suffering on Nigerians that today majority are regretting having them as leaders. Remember how a healthy President devastated the country from 1985 to 1993, instituted corruption and open the gate for all kinds of grafts in high places. Up to this date some Nigerians are calling for the investigation of that regime. Same happened from 1999 to 2008 under a civilian administration, our courts are filled with cases of corruption charges never seen in the history of the nation.
Therefore it is wrong to assume that just because Yar'Adua is ill his government cannot function. The only thing I can accept is may be attributing his poor performance to Nigerian Factor which is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria.
For the PDP and the Governors, it is self-deception to say Yar'Adua is healthy because the man himself admitted he is ill. The only thing Nigerians will accept is to tell them that despite his illness he can be able to rule Nigeria , even that only time can tell, because time dilutes the conviction of the weak.
Kabiru Danladi,
Lawanti Village,
Akko LGA,
Gombe State.