The Politics of Yar'Adua's Illness

BBC reports that Nigeria’s Information Minister, Professor Dora Akunyili says she is fed up with the “lies” told by some presidential aides about the health of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. She also says the president’s return last week has “actually exaggerated uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, fear and concern, not just by Nigerians but by the international community”.

Unlike what some journalists in Nigeria claim is a “bombshell” I actually don’t see her latest utterances as such. This is not the first time Professor Akunyili has poked her index finger at some “few” individuals whom she claims are holding Nigeria to ransom over the Presidents health. On February 5th she attempted to present a memo to the Executive Council of the Federation, EXCOF, with the hope of forcing a change in the official position on the President’s health which was that “he was still in a position to lead Nigeria”.

Since then the whole world witnessed the political wrangling and debacle which led to the emergence of Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President.

From this latest pronouncement, and for some reason I suspect, Dora is not all spewing brimstone and fire. The Info boss uses some nice words to describe the President: “he is peace loving” and the rule of law he preaches” is from his heart”.

The culprits says the ex-drug buster were some “people around him that are gaining from the confusion; people around him that are doing to him today what 100 million political enemies cannot do to him”, she said, adding: “He has done a lot for this country and suddenly, a few people are rubbishing it. They stole him into this country in the night”.

On that note though, not many Nigerians’ view would differ from Dora’s. Some sympathetic to Akunyili say she’s vomiting all this grammar because of apparent “frustration at her inaccessibility to information on the President’s health status, she said: “You manage information if you have information. We did not have information that our President was travelling to Saudi Arabia until we read it in the news, and when he was in Saudi Arabia we hardly got information. “We never had a comprehensive channel of getting information that we are sure of and most of the information sometimes, they don’t add up and it gets very disturbing. When they don’t add up, you feel very awkward reporting such information".

Understandable perhaps given that her job really is to "sell the government to the people". If there really is no commodity to sell, well, what then does she do?

Hmmm...tough nut to crack!

But her detractors are suspicious. They say “no, no, no, this is all a pan“dora”s box”, and somewhere underneath lurks something that would emerge for Dora when all is said and done with the health drama.

We are as contributors and analysts, privy to Nigeria's colourful democracy. This is all to do with “the politics of Yar’Adua’s illness” as the Professor herself admits. The questions here though are: at whose expense are politicians playing politics with the President’s health; where should it all end?; who will decide when it should end?; who will pay the ultimate price of playing politics with the President’s health?