Let's just call a spade what it is. The President is dead. Long live the man Umaru Musa Yar'Adua and long may he benefit from the superior healthcare his position as president gave him. There is nothing else going on here.
To all intents and purposes we do not have a commander in chief. He is either dead or no longer in a position to function and as far as running this country is concerned, it boils down to the same thing. The most generous interpretation we can put on this situation is that his wife is so totally consumed with tending to his needs that for 48 days and counting she cannot speak or bear to see anyone, and for a Nigerian that is almost unimaginable. She has no time to acknowledge the good wishes and fervent prayers that have been uttered for the return to health of Yar'Adua by the combined mass of the people, state governments, judiciary and legislature of Nigeria.
As it is there is no distinction between the private man and the public servant leader, even though at the very least, he owes the prolongation of his health to the country.
The man took office under false pretences, hiding the fact that he was physically unfit for the post, while fully acknowledging in his first honest declaration at his inauguration, that the election that brought him to power was rigged.
This fudging of the distinction between private and public is part of the reason why we are being lied to. The whole approach to politics, governance and public service is to view it as an enterprise for private gain.
It is one ex-president giving the finger to 140 million people; a bunch of fat cats, military and civilian, playing draughts with the nation's future; a generation of amoral whiz kids gambling away the country's reserves; a coven of gangsters playing 419 with the treasury.
They say it is not how long you live but what you make of the time you spend on earth that matters. A columnist on this paper has already raised the question of whether Mr. Yar' Adua's absence makes any difference at all. The truth is pretty obvious: it is not supposed to make any difference to us. We are not in the equation.
This cancerous cynicism that has eaten deep into us is on a parallel with the nihilism that fuels suicide bombers and if we continue to let it guide us it will consume us entirely.
In the period that the Nigerian president has been fighting for his life, death has continued to stalk the rest of the world since November 19, 2009, the day he was whisked away to Saudi Arabia and Lester Shibin, the inventor of the Kevlar vest died at 84 of a heart attack. On December 8, Yang Yinming, 51, a rogue securities trader was executed in Beijing for making away with $9.52 million. The Chinese government doesn't play. Yang's famous last words to the Beijing Evening news were: "Preserve your moral integrity and don't set too much store by business results." Over the holiday a friend suggested that Nigeria adopt the Chinese option: total lock down, no overseas schools or medical trips for public office holders or their children. Just sit at home and make it work.
On December 16, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, 69, a former South African Minister of Health died from liver complications. Two years earlier she had successfully recovered from a liver transplant in Johannesburg and she did not have to fly out anywhere, to anybody else's country, to get it done.
December 16, Anne Nixon Cooper, 107, she was the civil rights activist Barrack Obama mentioned in his election victory speech. She had lived to see the day the tree of her labour bore fruit. December 22, Luis Francisco Cuellar 69, governor of Caqueta in Colombia was assassinated - his throat was cut, like you would to slaughter a goat.
On December 25, the day young Mutallab planned to meet his 7 virgins, a true Nigerian great, Lamidi Olonade Fakeye, 71, died of complications from prostate surgery. No expensive specialist care abroad for him, as far as one can tell from the brief reports of his passing.
December 30, Michelle Lang at 34, became the first Canadian journalist to die in the war in Afghanistan while travelling in an armoured military vehicle. On December 31 Rashidi Kawawa, 83, prime minister of Tanzania from 1972 to 1977 died.
New Year's day saw the passing away of 80 year old Paul Ahyi from Togo who designed the country's flag and on January 4, Tsumotu Yamaguchi, a 93 year old survivor of the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, died of stomach cancer.
What will be said of Mr. Yar ‘Adua in years to come? That he was a good patient?
What can we find to fill in the blanks about Mr. Yar'Adua and his political and private families that have focused in such a thoroughly self-entitled way, on their narrow, private interests that the sense of shame and responsibility has completely deserted them?
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