The power of incapacitation

After a generous quantity of red wine had created a safe channel for the asun to sail through into his stomach, the journalist in our midst sent a shock wave through the house when he fired an imprudent bombshell.

“Barrister, tell us. If President Yar’Adua dies anytime from now while in office, who will take over from him? Is it vice president Goodluck Jonathan? Or Senate President David Mark? Or First lady Turai Yar’Adua?” But as the lawyer battled to reel out by rote the constitutional provision concerning incapacitation of the president, the whole house turned the session into a public debate of perilous dimensions. And so the personal affliction of the president became a matter for ‘beer-parlour’ discussion. The sore on the groin of the masquerade has come to public view because the masquerade has chosen to take a reckless stroll around the market place.

Last week, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua left the country for yet another medical check-up, the third in four months. Though, his information managers had always tied each health check to an official assignment, they could no longer leave Nigerians in the dark about the president’s physical state. He is suffering from a heart-related ailment; one that some medical experts claim could incapacitate him. And then came a deluge of sympathy and prayers for God’s will to be done so that he could be back to office well recovered.

President Yar’Adua has never made a fuss about his ill health. In one interview he granted The Guardian sometime back, he expended some logic trying to explain how fit he was at the time, how he exercised routinely with his weekly squash games. He also took time to throw some jibes at his critics whom he lampooned for playing God by making a news feast of his adjudged incapacitation.

It is rude and insensitive to celebrate a person’s predicament, especially the president’s.

But taking a critical look at the Mr. Yar’Adua’s ordeal, the issue really is not one of sympathy or resignation to the will of God. Sympathy is a patronising expression of fellow feeling and detached response to the misery, and anguish of another. This is not an emotion expressed toward a leader or master, for there is something condescending about the expression of sympathy: it makes the receiver seem inferior.

Like sympathy, the abused catch phrase “the will of God” is one of the most shameless expressions of hypocrisy in our political life. It is a linguistic facade for intellectual sloth or for any political act that develops cracks under the scrutiny of reason.

I think where the expression of freedom is in accord with the dictates of reason there the will of God abounds.

But my religious brethren would want to lynch me for this. In all this, the sentiment of religious people is for God to cure him, so that illness may flee from him. While there is nothing wrong with praying for the sick, an attitude that views infirmity as alien to the human predicament is a myopic and unrealistic appreciation of human existence.

The problem with some overly religious people on this issue is their inconsistency. While they fervently urge everybody to pray for the recovery of the president, they unwittingly gloss over the logical import of ‘praying for the will of God’.

Who discerns what the will of God is in our land? Who says our present circumstance, and not the contrary, is the will of God for the country?

The issue before Aso Rock, as it concerns the president’s health, is one of dedication and sincerity to oneself. A servant-leader may lay down his life for his flock, but he does it with dignity, recognising that as a leader he is the hub of the machinery of state, that animates, aspirates, exemplifies, and motivates.

Slugging along the way the president does smacks of some selfishness and insensitivity to the generality. His frequent absences stall the management of government and amplify the substandard state of our healthcare system. All these are detrimental to the national psyche.

What Yar’Adua needs is not public expression of sympathy or the preachment of selfish religionists. He needs the counsel that will make him take the path of honour. Leading well does not mean expiring in office; it entails knowledge of one’s capacity to deliver in a given situation. And this is what the system ensures and promotes in an organised society.