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By Niyi Osundare, New Orleans, United States
419 Nation. Yes, that is what some evil-minded, foul-mouthed people have been calling Nigeria since all hell broke loose over the illness of our dear Malam Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, President and Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who left the country in shadowy circumstances some five weeks ago for 'health reasons'. This time around, our President and his handlers were so admirably, so patriotically honest. They didn't lie to the nation, as is their wont, that our President was going on lesser hajj; no one spewed the news in the press that he was off to the Saudi Kingdom to participate in the opening of a new technical university (even while the university system in his own country was reeling under a protracted strike action). They didn't say he was off to Saudi to negotiate a higher price for our oil or to seek divine guidance over the nettlesome deregulation issue that had turned the oil market in Nigeria into the profiteer's paradise. No, this time, our President left Nigeria for an important medical checkup, again, in Saudi Arabia.

That was some five weeks ago. Since then, the checkup has resulted in a curious checkdown, and the medical gurus in the Saudi Kingdom have pronounced our President's ailment as pericarditis, an acute, life-threatening heart condition. Now, Nigerian rulers may be grossly lacking in progressive ideas, but nobody can justly accuse them of not adding their own bit of 'science' to our medical vocabulary. For which Nigerian could have forgotten in a hurry the hum and buzz created by the term radiculopathy when President Ibrahim Babangida's doctors filed it in all the way from his sick bed in Germany in the 1980s? Our Presidents have not been so lacking in scientific achievements, after all!

But as I was saying, our President, Malam Umaru Yar'Adua, has been away from us, from his presidency, from his office for over 50 days now. Away without official notification. Away without handing over the running of the country as prescribed by the constitution. His medical condition is as shrouded in mystery as the country he purports to rule is enveloped in critical uncertainties. Many speculators say the President is in coma and has taken the country with him into that state. Nigeria is adrift, like a snake with a dying head, thrashing pathetically all over the place. We are left to wonder why, how, one man can take a country of over 140 million people so obliviously for granted. What greed for power, what insensitive arrogance, what impertinent/ arrant inconsiderateness could have led a man to so take his country to ransom?

Those asking this kind of questions do not know what Nigeria is and what it means to be a Nigerian. The Nigerian President combines the absolute powers of an Emperor with the divine rights of a King. The real Kabiyesi that he is, those who will question him have not yet been born. He can do and undo. He can disappear and re-appear. He can lie deathly ill while his handlers proclaim his fitness for the Olympic marathon. He can die and still rule from his grave. All these miracles are, of course, possible depending upon what part/zone/region of the country he hails from, and the kind of political party that saw him to power. We all know that those who question these supernatural feats by evoking the Constitution are undue radicals, idle egg heads, and professional litigants suffering from acute constitutionitis. Who does not know that the Nigerian constitution is created to be obeyed in the breach, bent to the whims of powerful interest groups, enslaved to the convenience of those who claim they are born to rule, trampled in the mud like a half-kobo newspaper? And who are we, pitiable Nigerians, to demand any accountability from the President? Afterall, he never got to power solely through our votes, but through the rigging machinations of 'Africa's biggest political party' and INEC, its faithful Mephistopheles. Our President is, therefore, a ruler with unimaginable powers. And when the kind of immunity granted him by the nature of his ascension to the throne is combined with the impunity so mindlessly conceded to him by a lethargic, amazingly permissive Nigerian electorate, the result is the kind of power whose extra-legal excesses are bound to confound the civilised world.

So, Malam Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces, owes us no explanation regarding the state of his health. The Saudi authorities may know; a few members of his kitchen cabinet may be close enough to guess. But we Nigerians should be content with the diet of rumours and half truths dished out to us on an hourly basis by a band of well-oiled spin doctors, damage-managers, and professional liars. As for the trouble-makers who are clamouring for information about the President's state of health, let them find a more worthwhile mischief to occupy their time. Our brave legislators have risen to the occasion once again. After days of mindless bickering, tergivization, and procrastination, both the Senate and House of Representatives have decided to send high-powered delegations to the Saudi Kingdom to ascertain the true state of our President's health. Yes, the lawmakers must drain the national purse, again, for a trip to a foreign land to find out how sick the President of the Republic really is! No doubt, Nigeria is not a country but some surreal nightmare knocked together by some cynical fiat to amuse and embarrass the civilised world.

Oh well, the President was said to have spoken on BBC some days ago. Yes, from his sick bed in Saudi Arabia, the President of he Federal Republic of Nigeria sent a message to his countrymen and women via Bush House in London. What wonderful benevolence! What awesome patriotism! Now we know our President is hanging tenuously to life - and desperately to power. Now we know he is coming home someday, and Nigeria can continue in its drift in the meantime. And (Goodness forbid!) if the ultimate occurs, he can continue to rule us from the grave.

    * Professor Osundare, writer and scholar, lives in New Orleans, United States