My Krossroads

President Umaru Yar’Adua to endorse the Supplementary Budget to be operated till next March, and will not sign another document to allow Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan act as President. 
Yar’Adua signed the document on his sick bed in the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Tam David-West, professor of Virology and one time Minister of petroleum spoke with KELVIN EBIRI in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital. Excerpts:

WHAT do you make of the speculations that President Musa Umaru Yar’Adua will formally handover to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to enable him swear in the new Chief Judge of the Federation?

You see the disgrace. Because he wants to confirm a northerner as Chief Judge, he now wants Jonathan to act. If it happens, it will be a miracle and a pleasant surprise. The confirmation of a Chief Judge is of little significance when compared to running the country. Yar’Adua cannot rule this country from anywhere; he can sack the federal executive council from anywhere but he cannot rule from outside. If he did not want to handover to Jonathan to rule this country but now he deems it fit to do so just to confirm a northern Chief Judge, then it is an insult. But Yar’Adua will not do it because the acting Chief Judge can continue to act. There is no time limit for the acting Chief Judge to act. He will continue to act because acting is open ended.

Should the president resign based on the state of his health?

If I were Yar’Adua, I will not resign. The constitution guarantees the sanctity of Yar’Adua’s person and his fundamental human rights. If you look at his photographs in some papers, you will see a wrinkled face. Some of the photographs can scare a child. If you are doing this to me, I will defy you, using the constitution to defend myself. Section 144 of the Constitution is clear. The federal executive should meet and with two-third majority, they will take Yar’Adua out, but they will not do it. They are afraid because he will sack them. The ministers are there for him. President Yar’Adua should stay and not die because if he does, there will be conflagration in this country because of the determination of the North to rule. Let him live and see the end of his tenure. If he dies, there will be crisis of untold proportion. Nigerians should pray that the president survives his illness and lives. The North will not allow Jonathan to act in Yar’Adua’s place. If anything happens to Yar’Adua, two things may likely happen. There will be crises and the military might step in to bring sanity. Though this move might be unpopular. Alternatively, Jonathan will be forced to resign secretly. Do you know whether he has already signed a letter of resignation. He could have been forced to sign a resignation letter to save his life.

Do you see in the president’s ill health the issue of North-South dichotomy?

Nigeria will continue like this until the South gets sensible. The late Hubert Ogunde has a play called Yoruba Ronu in which he told the Yourba patience to have patience. I think the South should have patience. I am for one Nigeria, but it must not be one Nigeria at all costs. Because of the petroleum crisis, the Minister of Petroleum Rilwanu Lukman defied this directive from the Vice President and travelled out with impunity. What he has done is not only disgraceful; it is outrageous. We should make a difference between Jonathan and Jonathan as Vice President. I am not a supporter of Jonathan person but the office of the Vice President has to be respected by every citizen of the country. Although President Yar’Adua never handed over to him, Jonathan as a Vice President has been conducting executive council meeting of ministers and Lukman has been attempting to defy him. Mr. Ajumogobia is the Minister of State for Petroleum, a well educated man and one of the leading Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) in this country with over 20 lawyers working for him in his chambers, yet he ordered the Vice President as a gentleman. If Jonathan were a northern vice president, even if Yar’Adua never handed over to him, Lukman will not disobey him. Nigeria is not a nation. If we were a nation, Lukman will not do what he did. He did it because he knows he will get away with it based on support from his northern hegemony. The north is united. Nigeria has been going on like this and I have said it epigrammatically that the strength of the North politically, is the weakness of the South politically. The South cannot come together. We cannot go on like this and we have been saying this. We had independence in 1960 and we are in 2009, we have been complaining about the same thing and why has nothing been done about it. Most southern politicians are prostitutes; they act like they are cheap commodities. They can easily sell their birthright for a pot of porridge to the North. Most of them have no honour. The southern politicians are the cause of our problem and we will continue like this.

Can you expatiate on this?

They are in government and decisions are made in government, Federal Executive Council (FEC). We are the problem because we do not want to do what we should do. We have been talking about lack of true federalism but we have not changed because the South is not united. We have a Chief Justice of the federation from the North and the next one will be a northern too. I do not blame them. Why should we blame the northerners for taking care of themselves? We will continue like this. If Jonathan were from the North, Lukman will never have dared it. He will respect him. From the beginning, the North did not respect Jonathan. The first evidence was when he was sworn in at the Eagle Square in Abuja. The entourage of President Yar’Adua drove away and Jonathan has to wait 20 minutes to get a car. From that minute they had shown that the North does not care for him. President Yar’Adua has gone out of the country many times without obeying Section 146 of the constitution so that Jonathan can act. If Jonathan was a northern Vice President, Yar’Adua will not do that. What are seeing is that Lukman’s action is not only an action against Jonathan; it is an action against the office of the Vice President and an action against the South. It is on record that Senator Jubril Aminu, it is on record was relieved as a minister of petroleum because he was nonchalant with petroleum crisis. The then Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) said he should go because he was nonchalant with what was happening. So Lukman must go. If a southern minister fails to resign with what Lukman has done, they are not men of honour. What he has done is not against Jonathan is not as a person, it is against the South. If President Yar’Adua wants to show that he does not approve of what Lukman has done against the Vice President, which is an insult against the country, the constitution, he should relieve him of his job. If he does not do that, then, he is part of this disgrace to the south. Lukman refused to attend the meeting called by Jonathan to discuss petroleum matters. Lukman has been there as a minister many times. I took over mines and power from him and he had over 15 files untouched.

Do you foresee a possible revolution soon?

Alhaji Maitama Sule said that there would be a revolution in Nigeria. There will be no revolution in Nigeria. We have been saying for over 15 years that Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb; it is a lie. We are very accommodating. You can only have a revolution when people have decided and determined to fight for a cause under any situation. Nigeria has not got that stamina. The Orange revolution in Europe and similar cases in Latin America are possible because the revolutionaries are determined. Look at what happened in Georgia. Nigeria does not have the stamina. A colleague of mine once said that people dance and sing so much, but they cannot revolt. They love pleasure too much. People that enjoy so much pleasure cannot be revolutionaries. Nigeria will not drive revolution. The future of this country is bleak. Nigeria is patch-patch and will collapse like this one day.