COVID-19 in Aso Rock: Preparing for Worst Case Scenario, By Joshua Omenga
COVID-19 in Aso Rock: Preparing for Worst Case Scenario, By Omenga Jo
Is it out of place if Nigeria begins preparation for the worst case scenario now? The style with which COVID-19 is spreading in Nigeria calls for that. In two weeks, confirmed cases of the virus have grown by 600 percent. At this point no prospicience is needed to discern the looming danger. Ordinary calculation is enough to alert us to an impending leadership vacuum in Nigeria. Death of political figures in significant number may be a matter of time away. This is neither a wish nor a prophecy but a fact of observation.
Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, who I like to call the de facto president, Abba Kyari, is down with Coronavirus; President Buhari himself is reportedly sick and in isolation (time will reveal what else that ails him); two State Governors so far are positive to Coronavirus; and members of the National Assembly and some significant political officers at the national and state levels are also victims of Coronavirus.
The disclosed figures are grim enough, and for the sake of our projection, we only need to consider the circles of those already infected with the Coronavirus. Birds of a feather, it is said, flock together. It is self-evident that when the politicians and rich men throw parties, make burials, organize weddings and birthdays, the attendants are people of their class. Visitors to their private lives are also people of their class. It is no surprise therefore that when they are infected with Coronavirus, they pass it on to people of their class. That is why Mohammed Atiku Abubakar, son of former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar allegedly infected Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed; that is why Kyari infected his aides; that is why a significant number of the members of the National Assembly are imperiled by their comrades who had recently returned from oversea travels. The circle continues, and of course the middle class (such as Kyari’s staff) get the infection from their masters and pass it on to the general population, but the ordinary citizens are not the subject of this discussion.
Even without the statistics already reeling out from investigative journalists, one can easily predict the vastness of political figures in Nigeria infected and exposed to Coronavirus. It is no help that these people are mostly advanced in age and are common prey to the mortality of Coronavirus. If one is optimistic enough to predict that of those already infected with the virus, those at latent period, and those yet but inevitably to be infected, only about 50% will succumb to its mortality, then one understands the perspective from which this writing is coming. And mortality among these infected politicians is inevitable, hopes and wishes to the contrary notwithstanding.
Let us then imagine what may lie ahead of our political sphere. Suppose that the number one citizen of Nigeria, currently sick, is in fact positive to Coronavirus and dies therefrom, and the Vice President follows suit (or is in isolation and consequently unable to take over the vacant office of the president), and coincidentally also the Senate President is unable to take over interim function of the office of the president due to the ravages of Coronavirus. Suppose also that the country is in a lockdown, as already it is preparing to. Suppose in addition that due to the lockdown and its financial constraints Nigeria is unable to conduct an election for a new president. Apply these suppositions to the different tiers of government as macrocosms. And now the question is: How is the rudder of the country to be steered under this circumstance until things normalise?
It was Nnamdi Kanu’s contention that the ‘original Buhari’ died in 2017 and that an impostor, discarding his Sudanese name, was installed as president at the behest of some power-obsessed conspirators (presumably headed by Abba Kyari). If for a moment one is to accord credence to such a monstrous proposition, one would at least credit the conspirators and the impostor with ingenuity: they have so far managed to give us a ‘working’ president (by which I mean someone performing a semblance of presidential functions), well-nigh indistinguishable from the ‘real’ president. Without their ingenuity, the next option was for Osibanjo to take over power. Of course – but for the interest of those whose birthright is the rulership of Nigeria – nothing significantly detrimental would have resulted from Osibanjo’s taking over power; it might indeed have been advantageous for Nigeria, for Osibanjo proved his mettle during the brief period of Buhari’s ‘legitimate’ absence.
But now the choice of succession is not so palatable. Covik-1-9 (the Nigerian version of Covid19) is threatening to remove those at the apex of power, and also their immediate successors, the exhaustion of which leaves the country no option but to allow the State affairs to be handled by unseen hands or to elect new officials into the vacant positions. The germane question is: if this wholesale decimation of political office holders should happen while the nation is on lockdown, will it be in the interest of the citizens to impose political officers to take the posts and names of departed office holders (in a fashion similar to Kanu’s allegation), or will the citizens be better served by an open declaration of the truth, and a necessity for an election which its conduct may be impossible or even detrimental to the public safety and existence?
It seems an obvious answer that the people should be allowed to exercise their franchise and elect new political office holders – until one absorbs the impact of the desolation following a Coronavirus lockdown. We need not experience it to understand it; the grisly example of Italy is enough paradigm. People will not only find it physically impossible to exercise their franchise but will be so morally and emotionally weakened from human and economic losses as to care nothing about the political sphere.
It will then be an act of mercy to conceal the truth from the people, to keep the figures of dead and dying political figures hidden while ghost political officers are appointed to replace them, until stability is restored in the country. It is a bitter option, but not as revolting as its alternative of anarchy. Bad leaders are better than no leaders. And who is to say that there will be any difference between those elected by the people and those appointed for them? Have the people not always alleged that those in offices are not their elected leaders or performing the functions for which they are elected? And lately too, the courts have been electing for the people, so that any exigent imposition of political office holders will be but an extension of the present dispensation, but with an option for a cleansing when the shadow of Coronavirus shall have passed over Nigeria.
It may be that Covik-1-9 is the answer to the prayers of many Nigerians against the political class who have beggared them and theirs, but it is an answer better imagined than fulfilled. The common and underdog class may seem ready to make any sacrifice for the common woe, so long as the politicians are also partakers of the woe, yet to leave the rudder of governance without control is not a light matter to contemplate.
Maybe there shall be no significant decimation of the political class by the Coronavirus, but the chance of its occurrence suffices to invite reasoning.
Mr. Omenga, a lawyer is based in Nigeria.