By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria has been without a ruler or leader for several days now. In my opinion Nigeria has never had a president since May 2007. The man who was illegally imposed on us is now very sick and lying in some hospital in far away Saudi Arabia. Call it the shame of Nigeria-the nation with the largest concentration of black people not been able to provide good health care for its own (fake) president! Imagine the fate of the man on the street who has to beg to be able to afford a pill for his headache! What a tragedy for our nation?

Before he was bundled away he didn’t hand over the reign of power to his deputy, the so called vice president Goodluck Jonathan. On several occasions in the past Mr. Yar Adua had left his ill-gotten post unceremoniously without handing over to the man next to him. But this time it appears he will be away for a long-long time. There are uncertainties if he would be able to stand on his feet again, let home forcefully and illegally govern a nation of 150m passive people. Yes, we are that many but almost stupidly passive!

If we are not too passive or fashion-ly resilient we should have taken back all the things that were stolen from us or we should have kicked away the things that we didn’t ask for. Nobody voted for Mr. Yar Adua in the first place, so it was a stupid passivity that we allowed him to reign, forcefully.

We have been left alone several times without a ruler or a leader we still sit down and adopt the wait and see approach. By now millions of Nigerians should be on the streets demanding an end to this useless dilemma. Our economy is bad and investment is uncertain, yet we sit at home or go to work pretending that all will be well. The national budget is unknown making the already bad economy even looking predictably worse in the days ahead.

The men and women who pretend to be in the national assembly are too busy with personal interests and political survival that they do not see or realise how USELESS they have become in their own existence. If they are not useless what are they still doing when Nigeria with a population of over 140m has no legal president? Their own personal individual emergence continues to haunt them and they know that trying to do anything “right” will jeopardise their political future. I dare any member of the Nigeria Senate or House of Rep to sanely move for the removal of Yar Adua! They are all birds of the same feather-wicked and evil in colour.

The junta who want to have a northern president at all cost or the removal of Goodluck Jonathan to pave away for a Northern President to replace Yar Adua have now sown new seeds of secession. If the North must be president at all cost or at any cost, it makes more sense that they should keep the north to themselves. The rest of the south can decide what to do with their regions.

If the constitution of the PDP takes pre-eminence over that of Nigeria, then there should not be a country called Nigeria. This definitely is not the best option for Nigeria but it appears sensible that if the north wants to always dominate power then the other regions have the opportunity and reason to say, NO MORE!
The South-South have already issued a warning that if Jonathan cannot be the president in the absence of Yar Adua then the rest of us should brace up to a secession. That is more than justified. I mean if the constitution is not followed then there is no country to belong to. Therefore the individual nationalities have a reason to carve out their own existence. No one knows if there will be civil rife and on what scale.

But seriously what is wrong with Nigeria and Nigerians? I cannot stop looking at the intelligence question and the black race. Are we really stupid? Why is it so hard to follow the norm?

One man is sick and incapable, what is wrong with the deputy taking over as it is written in the constitution? Why should there be any rumour or allegation that a group from the north is putting pressure on the VP to resign? What sort of useless agreement could have been made between the VP and the North before the emergence of this unelected government? Are these the outcomes of Nigeria’s crazy democracy-one in which our votes are never counted? How long shall be continue with this nonsense? For how long shall we remain captives and slaves in our own country? For how long shall we bring shame and dishonour to ourselves and to Africa?

A time must come and maybe this is the best chance to redefine our mode of existence and the conditions for our co-existence or disintegration. What is of paramount significance and importance is the quality of lives that we want to live. We must be able to address the best avenues to attain our objectives for the nearest future.

To continue to live passively, doing nothing and encouraging these dictators-visible and invisible is a disservice to ourselves, our children and our children’s children. Just over the weekend Shakira said on Larry King Live: “we should be political, we must participate in the decisions that affect the future of our nations”

This statement must be directed to every Nigerian. We must participate-and we must start to do so positively-in the decisions that affect us now and our children in the future. Our political madness must stop and the way we do our elections must change. If nothing changes then we are confirming the fears of some group that as the black race we are not intelligent afterall. The prevalence of poverty and the fact that more than 90m live on less than 1 dollar per day despite the oil wealth of our country does not show that we are intelligent on our own soil. Maybe we are elsewhere.

The days ahead will shed more light on our intelligence especially in the political arena. The future of Nigeria is in our hands and whatever we decide to do or not do about it.