PATIENCE JONATHAN'S HEALTH: ANYTHING HIDDEN?
It is a well known fact that Africans guard the individual self (problem) jealously with most matters of the heart not known to be spoken with even family members, unless perhaps such matters had gotten out of hand. It is therefore, understandable why the illness surrounding the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan has refused to be discussed within the Presidency, most especially media aides of both the President and First Lady. Since the First Lady was flown out of the country with suspicion rife among cynics, pestle-wielding critics, unrelenting, self-appointed activists, idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, distracted crowd of Facebook addicts and the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria (apologies to Reuben Abati), that she was diagnosed of food poisoning, media sources within the presidency had been finding the right words to convince Nigerians that whatever was said to have happened were just silly rumours.
The report initially peddled was that the First Lady, having gone through the rigours of organising the Africa First Ladies Peace Mission in Abuja, needed to take a vacation and rest.
Many Nigerians had felt there was nothing wrong in having a rest after such a summit but were marvelled when media aides said the choice place was in Germany. That of course triggered a whole lot of suspicions and probing much that not only politics angles to the story began to creep into the First Lady’s health status, but rumours of her going to Germany to perform the same operation a former first lady had once undergone which ultimately led to her death, became common news.
It is quite an irony that we have refused to learn from recent events in the country which almost tore us apart. We have refused to understand that in a democracy, maturity of purpose should be our watch words, right thinking our motto, our guiding spirit, our ethos and badge.
We have failed to learn lessons from elsewhere and for that reason have derailed the progress of the country by the day. We have not asked ourselves the simple question why a ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ had to be used to solve a simple issue that had to do with the absence of the president when the constitution was clear as to what needed to be done in a situation of incapacitation. The idea here is not simply about the wishy-washy political struggle that characterised the polity sometime ago, but the health saga of a former president which if handled properly wouldn’t have led to the crisis of confidence and power flexing witnessed few years back. For the simple fact that an individual is responsible to a people through the ballot, his life stops being private. A politician shouldn’t be in power only for himself and cronies but for the vast majority of the people who look up to him for their sustainability, security and pursuit of happiness in a binding social contract, therefore, a political leader loses the respect he initially earned as a private citizen as soon as he becomes a public figure because politics in a democracy gives the vast majority of the people the democratic license to talk, punch, critique and criticise actions which initially wouldn’t have been possible if such political leader were to be a private figure and family man in his home. It is therefore, the reason why issues which has to do with the health of political leaders need not be hidden or secretive.
It shouldn’t be an issue locked up in the cupboard. If the first lady is ill, for the fact that she occupies such a huge office as the one we operate in Aso-Rock and of course as a Permanent Secretary in the Bayelsa state civil-service, it behoves those who are saddled with promoting her office to come out plain to tell the vast majority of those she is serving what exactly is wrong. Undergoing intestinal operation to keep one’s tummy firm (a process which led to poisoning and complications) or the latest one which says she is suffering from Parkinson is nothing new. What is new are the political intrigues being played by groups of people, half truths and secrecy that has culminated into the myriads of rumours, some true and others false, shared around on a daily basis.
In a related development, Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos not long ago announced he had prostate cancer and would have surgery. President Santos said the tumour had been detected early and placed his chances of recovery at 97%. He said there had been an abnormal growth of the prostate specific antigen in his body and made it clear that he had carried out all the routine exams recommended by the doctors. He said the surgery would only require local anaesthetics, and therefore, would not be delegating any responsibilities. "With God's help, this will turn out to be only one of those challenges we all have to face in life," the President had added. Of course, his announcement came as a surprise to many Colombians who did not believe sincerity and openness could be the watch-word of the current administration.
President Santos would, however, not be the only Latin American leader to be diagnosed of one ailment or the other. He in fact joins several others who have fought cancer in recent years. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who seeks re-election in few days, has had three operations for tumours since mid-2011. Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was successfully treated for a throat tumour earlier this year and his successor, President Vilma Rousseff, was treated for lymphoma cancer in 2009 but has been given a clean bill of health by her doctors. Paraguay's former President Fernando Lugo also beat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011 after four months of chemotherapy treatment.
One surprising aspect of this is that these political leaders were able to detect whatever was wrong with their health and made it open to the very people who they served or are serving. No forms of secrecy, half truths or lies were noted to have taken place. With this sincere openness, floods of messages appeared on social network sites offering support for President Santos, including best wishes from ally-turned-foe Uribe, opposition lawmakers and government officials. A lesson from this is that when government is open, the people this same government serve in-turn show solidarity in time of austerity and despair.
It is therefore, unfair to hear the presidency asking Nigerians to empathise with the First Lady when the same Nigerians are denied knowledge of what went wrong with the latter. Dr. Doyin Okupe’s assertion that they expect Nigerians not to be probing into the health problems of the First Lady but praying for her sparks off nothing but sheer ignorance of the workings of democratic openness. If according to Okupe, ‘Nigerians have gone through a lot of trauma in term of leadership and death and ill luck...’ and ‘have become so disenchanted with leadership as to believe that the leadership is inhuman’ why have they refused to make the illness of the First Lady open? It is a well known fact that humans are naturally inquisitive when issues are not open to them, therefore, Okupe’s belief that Nigerians should feel empathy rather than probing or questioning about the health of the First Lady is highly misplaced and fails to answer the question of responsibility in the discharge of duty when in leadership position.
If Nigerians were to actually pray for the First Lady, what would be the crux of the prayer? Why do Nigerians need to pray for the First Lady when it was initially said by media aides that she went abroad to have a rest or holiday? It was a good thing Okupe had mentioned the names of past political office holders who had died while in office with Nigerians going through a lot as a result of such, however, what Okupe refused to tell Nigerians is the lesson we ought to have learnt in keeping the health status of those political office holders secret, to have caused ‘trauma in terms of leadership and ill luck’.
For the single fact that the illness of a former president almost exposed the cleavages in our political system should be a lesson those who are managing the health status of the First Lady must learn. The First Lady needs our support this time and more than ever before via a system ready to picture the true nature of things. God bless Dame Patience Jonathan.
Written By RAHEEM Oluwafunminiyi
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