SOME Nigerians were at their fawning best when
the wife of the President, Patience Jonathan,
returned from her unannounced overseas trip
recently. A crowd of hangers-on in the Presidency
trooped to the airport to receive her amid singing
and dancing. Some wore T-shirts proclaiming their
love and solidarity for the President’s wife. Though
Mrs. Jonathan’s well-wishers reserve the right to
celebrate the return of a woman who is probably
their benefactor, it is awkward and bizarre for
senior cabinet ministers to join in such banality. The
main issue here is not about Patience Jonathan’s
health but about misuse of public funds, abuse of
power and lack of transparency.
In the United States where Nigeria borrowed its
presidential system from, the Office of the First Lady
is part of the Presidency and is maintained with tax
payer’s money. Though unelected, Nigeria’s First
Lady is also regarded as part of the Presidency. In
the official website of the State House, Abuja, the
Office of the First Lady comes immediately after that
of the Vice-President and precedes the Federal
Executive Council. According to Wikipedia, an online
encyclopedia, the Office of the First Lady of the
United States is accountable to the First Lady to
enable her to carry out her duties as hostess of the
White House, and is also in charge of all social and
ceremonial events of the White House. It adds that
“The First Lady has her own staff that includes a
chief of staff, press secretary, White House Social
Secretary, Chief Floral Designer, etc. The Office of
the First Lady is an entity of the White House Office,
a branch of the Executive Office of the President.”
Mrs. Jonathan enjoys similar perquisites of office.
Some online media outlets had reported that Mrs
Jonathan was flown to a German hospital for an
undisclosed ailment. Speculations were rife that she
was being treated either of food poisoning allegedly
contracted in Dubai, or appendicitis. Some even
claimed she went for a “tummy tuck” — medical
surgery to reduce the size of the stomach. The
Presidency stoked up this fire of rumour when it
refused to clearly disclose her health status. Rather
than make her return a quiet affair knowing that
Nigerians were not informed about her real reason
for going abroad, the Presidency decided to hold a
carnival-like reception for her and there were
reports of a grand reception being planned.
It is not as if Mrs. Jonathan’s health condition has
any critical bearing on the running of government.
But when secrecy is baked into the government
culture, public trust takes flight. It is only in countries
where openness is a luxury, like North Korea, that
such things can happen. Incidentally, the North
Korean First Lady, Ri Sol-ju, has also disappeared
from the public for more than a month now,
fuelling speculations about her fate. Some reports
say she may have fallen out of favour with the ruling
Communist Party in the country; some say she may
be pregnant. But North Korea is a totalitarian, single
party state while Nigeria is a supposed democracy.
Nigeria has gone through this cycle before. Former
President Umaru Yar’Adua was in a Saudi Arabian
hospital for months, but Nigerians were kept in the
dark about his trip and illness. Ironically, President
Goodluck Jonathan was his deputy then and
directly suffered the consequences of the secrecy
and lies that surrounded Yar’Adua’s absence. It took
the intervention of the National Assembly which
invoked a “doctrine of necessity” to bring sanity
back to the country.
Like in Yar’Adua’s case, public funds were wasted in
the inglorious trip of the Mrs. Jonathan. A
Presidential jet took her to Germany and brought
her back. The cost of whatever treatment she
underwent in Germany was likely borne by Nigerian
taxpayers. Shouldn’t these taxpayers then be
informed about her condition?
As if to insult Nigerians the more, Mrs Jonathan has
denied ever going to any German hospital. As she
put it, “I read in the media where they said I was in
the hospital. God Almighty knows I have never been
to that hospital…I do not have terminal illness, or
any cosmetic surgery, much less tummy tuck. My
husband loves me as I am and I am pleased with
how God created me.”
She missed the point here. We do not think that any
rational person would want to contest the love her
husband has for her. Nor are sane Nigerians
praying that she develops a terminal illness. Being
the wife of our President and a public figure whose
welfare is taken care of with public funds, she owes
it as a duty to Nigerians to explain her whereabouts.
If she is ill, it only means she is human and will elicit
the sympathy of Nigerians if she makes it public. If
she said she didn’t go to the German hospital, then
where did she disappear to for almost two months?
And why did she say Nigerians gathered and prayed
for her and God listened and heard their prayers?
Mrs Jonathan’s health controversy has entrenched
the climate of secrecy in government.
In saner countries, the Presidency would have been
answering some penetrating questions by now.
The United States taxpayers, for instance, do not
pay for their First Lady’s private trips abroad. And it
would have been a return to the Stone Age for
Americans to troop out to sing and dance for Mrs
Obama for travelling overseas secretly and
returning with a swagger. The female ministers and
other government functionaries who went to the
airport to sing and dance with T-shirt-wearing aides
of Mrs. Jonathan should be ashamed of
themselves. Where in the civilised world do senior
ministers leave their job to welcome the first lady
from a private trip?
In a democracy, it is argued, the principle of
accountability holds that government officials —
whether elected or appointed by those who have
been elected — are responsible to the citizenry for
their decisions and actions. Transparency requires
that the decisions and actions of those in
government are open to public scrutiny and that
the public has a right to access such information.
Both concepts are central to the very idea of
democratic governance.
Nigerians should begin to demand accountability
from their public officers. There should be
transparency in government. A transparent
government plays a critical role in a functioning
democracy. Our public officers should learn some
lessons from countries that run an open and
transparent system. Earlier this month, the
Colombian President, Juan Manuel Santos,
informed his people that he had prostate cancer
and would undergo surgery. His people wished him
well. The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, was
taken to the King Edward VII hospital, London, in
June this year for a bladder infection and that was
also made public. The world no longer operates like
a secret cult. That is the civilised trend our leaders
should emulate.
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