When the most powerful president is the dead one

The Yar’Adua circus illustrates that even the toughest African presidents who seem to be calling nearly all the shots never really rule alone. There are always many shareholders in an African presidency. The big man can decide to retire and go home early, but it is not easy. He just can’t get up, pack his suitcase, and go to his farm to raise goats and grow yams.

Let’s pose for a moment and reflect on the saga of Nigeria’s President Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua. For the last three months, he was very ill in a Saudi hospital.

Most accounts suggested he was partly in coma. There was a political vacuum and a constitutional crisis back in Nigeria, and agitation started for him to give up power. In the end, his vice president, a hat-loving politician with the appropriate of Goodluck Jonathan, hit good luck and was sworn in as acting president.

Then Yar’Adua was, purportedly, flown back home in the dark of night last week. Soldiers from the Brigade of Guards took over the airport, turned off the lights, and Yar’Adua was supposed to have been put in an ambulance and carted off to the executive mansion. No one, can say with 100 per cent certainty that President Yar’Adua is back, and if he is, if he is alive!

At a minimum, most people agree that Yar’Adua is very sick. Also, that he did not take most of the decisions attributed to him in recent weeks, but by the inner circle, that cabal that surrounds every African president.

Nearly 15 years ago, the playwright Alex Mukulu in one of those spectacular moments of insight that creative minds often have, foresaw this Yar’Adua scenario. In one of his plays (I am not sure whether it was “Excuse me Mzungu” or “30 Years of Bananas”), there was a scene of an African leader in coma, but his aides decided to take him to review a guard of honour. The big man was on a stretcher, in his hospital dress, with the drip being carried along.

The Yar’Adua circus illustrates that even the toughest African presidents who seem to be calling nearly all the shots never really rule alone. There are always many shareholders in an African presidency. The big man can decide to retire and go home early, but it is not easy. He just can’t get up, pack his suitcase, and go to his farm to raise goats and grow yams. Most times, he has to negotiate with other stakeholders (to use that dreadful word).

This explains many things, including why African presidents cling on to power well past their sell-by date. The problem begins in how you get to power. If you came to power via a rebel war, then others did most of the fighting because as an individual you couldn’t be on all fronts at the same time. If you were elected, then you couldn’t campaign in every village or house, you needed agents to do that for you.

And if, like some presidents we know, you rig elections, not only do you need the millions of people who campaign for you, but you need hundreds of thousands more to steal votes for you as you cannot stuff every ballot box and tick all the extra ballot papers by yourself.

You cannot reward everyone who helps you to power. However, you still have to sort out a few or else they will not aid you to power next time, and you increase the chances of your throat being cut by angry supporters the more of them you disappoint. So the trick is to reward just enough of them to allow you have a number of happy allies to keep you safe. Then, as president, there are very few things you can do yourself. You need some one who does a list of your enemies.

Beside your enemies, you need someone who can spy on your friends and allies to find out how many of them are genuine. The list is endless. As president you can do a lot of things with these factions and groups. You can play them against each other. You can create more factions, and multiply the number of rivals vying for your attention.

To each of these people and groups, you must surrender a bit of power—the power that enables them loot, evade taxes, escape police arrest, and so forth. So no African big man has 100 per cent of the presidency. He has only about 50 per cent. His influence comes from the fact that his slice of power is the biggest, otherwise there is nothing like an all-powerful president.

It explains why, some times, the most difficult thing for them to do is walk away. First, as president, we have illustrated that you are one million people’s meal ticket. These people need to know how they will eat tomorrow, before they let you go.

Secondly, precisely because you have created factions to improve your survival, when you are in coma like Yar’Adua, these individuals cannot agree on who should replace you. Thus your chances of remaining president are more when you are dead, than when you are alive!

Secondly, in ordinary circumstances, if a president decides to leave all he can do is surrender his 50 per cent of power. Another 1,000 or so people will also need to give the 0.05 per cent of the power that each of them holds, before you can leave. That can take years. So the longer a president like Museveni stays in office, the more his chances of staying longer in office increase.

cobbo@nation.co.ke