It’s been six years since President Umar Yar’Adua passed on; wow, its six years already? I can still clearly remember that day. It was the first semester of my final year in school, I lay on my bed listening to the radio on my ‘Nokia-torch light’ when the news came.

It was shocking, but again so many shocking incidents had occurred prior to that faithful day. I had a neighbor then whose birthday way on the same day May 5th. When I shared the grim news with him while he was singing praise and worship songs, his reply was “Thank God ooo!!! It’s a wonderful birth day gift ooo!!! It was at that moment that I felt the real shock of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua’s death.

Honestly, I was always a critic of President Yar’Aduar’s administration. I thought his government was too slow, with a long seven point agenda fraught with unrealistic targets. However even then, there were undeniable qualities of his personality that made the late president endearing to most Nigerians.

One of his most profound qualities is the uncommon humility and honesty he brought to presidential leadership in Nigeria. Umar Musr Yar’Adua was the first Nigerian president ever to admit that the electoral process that brought him to power was not good enough. The electoral reforms that were eventually implemented by former President Jonathan started with him.

President Yar’Adua was also the first Nigerian head of state to fully declare all his assets, under absolutely no forms of pressure, duress or demands, a precedent his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan never lived up to, neither can it be compared to the partial asset declaration of President Buhari which was done under very choice-less circumstances, given that he ran a campaign of change and anti-corruption.

President Yar’Adua also decisively fought corruption, but because his actions were noiseless and void of obscene publicity, so many Nigerians don’t perceive him in that light. Some of the first actions of his administrations were the reversal of the dubious sale of national assets including the refineries bought by the Dangote and Transcop groups. He also revoked the Certificate of Occupancy of a parcel of land in the F.C.T, allotted to him by the outgoing administration because due process was not followed.

He was also most intolerant of sacred cows – ask Iyabo Obasanj Bello, Adenike Grange, Bode George and many others if you think otherwise.

President Yar’Adua’s civil service reforms introduced tenures for directors and permanent secretaries of the federal civil service. A policy which was most unpopular in Northern Nigeria given that nearly 80% of all the directors and all the 9 permanent secretaries retired because of the policy were northerners. He also strictly implemented the policy of returning unspent funds of Ministries, Departments and Agencies to the federation account at the end of every fiscal year.

His Amnesty program (currently being copied by other countries) brought back peace to the Niger-Delta. It was an initiative that epitomized his humility given that the procedure for accomplishing the program required that Mr. President sit at a round table with people whom some critics described as miscreants who took up arms against the state. But for him it was Nigerian first before his ego and personal sentiments.

While President Yar’adua possessed these amiable characters, the same cannot be said of his wife who almost became de-facto president at the expense of her husband’s health and the Nigerian polity. Even after the strategy of smuggling her husband into the country just 12 days after the ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ paved way for Goodluck Jonathan’s acting presidency failed, she continuously denied the acting president access to his ailing boss, an attitude that further tore the nation apart along ethno-religious lines.

The drama that followed those months drained the country of good energy and free will, imposing a general sense of uncertainty and anxiety within the country. The summit of the drama includes a visit by a delegation of Muslim clerics who returned telling us that Mr. President was recuperating properly and that he even stood to address them and pray with them and a counter visit by Christian clerics, whom after the visit said little or nothing but however hinted that the President was gravely ill.

It seems President Yar’Adua in his quite moments on his sick bed assessed the state of the nation; of a people he gave so much for, who however returned the favour by politicizing and mocking his ill health. It couldn’t have felt good to be treated as such by family, friends and so-called well wishers; and while so many people were scheming and planning the next gains to make out of the dying man, he gave up his beautiful soul, unto Paradise, ending the stupidity and cheap greed that surrounded all the drama about his ill health.

Umar Musa Yar’Adua transformed Nigeria in numerous ways. His life and death tested the limits of divisiveness within the Nigerian polity, leaving us all with timeless fruits and lessons.

His administration was the first, in which for nearly three months, there was no Commander-in-Chief in the country and yet no military coup happened, proving beyond reasonable doubt that the Nigerian military indeed had either lost its appetite for executive powers or had found a way to control it.

We also have constitutional amendments being enjoyed by the current administration among other things to remember him for. The history books are yet to have enough space to absorb all of Umar Musa Yar’Aadua and everything he stood for in his life time and we will ever remember him.

May his gentle soul continue to rest in Paradise.

My neighbor who happily celebrated the news of President Yar’Adua’s death is late today, he died two years ago. I’m just wondering how he would feel if someone shouted “Thank God ooo!!!” for his own death.
http://www.mybeautifulnigeria.com/remembering-umar-musa-yaradua/

He was ready to serve.

I really really wished death spared this man