Standby President Urgently Needed Here

How can some concerned Nigerians be talking of having an absentee president when all that is needed is a standby president?

It is only in Nigeria that people are wise enough to get a standby generator for their absent electricity only to forget to fetch a standby president to do the job of an absent president.

Not even Miyetti Allah and Boko Haram can argue against this wise proposal of the need for a standby president.

Who is that Nigerian bloke out there who does not know that a standby president is more important than a standby generator?

It does not need any Asaba Declaration to learn that before buying a standby generator it is indeed crucial to steal, beg or borrow to buy a standby president.

Do not say I did not advise you on this matter of urgent national importance now that the president is neither here nor there.

If the president is forever airborne, the standby president will be down here on earth doing service to the nation.

Anybody arguing with me that there is a vice-president may not have been living in Nigeria where the president is almost always adamant to cede power to the deputy in the many moons of absences.

Only a standby president can checkmate the current absurdities of the senate president being in the president’s side-pocket eating kilishi while the speaker is in the back-pocket masticating guguru.

The cliquishly appointed chief justice, I understand, is avidly struggling to get marooned inside the president’s underpants in the binge of arse-licking.

It calls for celebration that the standby president will always be there, live and direct, to address the nation and duly follow up with presidential media chats.

The standby president will do his talking by himself, and definitely will not need the pathetic services of that bloke onomatopoeically named Lai to lie on his behalf or a Garba of garbage to vomit hokum in his name.

It is not in the standby president’s presidential forte to forever hide behind Femi of infamy or Lauretta of lurid crassness.

The ready availability of the standby president will not allow any talebearer to tell tales of a certain Jibril from Sudan moonlighting on the rock.

The standby president, like a standby generator, will come with a genuine certificate from the manufacturer instead of a bogus NEPA certificate.

NEPA is crooked enough, whence its change of name to PHCN, and now the country is saddled with the bearer of NEPA certificate as a giver of light!

The darkness all over the land makes it imperative for the standby president to get cracking “with immediate effect and automatic alacrity”, as they say.

With his proper certificate, the standby president cannot be such a bad mathematician as the one boasting of giving light to 97 percent while giving darkness to 5 percent.

The arithmetic will only start to add up when the standby president takes charge of doing a proper headcount of human beings instead of cows.

The standby president is well-charged to give killer electric shocks to Gumi, that bandit ransom-arranger.

Now that the presidency is overloaded with all affairs of state, notably all security services, INEC, all monetary agencies etc., the coming of the standby president will undertake the necessary load-shedding.

With the standby president on ground, the country cannot lose anything whatsoever anytime the president travels abroad to attend a conference that had already been postponed!

It is incumbent on a worthy standby president to showcase his gift of diverse tongues by diversifying the language in the house of power beyond Fulfude.

The standby president gets saddled with confronting the incumbent president with questions anytime the man shows up after his many disappearances.

It is such a sweet scene seeing the standby president ask the president this particular question: “What happened to your promise of making the Naira equal to the American Dollar?”

Even as the president is chewing gworo before giving an answer, the standby president fires another question thusly: “Why is petroleum subsidy no longer a fraud?”

The president is hard put to make a reply to this poser: “Why have you borrowed more money than our children’s children can pay?”

But wait, the standby president is being whisked away with a poem in his mouth:

 

The barbarian, Baba for short, swears by the rock:

“Make me the messiah lest the people perish!”

The roused kith and kin retort with scorn:

“The mad messiah becomes prisoner of the rock!”

The crackpot pulls a gun and wills his command:

“Ordain me the first citizen or I shoot!”

Summarily the sane subjects stoop and salute:

“Hail His Excellency, Dear General and Head of State!”

The gunman bestrides the rock droning a corny anthem:

“Exalt my democratic transition to life incumbency!”

So the saints of sanity sing the stock song:

“Come down to the people, Emperor of Democracy!”

Baba the barbarian on the rock takes wing crooning:

“Up I go jetting abroad skies for foreign investment!”

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Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is the author of God of Poetry, Satan's Story, A Play of Ghosts and The Missing Link. A 2008 Caine Prize for African Writing nominee, he wrote the text for Scottish photographer Owen Logan's caricature of Michael Jackson's visit to Nigeria entitled Masquerade. He lives in Lagos and is married with children.

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