Last Monday, at the King Faisal Specialist and Research Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua checked in for what his private doctor, Salihu Banye, described as acute pericardities, an inflammatory condition of the outer walls of the heart.
“At about 3pm on Friday, November 20th, after he returned from the Abuja Central Mosque where he performed the Juma’at prayers, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua complained of left-sided severe chest pain,” said Mr. Banye, who added that while “preliminary medical examinations suggested acute pericarditis, (an inflammatory condition of the coverings of the heart)” it was nevertheless decided that “he should undertake confirmatory checks at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where he had his last medical check-up in August.”
This will be the third time in four months that the president will be admitted to a hospital for severe medical conditions, and the fifth time in his presidency. Typically, however, the administration treated this with carelessness.
Two days after this emergency trip, on Wednesday November 23, the Minister for Information and Communication, Dora Akunyili, gathered State House press corps to brief them on the outcome of the just concluded Federal Executive Council meeting but offered no single comment on the President’s health.
Mum is the word
Throughout her more than one hour briefing, during which she catalogued the spending priorities of the administration in the coming year, Mrs. Akunyili, a professor of Pharmacy, offered no insight on the president’s situation.
This famous public communication preference of the administration, for wilful silence on matters of germane national import, furiously blew back later that night, slamming, yet again, a public relations disaster on the plate of the administration by way of a nasty rumour claiming the demise of the president.
In case of incapacitation
While shock and outrage were the major concern, the touchy issue of presidential succession, which used to be a closet theme in political discussion circles, invariably surfaced on the diet in the light of President Yar’Adua’s perennial health challenges.
For most of his second term as governor in Katsina State, President Yar’Adua was nursing what the campaign team for the presidency thought was a serious kidney ailment. During his election campaigns, the nation woke to a rude shock on March 7 2007 with rumours that he had died. As it turned out, he was rushed out to the Schmidt Klinik (HSK), a prestigious private clinic in the Wiesbaden district of Germany where he was treated for a kidney-related ailment.
This time around, however, the major uncertainties were around Jonathan Goodluck, the 52-year zoologist, who is the vice-president, and who, by the demands of the Nigerian Constitution, is the logical successor in the event of a presidential vacancy
Segun Adeniyi the special adviser to the president on media matters tried to douse past fears when the president had travelled out on health emergency without any view of succession. He said in a statement on Thursday, that “the vice president is now acting on behalf of the president. He takes charge in the absence of the president.”
Mr. Adeniyi’s statement however offered only a rhetorical response to the problem because Section 145 of the constitution explains the basis for which the Vice President can assume the office of the President when he is unavailable.
“Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President,” states section 145 of the 1999 constitution.
This section implies that the President is expected to write to the leadership of both arms of the national assembly when he is proceeding on vacation, or when he for whatever reason is unable to discharge his duties, as he is presently unable to, before the Vice President can act on his behalf. This has not been done now or at any time that the President has travelled for treatment even though he could not perform his duties at those times. This did not happen.
Political implications
The immediate implications of Mr. Jonathan’s current status beg a number of questions, like the signing of bills. For instance the 2010 budget, nor can he ask the national assembly to grant him permission to draft the army into troubled areas in the event of an emergency. The truth is that he cannot truly perform any of the specified duties of the president or acting president in his current status.
In other words, while Mr. Jonathan can perform day to day presidential activities like chairing meetings, he cannot perform hardcore constitutional duties expected of the President.
Itse Sagay, constitutional lawyer and a professor of law, weighed in saying: “Well you know there’re two ways in which he (the Vice president) could act. There’s a formal acting which effectively, he is president in the absence of the president. That’s where the president of the senate is informed that the president is going on leave.
Or when the president is simply travelling or he falls sick and leaving the vice-president in charge to manage the affairs of the nation informally adding that what’s happening now is the informal type. “So he is not the Acting President but he’s acting as president. He’s doing the job of president without formally being the Acting President. He’s still the vice-president,” said Mr. Sagay.
Lai Mohammed, spokesman for the opposition, Action Congress, declined comments on the matter saying his party is still reviewing the constitutional implication of the matter.
The more troubling implication of the Jonathan succession, however, is how the north fairs in the current dispensation. The ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, operates a zoning formula. When Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, completed his tenure, there was a clamour from the different political zones that it was their turn to produce the President. Two zones led the campaign: The South-South and the collective ‘North.’
The South-South claimed it remained the only one of the six geopolitical zones so far denied a shot at the presidency since Independence, while the north claimed the south had just had it for the past eight years (Mr. Obasanjo’s tenure). The party failed to resolve the matter officially but allowed all interested candidates to vie for the presidency while its top members repeatedly made claims that it was the turn of the north.
In the event of a presidential incapacitation therefore, it is unclear what the position of the PDP will be on someone from the South-South using the Northern slot. Party officials kept mum and refused to return calls on the matter at the weekend.
In a brusque response to the question however, Yerimah Shettimma, the National President for the Arewa Youth Forum, [AYCF] said: “Although constitutionally it is spelt out that if anything happens to the president then the VP should take over, my worry is that with the political situation we have on ground, with the type of democracy we practise in this country, I don’t think it will work out. The north will not allow Goodluck Jonathan to take over as president. I don’t see how they will allow it. I’m from the north, and I know how people felt after waiting for eight years before producing the president, they will not allow Jonathan to become president.”
Mr. Shettimma rejected this notion, however, but insisted that he was reading the mind set of the average northern person. “It just shows you the type of democracy we practise in this country. The truth is that he did not want to be president, and so was Goodluck Jonathan. I don’t see them allowing Jonathan to be president, God forbids anything happens to Yar’Adua, he said. The theme of a southerner using a northern slot acquired disturbing traction at the recently concluded business session of the Honourary International Investment Council in Abuja where investors were repeatedly inundated by the claims that Mr. Obasanjo deliberately planted an ailing Mr. Yar’Adua in the presidency to deny the North of eight years of the presidency, according to a western diplomat who attended the forum and spoke to NEXT.
When the council’s leadership, led by Baroness Linda Chalker of Britain, failed to secure a meeting with the President throughout the two-day forum, NEXT gathered that the investors left with very “disturbing signals about the extent of Mr. Yar’Adua’s health.”
The Honourary International Investors Council (HIIC) was set up in 2004, to advise the government on its quest to involve the private sector and foreign direct investment to drive the economy to become one of the 20th largest economies in the world by the year 2020. The council comprises individuals, including Nigerians, who are vast with the knowledge of global investment to look at our investment environment and advise government on the right decision to take to encourage foreign investment in terms of security, infrastructure, the general business climate in the country and other issues that will attract investors into the country.
A north–south problem arising from President Yar’Adua’s problem is one thing commentators who spoke to NEXT say they hope will not happen, hoping, as many expressed, that a proper handling of the matter is critical.
Mr. Sagay wants the political snag around the rotation argument for the presidency to be separated from the legal, adding that “the legal position is that the VP takes over as president if anything occurs. If they want to rotate, that’s all political.”
Proposing a solution, a political analyst, speaking to NEXT on condition of anonymity said: The proper thing is to declare the President medically unfit for office, and secure an orderly transfer of power. To assuage northern fears (Mr.) Jonathan could declare himself a transitional figure and reinforce that by appointing a formidable northern Vice president.”
But Odia Ofeimun, a literary scholar and political commentator disagrees strongly saying: “I am afraid that there is nothing in the Nigerian constitution that can be set aside at any time to please non-constitutional arrangements.”
He warned that “whatever arrangements that have been made that are not in the constitution, which override what the constitution says, can only lead to anarchy. The president needs to have either resigned or been declared unfit by a proper medical council. If the VP becomes president, then it is his prerogative to choose who his VP should be. And if he wants to run for a second term, the constitution of Nigeria allows a president to run for two terms. It should be left at that. My view is that any arrangement made by any political party that is outside the constitution is automatically invalidated.”
Mr. Shettimma’s last word is that “Only a sovereign national conference will deal with a lot of this North -South issue,” adding: “We’re all Nigerians, and not a Northerner or a Southerner.”
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