A fragile transition

Nigerians everywhere are understandably anxious at what appears to be the deteriorating medical condition of the president. As fellow Nigerians and as human beings, we cannot but empathize with President Yar'Adua and his family. His wife, Turai, and their children would especially have been under considerable strain these past few days, dealing with the emotional and practical issues that would typically attend this sort of development.

This would have been particularly difficult as it takes place under the unforgiving glare of public scrutiny and rampant rumours of all sorts. We at NEXT wish them strength and join millions of others in hoping for a positive and joyful outcome.

The demise of the president is nothing we wish for nor expect. But the business of the country must go on, and everyone can be forgiven for entertaining the thought about what happens in the event that the president becomes incapacitated or is otherwise unable to fulfil his duties.

Ethnicity as destiny

It is a mark of the fragility of our political system that significant sections of our political class are thinking aloud about the possibility of engineering a succession that does not conform with the requirements of the constitution. Some version or another of that scenario that we have heard is based on certain assumption, apparently widely held:

A. Former President Obasanjo, in effectively choosing a successor that political convention dictated must come from the North, deliberately selected a little known governor from a small state who has a long history of serious health issues. In this thinking, a diabolical Mr. Obasanjo was intent on denying the North its eight years of presidential control by gambling that Mr. Yar'Adua's health may not survive two presidential terms. Of course, in a backward political culture where ethnicity is destiny, a northerner as president supposedly equals northern control of power. Should the worst happen and Mr. Yar'Adua is indeed unable to continue, that fact alone would confirm the worst assumptions of significant segments of the population and thus precipitate a political crisis.

B. Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, over his years as deputy governor of Bayelsa State and later as governor and currently as the country's Number Two citizen, has done precious little to inspire confidence that he can effectively govern the country and may, in fact, fall under the control of a gangster cartel whose most prominent members are from his native Niger Delta. What is more, so this thinking goes, it is dangerous for Mr. Jonathan, being from the core Delta where much of our oil resides, to also be anointed the next president, thus combining political power with oil.
Other arguments against Mr. Jonathan's ascension, should the situation warrant it, are a variant of those two main points.

We do not think it is even worthwhile to debate the merits of these arguments, since to even contemplate them is to agree to subvert our constitution.
We can state unequivocally that our best option is to follow the constitution. Despite its many faults, including the conferring of immunity against criminal prosecution on governors, our constitution is actually a workable basis on which honourable people can run a country. And, in the matter of succession, it is fairly straight forward.

In the event that the president resigns, is impeached, becomes incapacitated or dies, the vice president automatically becomes the president until the next scheduled election, in this case, in 2011. If there is no vice president, then the Senate president takes over but only for three months, while a special election is arranged.

In fact, in the event that the president is no longer able, physically or mentally, to perform his duties, the attending physician is supposed to immediately inform the vice president, who is to inform the chief justice, who is to go instantly to wherever the vice president is and administer on him the oath of office of president. The Americans have done this of course, the most recent being the impeachment of Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974 and the swearing in of the vice-president, Gerald Ford same day. Of course, this has never happened to us before, thankfully, so it is understandable that many people are filled with trepidation.

But being anxious is not the same as blundering into the wrong thing, and any attempt to subvert the constitution would constitute a historic blunder whose long term consequences are too dire to be contemplated.

In the uncertainty over how best to handle this potential problem, rumours have taken on the status of the holy writ. One such speculation, no doubt wild, is that certain powerful political figures already have sought and received the undated resignation of Mr. Jonathan. As the story goes, this would then be released in the event that the news regarding Mr. Yar'Adua goes against our fondest wishes, thus denying Mr. Jonathan the presidency without technically flouting the constitution.

We have no reason to believe this story is true, but even if the idea is being floated to test the wind, so to speak, we believe it is still altogether a bad one. We should, as a country, hold our nerves and stick to the known rules, even if the outcome is not necessarily to our liking.

Of course, the better outcome is that Mr. Yar'Adua rapidly recovers and reassumes his duties as president.