Nigeria nears constitutional crisis

By Tom Burgis in Lagos

Published: January 6 2010 20:40 | Last updated: January 6 2010 20:40

Nigeria is at risk of a full-blown constitutional crisis as unease over the absence of more than six weeks of its ailing president reaches fever pitch.

Buffeted by coups and corruption in their 50 years of independence, Nigerians have grown accustomed to upheaval.

But the prospect of legal battles, threats of renewed attacks on the oil industry and continued fallout from a young Nigerian’s alleged attempt to blow up a transatlantic jet on Christmas day have generated pervasive tension.

Little has been revealed about the health of Umaru Yar’Adua, the 58-year-old president elected in 2007’s flawed polls, since late November when he was rushed to a Saudi Arabian hospital suffering from what his doctor said was an inflammation around the heart.

The ailing leader also has a chronic kidney complaint and has repeatedly sought treatment abroad.

“It will snowball out of our control if we don’t take measures now,” said Rotimi Akeredolu, president of the Nigerian Bar Association, whose lawsuit calling for the temporary transfer of presidential powers to Goodluck Jonathan, vice-president, could be heard as early as next Thursday.

“If it is not resolved by next week we may have to be more insistent on compliance with the constitution.”

Other similar legal challenges are pending but senior officials maintain nothing is constitutionally amiss.

The cabinet, which could ask the president to submit to medical examinations to ascertain whether he is well enough to serve, has declined to do so, prompting allegations that Mr Yar’Adua’s allies prefer the current unease to any threat to their control.

Difficult to govern at the best of times, Africa’s most populous nation and leading energy producer now appears rudderless in choppy waters.

Washington’s decision to place Nigeria on a terrorist watchlist alongside Afghanistan and Somalia following Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s alleged bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound flight is perceived in part as a rebuke for a lack of leadership. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, an umbrella organisation of militant groups in Nigeria’s oil province which has warned that it will review a ceasefire by the middle of this month, said: “Yar’Adua’s absence is beginning to become a problem for the entire nation and will certainly affect the peace process in the [delta] region.”

Tanimu Yakubu, the president’s special economic adviser, told the Financial Times the president spoke to Mr Jonathan on Tuesday night, as well as consulting senior lawmakers and issuing instructions to officials.

But repeated claims that Mr Yar’Adua’s return is at hand, as well as a statement that he signed a $2.4bn (€1.6bn, £1.5bn) supplementary budget on his sickbed, have been greeted with widespread scepticism. Opposition groups have demanded video evidence that the president is discharging his duties.

Manoeuvring within the ruling People’s Democratic party, which has dominated since the return of civilian rule to Nigeria a decade ago, has been intensified by the growing conviction that, regardless of when he returns, the president is unlikely to seek a second term next year.

An unwritten agreement states that power rotates every two terms between the mainly Muslim north, from where Mr Yar’Adua hails, and the Christian south, home to both Mr Jonathan and the previous president, the still influential Olusegun Obasanjo. That has fuelled speculation that another northerner would have to emerge to fill Mr Yar’Adua’s position, were he to vacate it permanently.

Fears of military intervention are never far from the surface in a country that has seen seven successful coups since 1966.

Rolake Akinola, senior west Africa analyst at Control Risks, a consultancy, said: “Despite all we see, I still think the chances of a constitutional succession are high. “The military option is remote. Between the two is a managed transition, with Goodluck Jonathan taking over but elections brought forward.”


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c6a31dc2-fafd-11de-94d8-00144feab49a.html