The Federal Executive Council (FEC) ended its weekly meeting on Wednesday with no word on the lengthy absence of ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua who has not been seen in public since November 23, 2009. Rather, they chose to caution Dora Akunyili, minister of information and communications, for her comments on the president’s health status.

Elsewhere at the National Assembly, the Armed Forces yesterday pledged their loyalty to the Federal Government and the country’s constitution to douse the tension created by the deployment of troops to receive Yar’Adua who returned to the country in the wee hours of last week Wednesday.

Nigerians awoke to the shocking revelation that troops were deployed in the night to welcome the ailing President from his medical trip in Saudi Arabia, a development that has created fear and worry in the polity. At a closed door meeting with the leadership of the House of Representatives in Abuja, military chiefs comprising officers from the navy, army and the air-force led by Paul Dike, chief of defence staff, an air chief marshall, assured that they have no intention to capitalize on the absence of the President to interrupt the nation’s democracy. Sources at the meeting said the military chiefs admitted the overtures from some politicians to intervene but which they rebuffed.

David Mark

“They assured us that they have no intention of interrupting governance and that they are loyal to the government of the day and to the nation’s constitution,” the source said.

Dike also defended the deployment of soldiers of the Brigade of Guards to Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja when Yar’Adua returned to the country last week without informing Acting President Goodluck Jonathan. “Dike justified the deployment, insisting that since the soldiers in the brigade guard the president and his family members, there was no need taking orders from the Acting President”, the source said.

Wole Oke, chairman of the House committee on Defence confirmed the meeting held, adding that the military officers in attendance “pledged their unalloyed loyalty to the nation and are not interested in governance. They said they are not cut out for that.”

The military had shortly after Jonathan was made Acting President by the resolutions of the National Assembly, warned politicians not to drag it into the politics. The military authorities, thereafter, began to restrict the movement of officers and men of the three armed forces.

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Still not satified with d answer.a