As the leadership crisis thrown up by Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua’s illness continues, former military leader Muhammadu Buhari has called for the removal of the President to save the nation from the lingering logjam.
The call came as a civil society organisation, Save Nigeria Group, converges on the nation’s capital, Abuja, Wednesday for a mass rally to force the removal of the President.
The local media Wednesday quoted Buhari, who contested against Yar’Adua in the 2007 presidential election, as calling on the National Assembly (parliament) to immediately impeach Yar’Adua.
He also asked the federal cabinet to declare the President incapacitated, prepare the grounds for his impeachment, after it emerged that no public official has confirmed seeing him since he returned from his 93-day medical trip to Saudi Arabia 24 Feb.
The President was ferried to the Gulf nation 23 Nov. 2009 to treat what his doctors call ‘acute pericardities’. He also suffers from kidney problem.
Buhari condemned the extra-constitutional arrangement that brought in Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President, in an apparent reference to the resolution of the National Assembly that paved the way for Jona than to act.
‘Political expediency won’t remedy this kind of problem because if the Federal Executive Council had acted in accordance with the constitution, by invoking the necessary sections to declare the President incapacitated, we wo uld not have found ourselves in this present situation.
‘As you can see, adopting extra-constitutional measures have not addressed the problem. If it had, we would not have been subjected to the raging debates and controversy going on. So we must go back to the constitution. FEC must do the right thing, because once we start moving away from the constitution, then we are inviting anarchy,’ he said.
The opposition has argued that Jonathan will be constrained to act for as long as Yar’Adua remains in the presidential villa, whether or not he is conscious