Nigeria in God’s hands? Well no one else is in charge

The prospect of Africa’s most populous nation, home to 150 million people, slipping into leaderless anarchy is now ringing alarm bells across the continent.

President Yar’Adua’s long absence through sickness has sparked a constitutional crisis. The Vice-President, 58, a southerner, would normally take over and govern if the President was declared unfit but the head of state slipped away for what he thought would be a matter of days without signing the necessary papers.

Mr Yar’Adua’s fellow northerners are now determined not to let the presidency slip from their grasp before their time is up. An unwritten compromise since the country returned to democracy in 1999 foresees the powerful presidency alternating between the Muslim north and Christian south.

Mr Yar’Adua was expected to stand for a second term in 2011. The northern political elite suspect that once Mr Jonathan, a southerner, steps into the presidential mansion he will not leave.

In the background lurk the military, many of whose senior generals are also northerners, which has found it hard to resist the temptation to carry out a coup in the past. “The country is in crisis but despite the anarchical nature of the democracy in place, it is still better than military rule,” said Banjo Adewale, a Nigerian analyst. “It is not like the 1970s and 80s. There is no support for the military — at the moment.”