Vice President Goodluck Jonathan Saturday described as ‘false in its entirety’ a local newspaper report that he is under pressure to resign from office.
The Vice President also regretted that President Umaru Yar’Adua’s illness’ has been blown out of all proportion in the media’.
The private Punch newspaper reported Saturday that Jonathan is under intense pressure to resign, so that he won’t assume the office of the president in case President Yar’Adua is unable to complete his tenure due to his sickness.
The paper said the pressure on the VP to resign, to pave the way for Senate President David Mark to assume office for three months – during which fresh elections will be organised – was aimed at preserving the zon ing arrangement under which power is expected to rotate between the North and the South at the end of the two presidential terms.
It claimed the VP was specifically being pressured to sign an undated resignation letter. Under the Nigerian Constitution, the VP automatically assumes office if the President is unable to complete his tenure.
President Yar’Adua is from the north, while his deputy is a southerner. The Senate President, the nation’s number three leader, is also a northerner.
But in a statement from his office, the Vice President said the content of the report about pressure on him to resign from office ‘dwells entirely in the imagination of its authors, their sponsors and cotravellers.’
Noting that the report, which it characterised as ‘wild and quite insulting”, the Vice President asked Nigerians to ‘discountenance such drivel.’
President Yar’Adua is suffering from acute pericardities (an inflammation of the outer lining of the heart), and his is currently in Saudi Arabia, where he is being treated for the disease, believed to be a fallout of the kidney disease he is believed to be suffering from.
During the week, rumours of the President’s alleged death spread quickly across the country, but was later denied by the government.