On March 9, 2010,
something happened which given the state of Nigeria right now, can best
be described as the mother of all ironies.
The
Nigerian president in that year was Umar Musa Yar'Adua and he had been
sick and away from the country for a while. The then vice president,
Goodluck Jonathan was made Acting President and the entire country was
confused about the exact state of Yar'Adua's health.
Then Muhammadu Buhari joined the growing number of Nigerians to call for the removal of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.
According
to the This Day article of March 9, 2010, President Buhari maintained
that the only viable option out of the present political logjam in the
country was for the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF) to
declare the President incapacitated and have him impeached.
Buhari
in 2010 said Nigeria should not have been in the situation it was in
the first instance because the constitution had made it clear on how an
ailing president could be succeeded.
Insisting
on Yar'Adua's impeachment, he said the refusal of the council to follow
constitutional provisions with regards to the illness of the then
president had thrown Nigeria into crisis and he argued that the 1999
Constitution was clear on the issue of succession when an incumbent
president is incapacitated.
Buhari who is now president said
all this when he received members of the National Unity Forum in Kaduna
who paid him a solidarity visit.
Goodluck
Jonathan was not spared, as the former military ruler criticized what
he described as "extra-constitutional measures", the measures applied by
the National Assembly to empower Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President
when the constitution already had a solution to the problem.
Below were his words from March 2010:
"Political expediency won't
remedy this kind of problem because if the Executive Council of the
Federation had acted in accordance with the constitution, by invoking
the necessary sections to declare the President incapacitated, we would
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.
"The Executive
Council of the Federation must do the right thing because once we start
moving away from the constitution, then we are inviting anarchy.”
Looking back at 2010, from 2017, it is indeed ironical that President Buhari is now sick in another country and he has placed his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo as acting president?
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