ONLY IN NIGERIA!
1 Army Chief Rejects Goodluck: “I am 100 % loyal to just one Commander in chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces and his name is President Musa Umoru Yar’Adua.” Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau in reaction to criticism about mobilising troops to the Airport without the order of the acting commander-in-Chief Jonathan Goodluck.
2. Turai Yar’Adua refused to meet acting President Goodluck. Wednesday meeting between Nigeria’s acting President and Mrs Yar’Adua could not hold as Mrs Yar’Adua refuse to acknowledge the meeting. Goodluck’s aids went back to the acting president disappointed.
Reports say Turai Yar’adua has already moved to assert herself by intimidating the vice-president and systematically divesting Mr Jonathan of any opportunity to exercise the powers of the presidency.
3. The Vice-president has been denied access to the President and to any information that will keep him abreast of the unfolding drama. As events keep changing around him sources say he only gets to hear of the changes after they were announced.
4. Minister of Information and Communication, Professor Dora Akunyili, who briefed State House Correspondents at the end of a brief meeting between Jonathan and all cabinet members, disclosed that apart from the Acting President none of them, ministers has been able to set their eyes on Yar’Adua, development she believed could be frustrating.
“He invited us for a meeting in his meeting room at 2:00 pm and when we came he told us that the president has returned, he has been briefed by the aides of Mr President and that he hopes to see the wife of the president this evening and that when we meet next week, we will be briefed on the outcome of the report of the Saudi Arabia trip by the members of council. And when he is eventually briefed by our President, he will call us again”.
4. Now, why is no one, virtually no one, talking about the high treason committed by the armed soldiers deployed to the airport to clear the way for Yar’ Adua’s return, when the acting president and commander in chief of the armed forces knew nothing- absolutely nothing- about it! Who gave them the orders? For a start, tho…se soldiers, and those who gave them the orders, must be court-martialed/prosecuted!
5. Meanwhile Nigerian President is still in a mobile intensive care unit a day after being flown in from Saudi Arabia.!
*Nigeria is drifting by the minute!!!
OMOBA-Confused
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Omoba,
I find this response by Nowa Omogui particularly instructive and so may I add it to your post:
One has no idea whether the accounts below are true.
But from the very beginning some of us have complained that the way the NASS went about things with its mago mago BBC law of necessity legislation was a recipe for confusion. Some of us pointed out that it was a trap of sorts.
Anyhow, whether true or not, the bottom line is that there are consequences for not obeying the law, even when politically expedient. We should aspire to be a country of laws, not men.
There was a reason why the Constitution was written the way it was.
If we do not like it, we should change it, using the constitutional method for making such a change. But UNTIL it is changed, it is the Constitution – the supreme law of the land. There is no room for doctrines of convenience.
The National Assembly can pass all the resolutions it wants about “recognizing” an “Acting President”; but only the Constitution can legally recognize an Acting President. The law is not a popularity contest. The law is the law.
Until UMYA dies, resigns, is impeached or otherwise “steps aside” constitutionally (e.g. on medical or other type of extended vacation), he remains the substantive C-in-C with direct legal authority to issue operational instructions to the COAS and Bde of Gds, from anywhere, without recourse to his deputy.
The Bde of Gds is not under any Army Division, and its Commander can take direct operational instructions from the Presidency, although administratively under AHQ. Ofcourse the VP can be delegated (by the President, and no one else) to exercise oversight over parts of or the whole of government, but that does not make him the substantive holder of that office. The President remains the highest authority – until otherwise stated Constitutionally.
The allegation below does not mean Goodluck has been ‘rejected’ by the COAS. The COAS is functioning under the command and control circumstances he finds himself. If the roles were reversed and Goodluck was in UMYA’s position the COAS and Gds Commander would behave in the same manner. The Press needs to stop trying to drive a wedge between the VP and the President. Command by committee does not work. There cannot be two C-in-Cs.
If and when the Federal High Court rules on the constitutionality of Goodluck Jonathan being “recognized” as and parading himself as “Acting President and C-in-C” by the NASS, things will be more clear.
In the meantime, the VP should continue to exercise authority over the affairs of State – as openly directed by the President. Whether he calls himself Acting President or the Press calls him that or the NASS calls him that has nothing to do with constitutional legality. I can call myself “Ronald Reagan” but that does not make me Ronald Reagan legally.
The Presidential system of government has its peculiarities.
On the other hand, KC Prince Asagwara wrote:
The type of argument put forward by you is among the reasons Nigeria remains adrift in a sea of hopelessness. Only you know what your rewards are for the kind of man-Friday job you do for your Northern masters. It is only in a country called Nigeria that the present chicanery takes place and you argued as you did. Nigeria has an apparently incapacitated President who failed and refused to do what the constitution required of him before leaving for Saudi Arabia for medication and did not return for 93 days. That was a serious dereliction of constitutional responsibility. The appropriate thing will have been to impeach him but Nigeria being the country that it is, impeachment will have been a tall order and probably, end in major national crisis or even another war. The political compromise reached by the National Assembly to stabilize the polity, that is, declared the VP an “Acting President”, for the Nowas of Nigeria is, unconstitutional. But he refused to see the irresponsible behavior of the President in similar light.
So far, what we know is that our sick President secretly flown back to Nigeria after 93 days of dereliction of his constitutional responsibility has neither addressed the nation and people he is ostensibly their President nor has he met with his VP, Dr. Jonathan Goodluck who held the country together in his absence. That not minding and as far as Nowa is concerned, “Until UMYA dies, resigns, is impeached or otherwise “steps aside” constitutionally (e.g. on medical or other type of extended vacation), he remains the substantive C-in-C with direct legal authority to issue operational instructions to the COAS and Bde of Gds, from anywhere, without recourse to his deputy.” Whoa, what a country and what a people!
It is times like this that reminds me about what a white colleague university teacher formerly married to a Nigerian woman said at a seminar. “Nigerians are a different breed, they match to the beat that only they seem to understand.” He went on to say that they probably reason from their penis.
What a country! What a people!! I keep saying.
Admin