“Yar’adua deserves honourable exit” -HURIWA

As members of the executive council of the federation holds a crucial meeting tomorrow on the health status of Nigeria’s ailing president Umaru Musa Yar’adua, an advice has gone to the ministers to do the needful to ensure that the sanctity of the 1999 constitution is preserved.

Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria, HURIWA which made the plea, also strongly canvassed that the ailing president deserves an ‘honourable exit’ and must not be disgraced out of office.

The democracy inclined and development focused non-governmental body in a media release jointly endorsed by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and senior program manager Barrister Lynette Ogom Kifordu lamented what it calls the ‘growing ethnicization and sectionalization’ of the controversy surrounding the prolonged absence from office on health ground of president Yar’adua, the secrecy and militarization of the alleged return to Nigeria in the wee hours of the night by the head of Nigeria’s sovereignty- President Yar’adua.

HURIWA which has consistently maintained that it was wrong for the ailing president to have been flown out of the country following health complications without the proper transmission of presidential powers in line with section 145 of the 1999 constitution to his vice, now Acting president Dr. Good Luck Jonathan, also stated that the executive council of the Federation must put to an end what it calls “organized confusion” orchestrated by the trusted aides of the ailing President, so that the Federal government can concentrate on delivering democracy dividends to millions of impoverished citizens. ‘’It is regrettable that while the elite argue over the emerging re-configuration of the executive arm of Nigeria’s government to favor their pecuniary and primordial interests, the majority of Nigerians are languishing in unwarranted existential economic adversities even as crime rate has become unprecedented in recent times with little or no effective action from the Federal Government to tackle the widening chasm between the extremely poor citizens and the few obscenely rich citizens in Nigeria,’’ HURIWA stressed.

The Rights group tasked the members of the Executive Council of the Federation to quickly meet and put an end to the unending controversy generated by what it called “the unwholesome attitudes” of the close aides of the ailing president who have over heated the polity and deliberately shielded the ailing president from even the Acting president.

The Rights group particularly Lampooned the Adviser on media to president Yar’adua Mr. Segun Adeniyi for making an initial statement which cast strong aspersions on the well thought out decision of the National Assembly to resolve the leadership vacuum by passing a resolution authorizing the then vice president to act as president pending the return to office of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua.

HURIWA criticized Mr. Adeniyi for initially failing deliberately to recognize the office of the acting president before he quickly corrected himself twenty four hours later after gauging that the mood of the nation was not favorable to the ‘wrong-headed’ political game he was playing in the wake of the alleged return to Nigeria of President Yar’adua.

The Rights group also frowned at the military deployment of full force to the international Airport Abuja without the knowledge of the Acting President as widely reported before and after the alleged arrival of the ailing president to Nigeria after a very extensive and prolonged absence of the president from office. HURIWA has therefore demanded that the Executive council of the Federation should invoke relevant provisions of section 144 to bring to a meaningful and peaceful end to the controversy surrounding the health situation of Nigeria’s president.

Specifically, section 144 (1) states thus “the President or Vice-President shall cease to hold office, if-

By a resolution passed by two-thirds majority of all the members of the executive council of the Federation it is declared that the President or Vice-President is incapable of discharging the functions of his office, and

The declaration is verified, after such medical examination as may be necessary, by a medical panel established under subsection (4) of this section in its report to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

(2) Where the medical panel certifies in the report that in its opinion the President or Vice-President is suffering from such infirmity of body or mind as renders him permanently incapable of discharging the functions of his office, a notice thereof signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall be published in the official Gazette of the Government of the Federation.”

HURIWA which demanded honourable exit for the ailing president also criticized the close aides of President Yar’adua for absolutely prohibiting media access to the ailing president which according to it is a violation of section 22 of the 1999 constitution.