The most creative of writers might struggle to conjure up a scenario to match the drama playing out in Nigeria today. The involuntary absence of Umaru Yar’Adua, the 58-year-old president, on health grounds is into its third month and Nigeria’s institutions are at loggerheads over how to respond.
The Senate called on the president last week to hand over formally to his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, an act that might ease tensions and forestall a constitutional crisis. The federal courts have been ambivalent, offering divergent rulings in a string of cases designed to force the government’s hand.
Yar’Adua’s cabinet and inner circle however, are bent on postponing the day of reckoning.
“When the cat’s away, the mice come out to play,” says a government insider, alluding to the corrupt dealmaking going on and the opportunism bred by the leadership vacuum.
In the 10 years since the military relinquished power, Nigeria, with its population of 150m, vast energy resources and pool of talent, has shown tantalising glimpses of potential as a motor for regional economic and political revival. In its current rudderless form, however, those with a stake in Africa’s future are more preoccupied with the dangers it represents.
Apart from a clutch of doctors, close aides and the redoubtable first lady, Turai, no one is sure how unwell Yar’Adua is. He may be dying. He could be poised to return to office, as some cabinet members insist. Or, as seems likely, he may be chronically weakened by the heart condition and underlying kidney ailment that led to his emergency admission to hospital in Saudi Arabia in November.
Regardless, a growing number of Nigerians, including former heads of state, are convinced it is not in the national interest for him to cling to office from his sick bed.
In the absence of a functioning head of state, reforms governing the electoral system, oil industry and troubled banking sector are stalling. Political uncertainty has forced hundreds of millions of dollars of investment on to the back-burner, according to business people.
Regional and ethnic tensions, never far from the surface, are bubbling up, putting the uneasy federation that joins rival regions, religions and ethnic groups under strain.
Hundreds of lives were lost in an outbreak of communal violence in the central city of Jos last month. Now the truce in the Niger delta that has allowed oil production to recover since an amnesty for militants kicked in last year is unravelling.
With oil at $75 a barrel, there may be money enough to grease the wheels of the patronage system. But for Nigerians who eke a living outside it, the leadership crisis has brought the cynical abuse of power by politicians purporting to represent them back into stark relief.
On cue, there have been rumblings in the army ranks, serious enough to encourage the defence chiefs to restrict troop movements and caution soldiers against compromising the army’s neutral role. The chance of a successful coup is remote but talk of it should sound a warning in a country with an unhappy history of army misrule.
It is baffling, therefore, that Mr Yar’Adua is so reluctant to let Mr Jonathan take over, at least in the interim. Is the president too sick to take the decision himself? Or has it been made for him by aides with personal interests in keeping his presidency going at all costs? Due toBecause of a glitch in the constitution - bequeathed to Nigeria by the military in 1999 - the very ministers with most to lose if power changes hands are those with the final word on whether the president is fit enough to rule.
The president and vice-president represent different regional interest groups and rival factions within the ruling People’s Democratic party. So those who owe Mr Yar’Adua their jobs would lose out should Mr Jonathan take over. There is a clear enough route out of Nigeria’s political impasse. Yet Yar’Adua’s lieutenants are gambling with the country’s future by blocking the way.