General Muhammadu Buhari
Former Head of
State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd), has declared that the only
solution to present political uncertainty in the country is for the
National Assembly to set machineries in motion for the impeachment of
ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
The 2003 and 2007 presidential candidate
of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) made the declaration yesterday
while addressing members of the National Unity Forum (NUF) which had
visited him in Kaduna.
The forum led by Alhaji Maigida Musa
Abdu had from last week began visiting notable northern leaders to seek
their opinions on how best to handle the Yar’Adua mess and at the same
time ensuring that the region does not lose out completely in the power
equation, especially as the country approaches 2011.
For instance, when it met with former
Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Alhaji Muhammadu Dikko Yusuf, last
week, the former police boss seized the occasion to call on the north to
ensure that it produced ‘credible and acceptable replacement’ for
Yar’Adua in 2011 presidential election.
Incidentally, like Buhari, the former police boss is also from Katsina State, like Yar’Adua and Daily Sun can authoritatively reveal that until the president took ill, Dikko was one of his honorary advisers.
But unlike Dikko, Buhari was more
forthcoming when he further said the Federal Executive Council must save
the nation from the current agony by declaring the president
incapacitated to pave the way for his impeachment.
He further argued that Nigeria, as a
nation, should not have been in the present situation if the provisions
of the constitution were respected by the leadership of the country,
insisting that the constitution has specific provisions on how an ailing
president could be succeeded, even as he noted that the refusal by the
FEC to respect and apply the constitutional provisions had led to the
present crisis in the country.
In an apparent reference to the
resolution passed by the National Assembly, which empowered Goodluck
Jonathan to function as an acting president, the former head of state
noted that it was wrong to introduce extra-constitutional measures to
tackle problems already addressed by the constitution.
To this end, he stressed that the joy of
political expediency would never replace clear laid out regulations
spelt out by the laws of the land, adding that ‘political expediency
won’t remedy this kind of problem because if the FEC 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 exco
must do the right thing because once we start moving away from the
constitution, then we are inviting anarchy,’ Buhari added.
This article originally appeared on The Will on Wednesday, March 10, 2010.
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