Suntai arrival
The effort of the Sixth National Assembly to solve the crisis thrown up by the pericarditis saga of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and prevent a recurrence of such, commendable as it was, failed to completely crack the problem. Shortly after the National Assembly passed the Doctrine of Necessity resolution in February 2010 or so, and empowered a lily-livered then Vice-President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, to become acting president, the lawmakers moved to amend Sections 145 and 190 of the 1999 Constitution in a move to put paid to any attempt by a sick president or governor and their cohorts to cling to power while incapacitated. As it turned out, Sections 145 and 190 emerged the very first sections to be successfully amended in a landmark review of the 1999 constitution carried out by that Sixth Assembly.
The import of the amendment of the two sections is that a president or governor proceeding on medical leave must transmit a letter to the national or state assembly, as the case may be, within 21 days; failure to do so the national or state assembly would pass a resolution empowering the vice-president or deputy governor to perform the functions of the office in acting capacity. Recall that the issue in the pericarditis saga of the late Yar’Adua at some point was the transmission of such a letter to the National Assembly. But the amendment made to Sections 145 and 190 did not address how long such a sick president or governor can stay away after transmitting the required letter to the assembly. Can such an officer stay on ad infinitum and return one day to claim power as long as his tenure hasn’t ended?
Now, after Governor Danbaba Suntai’s unfortunate air crash last October 25 and his subsequent airlift to a German hospital, he was not in a position to transmit such a letter to Taraba State House of Assembly within 21 days. I think on the 20th day or so, the assembly did the right thing by empowering the Deputy Governor Garba Umar to act as governor. Ten months after on and after treatment in various hospitals abroad, Suntai returned to the country last Sunday and indicated he was ready to assume office. He was said to have even dissolved the state executive council and removed the Secretary to the State Government recently appointed by the Deputy Governor.
I’m not a medical doctor, but the Suntai I saw on television and in photographs published by newspapers after his arrival is yet unfit. That he was helped out of the plane is little hassle, he looked weak, frail and vulnerable, seemingly unable to comprehend his surrounding. He doesn’t look to me fit to be chief executive of any organisation, let alone of a state. Before his arrival, the Nation’s reporter Joke Kujenya who saw him at the Sea View Hospital Rehabilitation Centre and Home in New York, United States, where he was receiving treatment, had painted a rather unflattering picture of the governor’s state. And that was barely 24 hours before he was ferried home.
I laughed when I read that Suntai made a broadcast to the people of the state on Wednesday night, congratulating the people on the state’s 22nd anniversary and urging them to continue to live in peace. Was he garbed up for the broadcast the same way late President Yar’Adua was dressed up to sign the 2010 budget or to broadcast to the nation at some point?
What precisely have we learnt from the Yar’Adua saga? What has changed? What have we gained from the amendment to Section 190 (2)? What is the need for this brazen attempt by Suntai’s cronies to hang on to power for their own interest and not that of Taraba people?
Don’t get me wrong, I sympathise with Governor Suntai and his wife Hauwa (my wife’s name shake), I know what it could mean for them, particularly for Mrs. Suntai, who is wholly mentally alert, to see power slip from the family’s hand. If in doubt ask Hajia Turai Yar’Adua. But methinks there is no need to plunge the state into a needless crisis because of power for a feckless Mr. Suntai. That’s not what the state needs on the 22nd anniversary of its creation. That is not what I think Mr. Suntai needs at present. What I think he needs is enough time to take care of his health, recuperate fully rather than assuming office as state chief executive, which I think his health can’t carry. I want to think that’s what Mr. Suntai would want now if he’s aware of his environment and in control of his situation. That he survived that horrifying air crash in which he was said to have lost more than half of his blood is enough favour from God and the cabals around him shouldn’t stretch their luck too far by this phantom take-over as chief executive.
Political Observatory
What’s This Hoopla about PDM’s Registration as a Political Party?
For the life of me, I just can’t get this controversy over whether the newly-registered Peoples Democratic Movement was meant to be a movement or a political party. I don’t understand why that should be an issue as Senator Abubakar Mahdi, Chief Dubem Onyia and others are making it to be. Even former Works Minister and Chairman Board of Trustees of PDP, Chief Tony Anenih, faulted the registration of PDM, saying transforming PDM into a political party was not the dream of the founding fathers of the group. Why should that be an issue? Those who don’t want PDM to be a party should simply not join the party and stay where they are - PDP. Or isn’t there freedom of association in the land again? They claim PDM should remain a movement within PDP, truth is members of the group are scattered across the political landscape. They can be found in PDP as in other parties as well. It’s all well and good that Anenih, Mahdi, Onyia and others are arguing the way they are doing now because the 2015 election is almost around the corner. Those who are kicking against the registration of PDM are playing politics just as those behind the new party. But what is wrong with PDM transforming into a political party for the purpose of attaining political power, after all the same PDM had started as Peoples Front, which later coalesced with other tendencies in the government-created SDP of the aborted Third Republic. Pray, if late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the brain-behind PDM, had not conceived it as a political party, how come he planned the PF, the precursor to PDM, as a political party and sought registration for it during the military president, General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition programme?
Anambra Again?
As the countdown to the November 16 governorship election continues, I would have been pleasantly surprised if Anambra State did not live to its billing as a state hopelessly wedded to crisis. Of all the major parties going into the election, there is hardly any one free from crisis, what varies is the intensity of the crisis. And here, as usual, the PDP takes the prize. There were two separate primaries to pick the party’s candidate for the poll conducted by the two factions in the state. Each picked its own candidate - Senator Andy Uba emerged from one and Tony Nwoye from the other.
For the life of me, I just can’t get this controversy over whether the newly-registered Peoples Democratic Movement was meant to be a movement or a political party. I don’t understand why that should be an issue as Senator Abubakar Mahdi, Chief Dubem Onyia and others are making it to be. Even former Works Minister and Chairman Board of Trustees of PDP, Chief Tony Anenih, faulted the registration of PDM, saying transforming PDM into a political party was not the dream of the founding fathers of the group. Why should that be an issue? Those who don’t want PDM to be a party should simply not join the party and stay where they are - PDP. Or isn’t there freedom of association in the land again? They claim PDM should remain a movement within PDP, truth is members of the group are scattered across the political landscape. They can be found in PDP as in other parties as well. It’s all well and good that Anenih, Mahdi, Onyia and others are arguing the way they are doing now because the 2015 election is almost around the corner. Those who are kicking against the registration of PDM are playing politics just as those behind the new party. But what is wrong with PDM transforming into a political party for the purpose of attaining political power, after all the same PDM had started as Peoples Front, which later coalesced with other tendencies in the government-created SDP of the aborted Third Republic. Pray, if late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the brain-behind PDM, had not conceived it as a political party, how come he planned the PF, the precursor to PDM, as a political party and sought registration for it during the military president, General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition programme?
Anambra Again?
As the countdown to the November 16 governorship election continues, I would have been pleasantly surprised if Anambra State did not live to its billing as a state hopelessly wedded to crisis. Of all the major parties going into the election, there is hardly any one free from crisis, what varies is the intensity of the crisis. And here, as usual, the PDP takes the prize. There were two separate primaries to pick the party’s candidate for the poll conducted by the two factions in the state. Each picked its own candidate - Senator Andy Uba emerged from one and Tony Nwoye from the other.
Both congresses were held last Saturday in Awka, the state capital. But PDP says Nwoye who emerged from the primary election conducted by the Ken Emekeyi-led faction is its rightful candidate and PDP Chairman Bamanga Tukur on Wednesday gave Nwoye the certificate of return as the party’s flagbearer. The South-east PDP leaders backed the party that Nwoye was the candidate. Meanwhile, a Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has ordered the party and INEC to recognize the candidate elected by the Ejike Oguebego-led faction of the state PDP, which is Senator Uba.
PDP is torn between the devil and the deep blue sea. What will it do? Will it now disrespect the court order given its newfound love for obeying court orders and judgments, even the spurious ones? Only last week the party’s NEC postponed the special zonal congress in the South-west, claiming it was in obedience to an injunction by an Ado-Ekiti High Court. Meanwhile, Justice O.I.O Ogunyemi of the court said he never issued any such injunction.
Comments
Post a Comment