Nigerian vice-president steps in to take charge

Published on Tuesday 9 February 2010 20:55

NIGERIA'S parliament yesterday empowered vice-president Goodluck Jonathan to run the country in place of an ailing and absent president.

Africa's most populous nation is striving for stability amid a crisis that has brought the government to a virtual halt and triggered the resumption of an insurgency in the vital oil sector.

But legal experts say the move is unconstitutional and could cause more friction between the Christian south, which gains the presidency at least temporarily, and the Muslim north, which finds itself out of the seat of power.

President Umaru Yar'Adua left Nigeria in late November, without writing a letter to Mr Jonathan empowering him to act as president, as called for by the 1999 constitution.

Mr Yar'Adua, 58, who long has suffered from kidney ailments, left for Saudi Arabia on 23 November and was admitted to a hospital there the next day for what his physician says is acute pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart.

Mr Yar'Adua's absence has caused a ceasefire he negotiated with insurgents in the country's oil-rich Niger Delta to unravel and left no-one formally in charge of a nation with a population of 150 million.

Oil contracts went unsigned and there was confusion about who was running the country.

The political turmoil in a powerful country with a long history of coups and military dictatorships recently prompted US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and European leaders to call on Nigeria to follow its constitution.

Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate yesterday passed measures calling on Mr Jonathan to act as president and commander in chief of the armed forces until Mr Yar'Adua returns from Saudi Arabia.

There is no indication that Mr Yar'Adua will return any time soon.