Late Yar’adua and Goodluck Jonathan. The Nigerian president in that year was Umar Musa Yar’Adua and he had been sick and away from the country for a while. The then vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, was made the acting president and the entire country was confused about the exact state of Yar’Adua’s health. Then an opposition leader, General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), joined the growing number of Nigerians to call for the removal of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
According to the This Day article dated March 9, 2010, President Buhari maintained that the only viable option out of the present political logjam in the country was for the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF) to declare the president incapacitated and have him impeached. Buhari, in 2010, said Nigeria should not have been in the situation it was in the first instance because the constitution had made it clear on how an ailing president could be succeeded. Insisting on Yar’Adua’s impeachment, he said the refusal of the council to follow constitutional provisions with regards to the illness of the then president had thrown Nigeria into crisis and he argued that the 1999 Constitution was clear on the issue of succession when an incumbent president is incapacitated. Buhari, who is the president now, said all this when he received members of the National Unity Forum in Kaduna who paid him a solidarity visit. Goodluck Jonathan was not spared, as the former military ruler criticized what he described as “extra-constitutional measures”, the measures applied by the National Assembly to empower Goodluck Jonathan as the acting president when the constitution already had a solution to the problem.
