Abuja — WhenThe President Ails..."Even if Yar'Adua resigns or cannot continue in office, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan cannot be president because we shall not relinquish power until 2015. The Northern caucus of the PDP will meet and another northerner will be chosen in a special PDP convention." -- Godwin Dabo

In the eleven-year old Fourth Republic, last week arguably represented the most anxious for Nigerians. The palpable anxiety was driven by the state of President Umaru Yar'Adua's health. Yar'Adua was flown to Saudi Arabia's elite King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah last week in response to a worsening health condition. But in this latest presidential health episode, there was a significant departure from past practice when Nigerians were left totally in the dark.This time around, presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi told Nigerians exactly what the problem was with the president: he is suffering from acute Acute Pericarditis - an inflammatory condition of the covering of the heart.

He said the president is expected to recover soon and return to the country, but no specific day has been fixed. According to Adeniyi, the president was very sad over his rumoured death. The kernel of Adeniyi's information was specific because it was couched by the Chief Physician to Yar'Adua, Dr. Salisu Banye.The four-paragraph letter from Banye read: "At about 3pm on Friday, November 20th, after he returned from the Abuja Central Mosque where he performed the Juma'at prayers, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua complained of left-sided severe chest pain. Preliminary medical examinations suggested acute pericarditis (an inflammatory condition of the coverings of the heart). "It was then decided that he should undertake confirmatory checks at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where he had his last medical check-up in August. "The medical review and tests undertaken at the hospital have confirmed the initial diagnosis that the president is indeed suffering from Acute Pericarditis. "He is now receiving treatment for the ailment and is responding remarkably well."Before this novel clarification from the presidency, rumours had swept the country like wildfire that the president had passed on. But Adeniyi captured the presidency's dilemma when he stated that rumour-mongering can not be legislated away.

To put Nigerians even more at ease with the situation, some 48 hours ago, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan who has assumed presidential powers until the return of the president, said he had spoken to the president. "We spoke yesterday (Friday) ... He asked me to convey his personal greetings to all Nigerians".The president's death scare, as it were, raised other issues. As speculations got to a head over the health brouhaha, Dr. Olusola Saraki, leader of the Northern Elders Forum told anyone who cared to listen that the North was not ready to relinquish power until 2015, the time Yar'Adua's two-term presidency would conclude. The position of Saraki, a medical doctor by training, a scenario which makes him a scientist raised worrying posers. Was he speaking for the North or for himself? Another northern voice spoke on the same subject earlier before now. According to Dr Godwin Dabo Adzuan, former Deputy National Auditor, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), "Even if Yar'Adua resigns or cannot continue in office, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan cannot be president because we shall not relinquish power until 2015. The Northern caucus of the PDP will meet and another northerner will be chosen in a special PDP convention." For good measure Dabo added that, "By the grace of God, Yar'Adua will complete his four-year term in good health. It is true that right from childhood, he had health challenges. But it was in that condition that he ruled Katsina State for eight years.

Leaders like him who had health issues always live durable legacy." Interestingly, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the mainstream platform that articulates Northern interests and agenda has not spoken on the matter. These positions from key figures in the civilian wing of the northern political intelligentsia provide fuel for further speculations in the nation's current power corridor. Constitutional succession mechanisms are clear on transfer of presidential power in case of circumstances that cannot be predicted (see box).Why would ordinarily informed politicians pitch for options that are at odds with the constitution?Some speculations went as far as suggesting that Vice President Jonathan Goodluck came under intense political pressure to quit his office, ostensibly to clear the coast for a northern agenda dovetailing into the Saraki-Dabo construct. Other speculations held that as Goodluck was a core Obasanjo man, it may not serve the northern interest for him to assume the presidency should it become constitutionally necessary. But related LEADERSHIP SUNDAY's inquiry at the presidency debunked the speculation as totally lacking in substance. Efforts to reach First Republic Minister of Information and Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Keagbado Clark proved abortive.In all, clearly the latest response of information managers at the presidency indicates a return to civilization. But key posers remain. Is the north nursing an extra-constitutional agenda to ensure power remains in the region to meet need of North-South power parity - should matters come to a head? Was the high level of public anxiety anchored on a misperception of constitutional succession scenario? Read on...

It is November 2009. Yar'Adua is ill again. He has, once more, been flown to Saudi Arabia. Curiously, believing that he is dead, or will die, some persons in the corridors of power, and even those far away, are reportedly scheming and plotting. Some are angling that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, a Southerner and a Christian, should not succeed the president in case of any eventuality. Some, like Dr. Olusola Saraki, are saying that, whatever it may cost, power must remain in the North because Southerners have had their turn in Obasanjo (1999 - 2007). Others like Godwin Dabo Adzuana are saying that the PDP should organize a special convention to elect a successor to Yar'Adua even when Jonathan is there, constitutionally appointed for just that purpose. But, on Friday, November 27, 2009, Northern Islamic Leaders went in a large delegation to pay the traditional SALLAH homage to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, resplendent in all-white flowing gown and cap. There was no tension whatever.

There was no disdain on the visages of the Northerners, the Muslims, as they were received by a Southern Christian. Perhaps, they do not reflect the unguarded sentiments of self-serving Northern 'champions' who read region or ethnicity into a natural calamity as human illness. True Muslims believe and agree that power belongs to Allah because "Allah Giveth; Allah Taketh".Are there persons scheming for ministerial and other appointments under "President" Goodluck Jonathan? They have a long wait before them. The Vice President is "notoriously" loyal to whoever his boss may be. Remember how he deported himself as deputy governor of Bayelsa State when Governor Diepriye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha was being tried for money-laundering which eventually led to his removal from office in December 2005? There is more. The most desirable and coveted office in any country is the presidency. It is the "world cup" of politics for many politicians. Many suffer imprisonment, like Nigeria's Obafemi Awolowo, Ghana's Osagyefo Kwameh Nkrumah, Ghana's Flt. Lt. John Jerry Rawlings who was actually snatched from the jaws of execution, for he was on death row for coup plotting when loyalists broke jail and took him to the radio station to declare himself Head of State in 1979.

But many others have died in the attempt. One recent example is Nigeria's Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. He was popularly believed to have won the Saturday June 12, 1993 presidential election. But he never took office: his election was voided in July 1993. And when he swore himself into office later in 1994 at Epetedo, Lagos, he went into hiding. He was declared wanted for treason and, after a protracted manhunt was arrested and detained for four years. He died a detainee.Another Nigerian who died seeking the presidency was General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua. Alongside former Head of State (1976 - 1979) General Olusegun Obasanjo, he was clamped into detention, tried and sentenced to death. National and international outrage and cries for clemency compelled General Sani Abacha to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. But while General Yar'Adua died in detention, reportedly of lethal infection, Obasanjo survived to become president of Nigeria in May 29, 1999.

In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest by the military junta for about twenty years. Her offence is that she won a free and fair election in which she ran for president. In the early days of the United States, former Vice President Aaron Burr, described as madly ambitious for the presidency, was brought to trial for attempting to carve out a part of that country with himself as president. He narrowly escaped execution for treason. Many others who saw the inside of a prison include Mr. Vaclav Havel, internationally renowned playwright, who became Czech president in the 1990s. Then, there was Mr. Frederick Chiluba, the ex-unionist who later became president of Zambia. So also was Mr. Lech Walesa, former leader of Poland's trade union, Solidarity. He was once declared Man of Year by TIME magazine for being "the most common of men doing the most uncommon things". One of the uncommon things that he did was that he brought down the military government of General Wojiech Jaruzelski in the 1980s. These are only a few examples of what men and women go through to become president.

But, once president, the individual becomes as vulnerable and as exposed to attacks as a defenceless baby. This explains the very watertight security that mark their tenure, person and families. Even then, many a president has been felled by an assassin's bullet. The list is a long one: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, James Garfield, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, all of the United States of America. In 1987, Prime Minister Indira Ghandi of India was shot and killed by her own bodyguards as she walked from her official residence to her office. Her successor-son, Rajiv, was also bombed to death about six years later while receiving a bouquet of flowers from a pre-teen girl. In 1981, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt was brutally murdered while inspecting a parade in Cairo. Israeli Yitzhak Rabin was shot and killed at almost point-blank range in 1995. Nigeria's General Murtala Ramat Mohammed was, on February 13, 1976, shot at and killed by coupists on the streets of Lagos. A similar fate nearly befell General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida on April 22, 1990 when Major Gideon Orkar and his collaborators stormed Dodan Barracks, Lagos, in an abortive coup attempt. The risk, indeed, is great for a president or prime minister. In the 1970s, the South Korean president was shot dead with a pistol by the head of the secret service who had been sacked by the president in a cabinet reshuffle. In the United States, President William McKinley was shot dead by a disappointed office-seeker.

In spite of the mortal danger, men and women continue to risk their lives as they ogle the juicy presidency, sometimes unscrupulously. Many will remember this 1981 incident in the United States. President Ronald Reagan had just been shot and hospitalized. The constitution of that country, adopted in 1775, provided that in the event of death, incapacity or removal from office of the president, the vice president should replace him. And, when the vice president is, for whatever reason, not available for the job, then the Secretary of State, then the Secretary of the Treasury and so on and so forth. But, so alluring is the presidency that the then Secretary of State, General Alexander Hang, former commander, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO's, troops, completely pushed aside vice president George Herbert Bush breathlessly: "Gentlemen, I'm in charge". It was a first-class goof by a man considered inordinately ambitious and callous because of his utter disdain for the health and survival of his shot president and commander-in-chief. But, General Haig was not alone in trying to actualize a vaulting ambition. Nearer home in Africa, in Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) when 'life president' Felix Houphouette-Boigry died about a decade ago, it was not the constitutionally-designated vice president that succeeded him, it was the Speaker of Parliament, Henry Koran Bedie. How? He simply, but unconstitutionally, marched with his supporters to the national television station and proclaimed himself President of the Republic! And so he was for about five years until General Robert Guei swept him away in a military putsch.

Now, back to Nigeria, many will recall that Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, when he retired from the diplomatic turf, he enlisted as a politician. In the Babangida diarchy, he became chairman of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, in 1990. then he elevated his ambition and became his party's presidential aspirant. Against MKO Abiola in Jos, he contested the primary election to pick the presidential candidate. He was narrowly defeated by Abiola who then appointed him as his running-mate. It was both of them that contested the presidential election of Saturday June 12 1993 which was voided by General Babangida. But when the Interim National Government, ING, headed by former chairman, United Africa Company, UACN, Chief Ernest Adegunle Shonakan, contrapted by Babangida, was sacked by General Sani Abacha, then Minister of Defence on November 17, 19993, it was the same Babagana Kingibe who became Abacha's Minister of External Affairs, in the first instance, and then Minister of Internal Affairs. All this while, Abacha had clamped Abiola into detention and Nigeria's prisons are under the supervision of the Internal Affairs Ministry.

The implication of this was that Kingibe became the jailor of his former boss, Abiola! When Abacha died in 1998, Kingibe went into political oblivion until 2007 when, to national stock, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua appointed him Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF. But ambition dies hard. And Yar'Adua, though sick, still remains the president. In August 2008, he took ill and was flown to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In his absence, even though Vice President Goodluck Jonathan was alive, hale and hearty, it was reported - and Yar'Adua heard it on his sick bed in Asia - that Kingibe, his Secretary to the Government of the Federation, was scheming to take over the presidency in the event that he, Yar'Adua died. It was actually reported that Kingibe ordered ministers and other high government officials to be reporting to him. The reports nailed his coffin and of his vaulting presidential ambition. Unfortunately, for him, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua did not die. He recovered and returned home and to his seat as Commander-in-Chief. His first action once home was to fire ambitious Ambassador Babagana Kingibe. Since then, 2008, none has heard of Kingibe and his ambition.