Nigeria: Law and the Politics of Buhari's Return

10 August 2017

A few days ago, a handful of Nigerians led by Charles Oputa aka Charlie Boy, the eccentric -or better enfant terrible- son of the late legal luminary, Justice Chukwudifa Oputa staged a 'peaceful' protest in Abuja calling on President Buhari to discontinue his medical treatment in London and resume office or he should resign forthwith. This is in spite of the fact that there is no subsisting law, constitutional or statutory, which obligates the President not to exceed a certain time limit while on medical vacation anywhere. It is also in spite of the fact that the ailing President has since done the needful -constitutionally- by handing over power to the Vice President, Osimbajo on each of the two occasions he had to embark on his medical vacation abroad.

You would think that this should be sufficient to assuage all concerns -real or unreal- by those who claim to worry about 'uninterrupted governance' in the absence of the President. But evidently this has not; -suggesting therefore that there is more to it than any feigned concern about 'continuity in governance', or about respect for the letter and spirit of the Constitution. And this exactly is where the huge irony plays out, that this brazen demonstration of ignorance of the law -or is it the prejudicial interpretation of law?- should be championed by an outlaw of sort with such enviable juristic ancestry.

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