Leadership Vacuum
On January 27, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the foreign ministers of the EU, France, and the United Kingdom in a joint statement called upon Nigeria to “resolve the question of governing authority in the president’s prolonged absence,” since “Nigeria’s stability and democracy can carry great significance beyond its immediate borders.”  How does President Umar Yar’Adua absence from the country since November for medical reasons impact the politics of the Niger Delta?

Background:
Nigeria is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, with 5 percent of the world’s languages.  One of the strategies for managing this heterogeneity involves the division of the country into progressively smaller geopolitical units, starting with the division of the country into two “regions” (north and south) and then moving down to local government areas.  The practice of “power shift” mandates that the president and the vice president should come from different regions.  Though it is not codified in the constitution, it is deeply entrenched in political party procedures for picking the presidential candidate and widely accepted by the population as a federal bargain that helps stabilize the country and ensure that each major group gets its “turn” at politics.  This tradition in part accounts for the political unrest after the nullification of 1993 elections, when the presumed winner (M.K.O. Abiola) who came from the south was denied the presidency; it also accounts for the relatively peaceful transfer of political authority from one civilian politician to another in 2007 – for the first time in Nigeria’s democratic history.

Potential Problems of “Power Shift”
One disadvantage of power shift is that it effectively reduces the selectorate – the total number of candidates eligible for office.  This may not be such a problem in Nigeria though because the pool of eligible candidates is so large.  Another potential disadvantage is that such rotational formulas tend to harden or reinforce the identities whose interests they are designed to protect.  For example, this appears to be unfolding in Bosnia.  A major risk highlighted by the current leadership crisis in Nigeria is that it is unclear how long each group’s “turn” at power shift should last, and this is where the Niger Delta becomes relevant.

President Obasanjo, a southerner from the Yoruba ethnic group governed for two terms starting from the democratic transition in 1999.  (An illegal effort to permit him a third term was narrowly defeated by the National Assembly and civil society; see Posner and Young’s excellent piece on this in the Journal of Democracy in July 2007)  After President Yar’Adua emerged from the contentious and corrupt election of 2007, the power shift tradition led northerners to assume that it is their turn to rule for the next eight years…or at least for four years.  Since power shift also mandated that Yar’Adua’s vice president should come from the south, this means that if power is transferred to Vice President Goodluck Johnathan for any reason — including the president’s current serious illness — that the north would effectively be denied some length of its turn at the helm of the executive.

Power Shift and the Niger Delta:
Several factors increase the political risks: (1) Johnathan was selected as a VP running mate in part because he is from a core Niger Delta state.  The ruling People’s Democratic Party hoped that choosing himi would help alleviate the sense of political disenfranchisement which motivates the armed rebellions by MEND and other militant groups; (2) elites inside and outside of government are organizing to defend the north’s turn, and even exploring the possibility of holding another presidential elections for which there is no constitutional basis; (3) should the president become “permanently incapacitated” in the words of the Constitution (sections 144-146), and VP Johnathan is also somehow prevented from assuming the office, then authority could transfer to the next in line for presidential succession, Senate President David Mark.  Senator Mark was very close to Ibrahim Babangida, the dictator who ruled from 1985 through the annulled election of 1993 and a northerner who ran for president himself in 2003.

The President could have easily prevented the speculation surrounding his condition by making a clear public statement about his medical plans and then his condition.  Because he did not effect a temporary transfer of authority to the VP, there is a constitutional crisis unfolding.  Yesterday members of the House of Representatives moved to impeach the president, since it has not been possible to determine if the president’s medical condition warrants the VP assuming temporary authority.  Since public officials can be impeached for reasons of absence or negligence of duty, such an effort would not be constitutionally unfounded.  So far the cabinet (through the Federal Executive Council) has declined to vote by the required two thirds majority to determine if the president is capable of continuing in office.  The federal courts have complicated matters by effectively defending the status quo, rather than for example attempting to compel the cabinet to vote on the president’s competence which would trigger a process that would include an examination by a publicly appointed team of five doctors.

The joint statement by Secretary Clinton and others yesterday is an important step forward.  But it is also critical that the government and the Nigerian military be made aware that the US and its allies will not recognize a president who assumes office by extra-constitutional means.  And in the meantime, the perceived re-disenfranchisement of the Niger Delta peoples may drive militants back into the swamps, especially if the amnesty plan being offered right now starts to fall apart (see the excellent work by Judy Asuni at the United States Institute of Peace on this topic).

More to come soon…