Power vacuum in Nigeria, oil industry in peril
Monday, 25 January 2010
LAGOS, Jan 24 (Commodity Online): With constitutional confusion prevailing in Nigeria due to ill-health of President Umaru Yar'Adua, who was flown to Saudi Arabia for treatment in November, the country's oil industry is in jeopardy, The power vacuumin Nigeria, one of Africa's leading oil producers, is putting the all-important oil industry in jeopardy by delaying reforms and threatening to re-ignite an insurgency in the oil-rich south.
Yar'Adua, who has a history of poor health, was flown to Saudi Arabia for hospitalisation with a heart condition on November 23, leaving no designated successor and plunging Africa's most populous nation into constitutional confusion.
There was neither sight nor sound of Yar'Adua for weeks, triggering nationwide suspicions that the 58-year-old president was dead or dying. Finally, on January 11 he had to announce on the BBC's Hausa language service from his hospital bed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah last week that he was still alive and would return.
Two days later a federal court ruled that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan could begin assuming the powers of acting president-but stopped short of formally transferring those powers to him. That deftly avoided a potentially explosive rift between Nigeria's rival political barons in the Muslim north and the Christian south of the country but did not defuse the political turmoil Yar'Adua's prolonged absence has caused.
The failure to delegate authority has paralysed government and blocked decisions on several important issues, notably the peace process Yar'Adua launched in the summer to end five years of insurgency in the south that has caused immense damage to the oil industry.
Yar'Adua, who has a history of poor health, was flown to Saudi Arabia for hospitalisation with a heart condition on November 23, leaving no designated successor and plunging Africa's most populous nation into constitutional confusion.
There was neither sight nor sound of Yar'Adua for weeks, triggering nationwide suspicions that the 58-year-old president was dead or dying. Finally, on January 11 he had to announce on the BBC's Hausa language service from his hospital bed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah last week that he was still alive and would return.
Two days later a federal court ruled that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan could begin assuming the powers of acting president-but stopped short of formally transferring those powers to him. That deftly avoided a potentially explosive rift between Nigeria's rival political barons in the Muslim north and the Christian south of the country but did not defuse the political turmoil Yar'Adua's prolonged absence has caused.
The failure to delegate authority has paralysed government and blocked decisions on several important issues, notably the peace process Yar'Adua launched in the summer to end five years of insurgency in the south that has caused immense damage to the oil industry.