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Nigerian presidency in balance as court convenes
2008-10-23
ABUJA (AFP) - Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua could step down on Thursday if the Supreme Court rules invalid the April 2007 poll which brought him to power in Africa's most populous country. The Supreme Court convened in the morning and is expected to decide on the vote's validity in a case brought by two opposition candidates, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar and former president Mohammadu Buhari. They have petitioned the court to overturn a February ruling by an electoral tribunal which upheld the validity of the poll. The 57-year-old president has indicated he would step down immediately, along with his vice-president Goodluck Jonathan, if the case went against him. "If the vote is invalidated, I'll step down immediately," Yar'Adua told AFP in an interview last May. "Without a credible electoral process, it is going to be difficult to anchor democracy," he said. State governors from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) have converged on Abuja intending to attend the Supreme Court hearing in support of Yar'Adua. However, the court has given no indication whether it will pronounce a judgement Thursday or merely set a date for a judgement at a future session. The wheels of justice have been slow to turn in Nigeria, and the last hearing in the case was in late April 2008. The hearing comes as a whole raft of measures appear to be on hold in Nigeria, one of Africa's top two oil producers. A cabinet reshuffle announced months ago has not materialised, nor has the nomination of a minister to head the new department tasked with pacifying the volatile Niger Delta. Moreover, 18 months after his election, Yar'Adua's administration appears to have made little progress on the areas the president set as his priorities. Despite the announcement just after he came to power that he would declare a state of emergency in the power sector. Nigeria and its 140 million inhabitants are still limping along on one-fifteenth of the power South Africa produces for a population only one-third of the size. The oil that both made Nigeria's fortune and destroyed the other sectors of its economy is not faring as well as previously. Attacks on oil companies and government plants in the oil-rich Delta have forced a cut in production to somewhere between 1.8 and 2 million barrels per day, down from 2.6 mbd two years ago, meaning that Angola is now vying with Nigeria to be the continent's biggest oil producer.
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