As the country remains on the tenterhooks following the absence of ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua from the country for over 70 days, indications have emerged that the National Assembly is set to amend the 1999 Constitution to include a provision for two vice presidents. Daily Sun gathered from highly reliable sources that the Senate and the House Committees on Constitution Review may have been requested to expeditiously tinker the relevant sections of the Constitution to accommodate a provision for two vice presidents.

Our source, who is a ranking member of the Upper Chamber, said the calculation is that the separate review committees of the two houses may be left with no choice than to adopt the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Constitution Review (JCCR) which was made in 2007. The committee was headed by former Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu. The 103-clause draft report was tabled at the two chambers just before the 2007 general election but was thrown out because of one controversial clause, which sought to introduce a Third Term for the president. The controversial clause was suspected to have been included primarily for the benefit of President, Olusegun Obasanjo, who allegedly wanted to elongate his tenure beyond the maximum two-term tenure.

But Daily Sun gathered that with the current power vacuum and the looming constitutional crisis in the country occasioned by the protracted illness of President Yar’Adua, the imperative of two vice presidents as recommended by the Mantu committee might have dawned on the lawmakers. They now want to revisit the Mantu committee report by “sifting the grains from the chaff,” the source revealed.
“We will not make the mistake of carrying the entire 103 clauses for amendment as the last National Assembly did. We will restrict ourselves to few vital clauses among them, including the clause that provides for two vice presidents,” the source further disclosed.

It is noteworthy that the Senate had last Wednesday directed its “committee on the review of the 1999 Constitution to propose an amendment” to “…the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 to resolve the flaws exposed by the present circumstance” in the country. Although, the Senate resolution, which also urged President Yar’Adua to formally notify the National Assembly of his medical vacation only mentioned Section 145 of the Constitution as the aspect that needed urgent amendment, the source hinted that a new clause making provision for two vice presidents was also part of the mandate given the review committee.
When Daily Sun interviewed the former JCCR Chairman whose committee initially made the recommendation, he said it was not his business what the current National Assembly did with the report even as he confirmed that his committee actually recommended two vice presidents for the country.

Mantu, who spoke at his Abuja residence, said: “We made our recommendations with the stability, peace and unity of the country at the back of our minds. You can see that if that report was debated and accepted, we would not have been in this tight corner that we have found ourselves today because we envisaged that this kind of development might arise once in a while in our political history. What we proposed with good intention is that one of the two vice presidents should be from the geo-political zone where the president comes from so that in the event of incapacitation, resignation or death, the vice president from the incumbent president’s zone would serve out the remaining years for the zone. But unfortunately, those who believed that they know better than the rest of the people came with their blackmail and what resulted was the throwing away of the baby with the bath water.”

Asked whether he would re-submit the report to the present National Assembly if called upon to do so, he said it was not for him to do that, adding that the report was still there in the archives as the property of National Assembly. “It is left to them to revisit it or throw it into the dustbin. We have done our bit, but what I can say is that we did a good job to the best of our ability. We may not have been perfect as human beings but we contributed our quota. No one person can be blamed for the clause on Third Term because it was something majority of the members of the committee adopted; but if one out of over 100 clauses was considered bad, why not remove that clause or few clauses and pass the rest for the benefit of the society rather than sacrifice the whole report. It is really painful, considering the time, resources and energy spent in reaching that stage and putting together that report. And remember, Nigeria is a very big and complex country that requires some peculiar political engineering to manage,” the former deputy Senate president between 2000 and 2007 emphasised.

Concerning the lingering ill-health of the President, Mantu said: “First of all, I’m happy that you acknowledged that anybody can be sick and that anybody can die at any given time. Sickness and death are two things that can befall anybody at any given time... Therefore when somebody falls sick, ordinarily what he deserves is sympathy and prayers that God will heal him fast. That is the case particularly if the person is very highly placed like the president of the country. The nation should pray for him so that he will recover quickly and continue with the affairs of running the state.

He said it was unfortunate that people were politicizing the illness of the President, contending that: “This is not the first President to fall sick while in office. There are many Presidents in the world that I have read about who had fallen sick while in office. In fact, recently Cuban President, Fidel Castro was sick and could not be in his office for about two years while somebody was acting in his place and when he recovered he returned and continued with service as the President of that country. I also know that at a point in time, the President of the USA was on a wheel chair and yet continued in office as President until his tenure expired.”

According to Mantu, administering or governing a country or state “does not require the energy of Mike Tyson necessarily,” adding that it is the mental capacity that is most needed. He also argued that there was no power vacuum as some people believed. “The Vice President is there and basically, the job of any Vice President is to act in the capacity of the principal when the principal is away. So, Goodluck Jonathan has been acting as President in the absence of the President. And I know that since the advent of this democratic dispensation in 1999, major government decisions had always been taken at the Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meetings. And since President Yar’Adua left the country, there has never been a Wednesday that the Federal Executive Council failed to hold.”

Mantu expressed satisfaction with the manner Vice President Jonathan has been acting in the absence of the President. “I’m happy with the actions he (Jonathan) had been taking in that capacity so far, like ordering that troops be deployed in Plateau following the crisis in Jos to assist the Police,” he stated.