Averting a grave constitutional crisis: An open letter to the FEC

President Umaru Yar'Adua has been a patient in a foreign hospital since 23 November 2009. The day before he left, a public statement by the Presidency announced the President would travel to Saudi Arabia for a medical review.
48 hours later, the President was rumored dead. In response to the rumor, the President’s personal physician informed Nigerians he was being treated for “acute Pericarditis”. This is how Nigerians learnt that the President had, in fact, been evacuated for medical attention abroad.
No one has yet credibly confirmed to Nigerians the diagnosis that detains our President overseas. His prognosis is undisclosed. No one is sure when or how he will return.

Since the President was medically evacuated, the public officials that he left behind have served him and Nigerians disreputably. Some of them have claimed that they are in regular contact with him in hospital. Others have claimed knowledge of when he will return.
These claims are false. It is now reasonably clear that no one except the attending medical professionals and the President's closest family members have had access to him since his medical evacuation. Their relationship with him is confidential.
The prolonged absence of the President from the country and the mismanagement of public communication on his health by the federal government undermine the principles of constitutional and accountable governance.

Dead or Alive: Frantic efforts to fly Yar'Adua "home" on Wednesday

Efforts by members of Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet to return him to Nigeria soon have so far not yielded any results, but sources told Saharareporters this evening that a “political gang” currently in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia vowed that the sickly leader will be flown home on Wednesday at all cost.

Saharareporters can reveal authoritatively that Yar’Adua has not spoken in person with anyone in Nigeria in the last 72 hours. That includes Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan.

Saharareporters sources have confirmed that contrary to his advertised position on national TV last week Thursday, Mr. Jonathan has certainly not spoken to Yar’Adua since he was evacuated to Saudi Arabia on a medical emergency.

What VP Jonathan Goodluck alluded to, as his contact with the president was his conversation with Yar’adua’s State House chief of protocol, Ambassador Abba Abdullahi Tijjani.

A team of politicians led by Kwara State governor, Bukola Saraki; Bauchi State governor, Isah Yuguda; Katsina State governor; Ibrahim Shema and businessman Aliko Dangote are hanging around in Jeddah with the hope of returning with Yar’Adua on Wednesday. That state governors have no problem abandoning their states is proof that the game is loyalty, not service.

God can't save Africa

Manmade problems require manmade solutions - Ebenezer Obadare
It is easy to see why a growing number of people in the west have started to see religion as a possible engine of development where the state has failed so dismally in Africa. Across the continent,religious organisations have gained a new visibility by stepping into the void created by anaemic state bureaucracies.
In several rural and urban communities, the pastor or imam (these days often an unemployed university graduate) has replaced the elected councillor. State½society disconnect, long predicted as the inescapable logic of worrisome trends in African governance, is now a profound fact of life. The crisis of the state in Africa has brought society to its knees, and a majority of citizens have, literally, remained there.
The interior expressions of religion on the continent are even more insidious and most clearly evident in an intellectual surrender that sees its current crises as the making of a divine being, one who will, as soon as current earthly arrangements are brought to their imminent end, sort things out and compensate the longsuffering faithful. Religion, therefore, has effectively become Africa½s shadow state, enhancing its dubious social agency, even as the authority and legitimacy of the state rapidly diminishes.

Mo Ibrahim: To govern Africa, you need the facts

The launch of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance once again brings the issue of governance to the centre stage. While many of the results may conform with people’s intuition, there are also some surprises.

One of those surprises is the continued lack of robust and comprehensive data with which to assess our continent. To take just one example, poverty data for the majority of sub-Saharan Africa is non-existent, extremely patchy or completely out-of-date.