Abuja — Human Rights Writers' Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called the National Assembly legislators, which resumes today, to declare the President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua missing and order a search team to locate his precise whereabouts and report back to Nigerians with verifiable video evidence.This call arose from its worry over the president's prolonged absence from his presidential functions in Nigeria due to ill-health, and the total ignorance of Nigerian citizens about the whereabouts of their number one citizen.
HURIWA, a pro-democracy civil society organization made the plea to the National Assembly legislators in a statement authorized by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko.
The group averred that the search team, to be made up of top government officials, National Assembly leaders and some leaders of the organized civil society, including Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), should ensure that, when located, the ailing president should respect section 145 of the 1999 constitution by transmitting presidential power temporarily, pending his full recuperation, to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to fill the leadership vacuum currently existing in Nigeria occasioned by Yar'Adua's absence.
Specifically section 145 of the 1999 constitution provides that "whenever the president transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation, and that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such functions shall be discharged by the vice president as acting president".
HURIWA expressed dissatisfaction with the claim by the personal physician to President Yar'Adua that he was flown to a Saudi Arabian hospital to undergo medical treatment for a heart- related ailment, even as it demanded that the precise whereabouts of the president be ascertained by some respected Nigerians who would constitute the search team so as to assuage the heightened anxieties and apprehensions of millions of Nigerians who do not believe that the truth about the president's health challenge has been communicated to them.
Huriwa blamed the uncertainty of the whereabouts and the absence of the president in the last forty days for the unprecedented situation of insecurity across the country and the killing of Nigerian citizens by Cameroonian gendarmes in the Bakassi Peninsula because the gendarmes believe that they can kill Nigerians and get away with it since Nigeria's commander-in-chief of the Armed forces is missing, just as it called on the National Assembly legislators to act without further delay.
Huriwa tasked the National Assembly legislators to resolve the long-standing constitutional crisis brewing because of the leadership vacuum that exists in the executive arm of government, and to meet the aspirations and demands of the Nigerian citizens by locating the precise whereabouts of Yar'Adua and determine his state of health.
The group blamed the absence of the president for the latest classification of Nigeria as a state sponsor of terrorism as the president could have corrected the misconceptions in a telephone conversation with President Obama.
The rights group asked the electorate in the different constituencies to begin the process of recalling their representatives should they refuse to resolve the lingering constitutional crisis caused by the absence of the president.
Source: Leadership
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