NewsRescue
This piece is adapted from the publication in the Vanguard of March 10th 2010 captioned “Buhari asks EXCOF to declare Yar’Adua incapacitated.”
Candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, Dr. Perry Brimah has said that the only option to the present political logjam in the country was for the National Assembly to start impeachment processes against ailing President Muhammadu Buhari.
Brimah said Buhari could save himself from ridicule of impeachment by resigning from office honourably.
He said the Executive Council of the Federation, EXCOF, owed the nation a sacred duty by ensuring the ongoing confusion is resolved by declaring Buhari incapacitated to pave the way for his removal from office through impeachment.
According to him, the country should not have been in the present situation if the provisions of the 1999 Constitution were respected by the leadership of the country, maintaining that the constitution has specific provisions on how a sick president can be replaced.
Brimah said the refusal by the EXCOF to respect and apply the constitutional provisions had led to the present rudderless situation the country had found itself.
On N/Assembly resolution on Osinbajo
Obviously referring to the resolution by the National Assembly empowering Pastor Yemi Osinbajo to act as President and not “coordinator in chief,” Brimah said it was wrong to use extra-constitutional measures to resolve matters that had already been addressed by the constitution.
He said the temporary joy of political expediency would never replace clearly laid out regulations in the constitution.
According to Brimah, political expediency won’t remedy this kind of problem because if the EXCOF had acted in accordance with the constitution, by invoking the necessary sections to declare the President incapacitated, we would not have found ourselves in this present situation.
As you can see, adopting extra-constitutional measures has not addressed the problem. If it had, we would not have been subjected to the raging debates and controversies going on.
So, we must go back to the constitution. The EXCOF must do the right thing because once we start moving away from the constitution, then we are inviting anarchy.”
Electoral reform
Brimah, however, asked the Acting President Osinbajo to make electoral reform the priority of his government, even as he said he had a feeling that Nigerians would stand up for the truth and reject any imposition or any government that wins future election through rigging and cabal looted-money politics.
The Advocate warned that unless free and fair polls are conducted in 2019, there would be no stability in the country, pointing out that the first measure of commitment to the electoral reform agenda would be to re-organise INEC and make it more effective with money banned from politics, as the organisation as currently constituted, it would not give Nigerians what they need in 2011.
His words: Why is it that while in America presidential forms are free thus attracting whoever intends to run, in Nigeria a whopping sum of N10 million ($33,000) is billed by INEC to enable only the cabal and their sponsored candidates pick up forms? INEC is encouraging corruption by supervising money-based politics in Nigeria.
But one way or the other, the APC and PDP will be out of office by May 2019.
– PerryBrimah.com ; @EveryNigerian; +1-929-427-5305
