Can Nigeria, still without its president, avoid a political crisis?

Officially, the Nigerian government does continue to function, with Jonathan presiding over cabinet meetings as acting president.

“The Constitution is very clear on this point: The vice president is in charge,” says Dora Akunyilu, Minister of Information and Communication, in a brief telephone interview. She then quotes the statement of the Nigerian ambassador in Saudi Arabia, saying, “The doctors will decide when he can leave, they will decide what should be done.”

While some northern politicians from Yar’Adua’s own region have called for the president to resign, and for fresh elections to elect a new northern president, Yar’Adua’s cabinet has stood by him.

"Those who are calling for the president's resignation are unpatriotic,” Olusola Oke, the People’s Democratic Party legal adviser told the Vanguard newspaper. “Resignation is a voluntary thing and the president should not be coerced.

Lost opportunies?

Yet a growing number of Nigerian politicians are now worried about the lost opportunities of a presidency that lacks full leadership authority. It was the personal intervention of Yar’Adua that started the latest peace negotiations with the Niger Delta rebels, for instance, and Yar’Adua’s absence has largely meant that the negotiations have stalled.

Some Niger Delta rebels who refused to disarm have already returned to the jungles, according to rebel sources contacted by the Monitor.

“This power vacuum could put the Niger Delta amnesty [and peace process] into danger,” says Osita Okechukwu, public spokesman of the Congress of Nigerian Political Parties, an umbrella of opposition parties. “The militants are not waiting for anything. If the projects are not working, they will want to take over immediately, but because of the lack of funds, they may give up.”

Pat Utomi, who once ran as an independent presidential candidate against Yar’Adua and is now a lecturer at the Lagos Business School, says the only option is to swear in Goodluck Jonathan as president.

“To fail to do so is to signal to [the people of] the region of the vice president - the troubled Niger Delta - that Nigeria is rejecting them,” he says. “If that were to happen, the demobilized militants would go straight back to the creeks, and the game would even be turned up a notch.”

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