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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 ABUJA 000183 
 
SIPDIS 
STATE FOR AF/FO, AF/W, AF/RSA, AF/PDPA, DRL, INR/AA 
AMEMBASSY YAOUNDE PASS TO AMEMBASSY MALABO 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 2020/01/26 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR OVIP SOCI KDEM KPAO NI
SUBJECT: ASSISTANT SECRETARY CARSON DISCUSSES POLITICAL SITUATION, 
ELECTORAL REFORM WITH POLITICAL LEADERS 
 
REF: ABUJA 0161 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: James P. McAnulty, Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy 
Abuja, Political Section; REASON: 1.4(B), (D) 
 
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SUMMARY 
 
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¶1. (C) Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie 
Carson engaged in a lively dialogue February 10 on Nigeria's 
leadership crisis, elections, and electoral reform with Kwara 
Governor and Governors' Forum Chairperson Bukola Saraki, former 
Senate President Ken Nnamani (now Chairperson of the Abuja-based 
Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development), and former 
Sokoto Governor and opposition Democratic People's Party (DPP) 
Presidential Candidate Attahiru Bafarawa.  All agreed that the 
non-binding resolutions passed by the Senate and House of 
Representatives February 9, while not definitively resolving the 
succession process, had moved forward the necessary presidential 
transition.   The group clashed over whether changing the 
leadership of the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) 
or giving it permanent financial autonomy remained the key to 
conducting credible elections in 2011.  The group also realized 
that the country is not "out of the woods" yet, given that Jonathan 
is now the sole executive of the nation.  They recognized that this 
is the next issue the National Assembly will need to address if the 
Acting President travels outside Nigeria.  (Meanwhile, the Federal 
Executive Council failed again February 17 to vote in support of 
declaring Yar'Adua incapacitated -- see septel.)  The Ambassador, 
DCM, and PolCouns (notetaker) also attended this wide-ranging 
political dialogue.  END SUMMARY. 
 
 
 
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NO SIGN OF YAR'ADUA 
 
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¶2. (C) Former Sokoto Governor Bafarawa, noting that he had just 
returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia, remarked that a delegation 
of five Senators visiting Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, had failed to see 
hospitalized President Yar'Adua either February 9 or 10.  He 
predicted that the delegation would never see Yar'Adua, as only 
First Lady Turai Yar'Adua and the President's Chief of Security had 
seen the ailing leader since late November.  He denied a press 
report that the President's mother had traveled to Saudi Arabia. 
Bafarawa expressed concern that Acting President Goodluck Jonathan 
had no deputy yet, leaving the country in the precarious situation 
of having only one chief executive. 
 
 
 
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YAR'ADUA OR FEC MUST FOLLOW UP RESOLUTION 
 
----------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶3. (C) Former Senate President Ken Nnamani of the ruling People's 
Democratic Party (PDP) said the resolutions were the right thing to 
do to settle down the country.  He did, however, predict litigation 
against the resolutions, because they lacked force of law and that 
Article 145 had specifically required the transmittal of a "written 
declaration" by the President to the Senate President and House 
Leader formally handing over power to his deputy as Acting 
President.  In practice, he added, such a declaration should not 
only bear the President's signature but the seal of his office. 
Absent either or both these features, the National Assembly could 
not read such documents into their "votes and proceedings" and 
would therefore return them to the Presidential Villa for 
correction.  He expressed doubt over the validity of using a 
 
ABUJA 00000183  002 OF 005 
 
 
transcript from Yar'Adua's January 12 BBC interview (as had done 
the Senate) as a substitute for such a written declaration. 
 
 
 
¶4. (C) Nnamadi acknowledged, however, that National Assembly 
members had acted in good faith in attempting to initiate the 
process of naming Vice President Jonathan as President and need to 
be given credit for trying to find a democratic solution to a 
difficult political problem.  He advocated keeping the process 
"tidy" and more in line with the Constitution.  Nnamadi declared 
that, to provide legitimacy for both resolutions, either President 
Yar'Adua would need to resign or the Federal Executive Council 
(FEC) would need to initiate proceedings to declare the President 
as incapacitated.  (Some members tried to do this at the February 
17 FEC meeting, but such action was voted down.)  To do the latter, 
he explained, two-thirds of the FEC members would need to approve a 
request to the Senate President and House Speaker seeking 
appointment of a five-person medical panel, including the 
president's physician, to ascertain the President's health. 
Nnamani did not advocate seeking impeachment under Article 143, as 
some have advocated, because he considered such action as overly 
"punitive" for an illness that was not of the President's making. 
 
 
 
¶5. (C) On the other hand, Bafarawa advocated for seeking a 
declaration of the President's incapacity under Article 144.  He 
wondered why the President, who reportedly signed a supplemental 
appropriations bill, could not sign a letter handing over power to 
his deputy as Acting President.  While ridiculing the idea of 
"pulling" such a declaration from the Internet, he remarked that 
Nigeria would not achieve progress if the country had to wait for 
its leaders to get everything right. 
 
 
 
¶6. (C) Governor Saraki of the ruling PDP, who also served as Chair 
of the powerful Governors' Forum, praised the resolutions as going 
a long way towards resolving the succession crisis and expressed 
agreement with the National Assembly's action.  He opined that the 
Constitution had not foreseen the situation where a President had 
left the country for medical treatment and was no longer in a 
position to transmit a letter to hand over presidential power. 
Saraki described the current situation as "fluid" but not a 
"U-turn" for democracy.  While not a perfect solution from a legal 
viewpoint, he considered approval of the resolutions as justified 
by the doctrine of necessity.  Political leaders, he continued, 
will need to review the situation again.  In his view, FEC members 
would need to show the will to decide for a declaration of 
incapacity.  After all, he noted, President Yar'Adua, in his 
opinion, did not come across as a person who wanted to hold 
indefinitely on to power.  Yar'Adua, he concluded, would either 
have to transmit a letter to hand over power, return home to resume 
duties, or allow the country to move on, which the resolutions to 
some extent help achieve. 
 
 
 
¶7. (C) During the last several weeks, Saraki said, the political 
system in Nigeria had demonstrated some maturity in the use of 
checks and balances, with civil society, political leaders, and 
elders all calling for Yar'Adua to hand over presidential power. 
He noted that FEC members had just voted unanimously to support the 
National Assembly resolutions designating Vice President Jonathan 
as Acting President.  Bafarawa interjected that such support was 
not enough, as the FEC had a constitutional role to play.  Saraki 
advocated giving the FEC and National Assembly the benefit of the 
doubt in recognizing the President's medical incapacity. 
 
 
 
¶8. (C) Bafarawa insisted that the FEC and National Assembly should 
send a medical panel to Saudi Arabia to check on the President's 
health.  Nnamadi noted that such action would require assent by 
two-thirds of the 42-person FEC, which he doubted FEC members would 
have the courage to do.  Saraki agreed that the FEC would not seek 
to declare the President as "medically unfit."  He argued that a 
person could suffer from a severe medical condition, such as 
 
ABUJA 00000183  003 OF 005 
 
 
pneumonia, but not be mentally incapacitated.  Bafarawa disagreed, 
insisting that no one has seen the President for nearly three 
months, hindering government decision-making.   He advocated making 
the President's medical records accessible to the public to counter 
the current tendency to manipulate and hide such information. 
Nnamani agreed that senior leaders should be able to consult daily 
with the President. 
 
 
 
¶9. (C) Nnamani attributed Nigeria's democratic shortcomings to the 
lack of genuine opposition in the country.  The PDP controlled all 
but eight governorships.  Even with the multiplicity of parties, he 
said, no one respected or heeded them until election time, when 
running for office.  Saraki noted lack of strong political parties 
as a problem with all developing nations and democracies, insisting 
that Nigeria had improved considerably since the end of military 
rule in 1999. 
 
 
 
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USE OF EFCC TO TARGET OPPOSITION 
 
-------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶10. (C) Bafarawa praised Nnamani for his role in blocking a bid for 
a third term by then President Olusegun Obasanjo.  He cited the 
former Senate Leader as an example of a courageous political leader 
who had stood up to the leaders of his own party.  Bafarawa decried 
deficiencies in the rule of law in Nigeria, citing his own tussles 
during the past two years with the Economic and Financial Crimes 
Commission (EFCC).  Bafarawa noted that he had left a surplus of 
11.8-billion naira in state coffers when he departed the Sokoto 
governorship in 2007.  EFCC officials, he said, waited more than a 
year before calling him in for questioning over alleged 
embezzlement of such funds.  EFCC investigators detained him for a 
few days and withheld his passport, but without filing charges.  He 
eventually gained release as well as a court order to return his 
passport.  Last December, EFCC officials again detained him, this 
time during a meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Abuja with other 
opposition leaders to discuss establishment of a "mega" party.  A 
federal judge in Abuja ordered his release on bail, but EFCC 
officials transported him promptly to Sokoto, in the middle of a 
strike by local judicial workers, where a different judge ordered 
him imprisoned.  He ultimately gained his release after more than 
one week in prison. 
 
 
 
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INEC ROLE IN CONDUCTING ELECTIONS 
 
--------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶11. (C) Bafarawa criticized current INEC Chairperson Maurice Iwu as 
"not competent" to run any election in Nigeria.  He cited, as an 
example, INEC's manipulation of previous elections in his state of 
Sokoto.  Saraki took a different view, insisting that improving the 
quality of INEC as an institution mattered more than the quality of 
any person who headed the organization.  He insisted that elections 
had started to improve recently.  Even in the February 6 
gubernatorial election in Anambra, he attributed the low number of 
voters as more of a problem with an inflated voter register than 
with the level of citizen participation. 
 
 
 
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LEADERSHIP IS KEY 
 
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ABUJA 00000183  004 OF 005 
 
 
¶12. (C) Nnamani sided with Bafarawa, declaring that institutions 
consisted of human beings and that the behavior of their leaders 
affected the behavior of their employees.  Many observers, he 
noted, had judged the 2007 national elections as the worst in 
Nigeria's history.  INEC, Nnamani insisted, needed honest 
leadership.  Not only did the Anambra election suffer from inflated 
voter registers, but voters could not find their names on the 
lists.  Therefore, inaccurate registers caused many voters to 
become "disenfranchised."  He noted that Supreme Court Justices in 
Nigeria had accorded progressively worse marks for the quality of 
national elections -- with 1999 deemed overall as "fairly okay," 
2003 described by one justice as a "sham," and 2007 characterized 
as "fraudulent" by three of the seven Justices. 
 
 
 
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ELECTORAL REFORMS 
 
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¶13. (C) The Ambassador asked whether the INEC Chairperson could 
behave impartially if he or she must first be member of a political 
party, as pointed out recently by another Nigerian interlocutor 
(N.B.:  former Chief Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais -- see reftel). 
Nnamani responded that the Government had removed one of the most 
important recommendations of the Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) 
by deleting its recommendation to provide for a more objective 
system of appointing the INEC Chairperson and Commissioners.  He 
noted that the Chairperson would defend the ruling party if the 
President continued to appoint the Chairperson without input from 
an objective third party, such as the National Judicial Council. 
He strongly advised immediate implementation of all ERC 
recommendations to prepare for the 2011 national elections. 
 
 
 
¶14. (C) Saraki defended electoral reforms under consideration by 
the National Assembly, insisting that the Executive branch had only 
dropped a few substantive recommendations from those proposed by 
the ERC.  He claimed that the National Assembly had even shown 
independence by already approving INEC's financial autonomy by 
giving it a first-line charge on the budget.  He argued that this 
reform was more important than the one involving appointment of the 
INEC Chairperson and Commissioners.  Nnamani interjected that this 
particular reform, while important, remained non-contentious and, 
therefore, easy for the National Assembly to support.  Hitting 
closer to home, Nnamani also advocated another ERC recommendation 
that called for eliminating state electoral commissions, which he 
claimed Governors had manipulated to dictate selection of favored 
local government councilors. 
 
 
 
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WHAT NEXT ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRONT 
 
------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶15. (C) The three guests amply debated what would happen next in 
Nigeria.  Former Governor Bafarawa, for example, noted that the 
country will need to decide how to address the issue of Jonathan 
being the sole executive.  Former Senate President Nnamani 
commented that Acting President Jonathan may be able to transmit a 
letter to the Senate President to serve as the daily executive if 
he had to travel outside Nigeria.  He continued that these were all 
issues that the current Constitution did not envision. 
 
ABUJA 00000183  005 OF 005 
 
 
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COMMENT 
 
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¶16. (C) The wide-ranging discussions proved quite lively.  Nnamani 
lived up to his well-earned reputation for independence, while 
Saraki generally towed the party line.  All agreed that the 
National Assembly resolutions appointing Jonathan as Acting 
President, while imperfect, had advanced the political process by 
moving Nigeria towards appointment of the 
Constitutionally-designated successor, albeit via a mechanism not 
specifically delineated by the Constitution.  They noted the need 
to "constitutionalize" the situation as soon as possible but agreed 
that the resolutions dampened down the country's political and 
stability concerns for the time being.  Both Nnamani and Bafarawa 
emphasized the importance of leadership to provide INEC with the 
political will and power to run credible elections, while Saraki 
fell back on the oft-stated excuse that INEC personnel only lacked 
better capacity.  END COMMENT. 
 
 
 
¶17. (U) Assistant Secretary Carson departed from Abuja before this 
telegram was prepared. 
SANDERS