ANALYSIS: Goodluck Jonathan has dismissed the entire cabinet in a move to end political intrigue
WHEN GOODLUCK Jonathan assumed the Nigerian presidency last month, many wondered whether he had the ability to pull the country back into line.
They were left in little doubt this week. In the boldest assertion of his authority so far, Nigeria’s acting president dismissed the entire cabinet on Wednesday, in a move to end the political intrigue that has dominated his first five weeks in office. The country’s ministers were all inherited from Umaru Yar’Adua, the country’s gravely ill president, and according to several analysts some of them had impeded Jonathan’s attempts to put his own stamp on the office.
There are questions over the constitutionality of the move. But there is little doubt that Africa’s most populous country and most important energy producer is in grave need of leadership.
Yar’Adua has not been seen in public since November, when he flew to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. Although he returned last month, no one, not even his mother, has been allowed to see him. In his absence, Nigeria has been gripped by a resurgence of violence in two of its most volatile regions.
Two bomb blasts rocked the oil-rich Niger Delta this week, as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the region’s main rebel group, said it had abandoned an unconditional three-month-old ceasefire agreement signed under Mr Yar’Adua.
Meanwhile, in the city of Jos, hundreds of people have been killed this year as competition between local Christian and Muslim settler groups over the area’s scare resources has bubbled over into ethnic violence. Another 10 people were butchered on Wednesday.
Nigerians are clamouring for leadership. Which means Jonathan’s move will be welcomed by many. However, it comes with big risks.
Firstly, the ruling People’s Democratic Party has a tradition of alternating power between the north of the country and the south. Yar’Adua is a northerner, while Jonathan is from the south, meaning many Muslims from the north of the country might not be as receptive to the acting president’s recent decision.
Secondly, if the formation of a new cabinet descends into chaos and Jonathan chooses a cabinet along strongly sectarian lines, some ambitious members of the military may decide to step into the political morass, said one analyst this week. In a country that was ruled under a military dictatorship for 21 years, this would be the most unfortunate of outcomes.
That leaves Jonathan with little time to appoint new ministers, in a country where appointing a cabinet has never been an easy process. Under the constitution, each of the 36 states must have had least one representative in the 42-member cabinet, while the needs and wants of the country’s three main tribes have to be constantly balanced.
Jonathan has a delicate balancing act on his hands. But the consequences of inaction would be far worse.
Reacting to the violence in Jos, Libya’s Col Muammar Gadafy called for the country to be split in two along religious lines, as Pakistan and India were in 1947. Nigeria recalled its ambassador to Libya over the remarks, which the president of Nigeria’s senate, David Mark, dismissed as those of a “mad man”.
It seems that some parliamentarians would back such a move, with one stating that although, “we may discard the messenger”, they might accept the message. Many Nigerians may already be thinking along similar lines. For those who are, they might like to be reminded that up to one million people died in the violence that followed the traumatic split of Britain’s Indian empire, which ended up displacing another 14 million.
Indeed, Nigeria has experience of a separation of its own making.
Between 1967 and 1970, one million people died in a bloody civil war when three eastern states seceded as the Republic of Biafra.
No matter how disgruntled Nigerians are, the country does not want to revisit that sorry era.