February 3, 2010
Members of Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet are disoriented over the shock memo presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday by Information Minister Dora Akunyili asking Yar’Adua to present a letter of vacation to the Senate as required by section 145 of Nigeria’s 1999 constitution. But aides and kitchen cabinet members loyal to ailing Yar’Adua are now strategizing on how to react to the memo, which we understand she will represent at the FEC's meeting next Wednesday. Already, a core member of t Yar'dua's loyalists, Nigeria's notoriously corrupt Attorney General, Michael Aondoakaa has called on Mrs. Akuyili to resign from the cabinet.Saharareporters sources say the kitchen cabinet has reactivated the option of calling in the military to take over power, in preference to handing power over to Goodluck Jonathan, Yar’Adua’s deputy.
It is now known that Akunyili’s five-page memo, which she first circulated yesterday at the FEC meeting, has now been formally submitted by the minister, who is insisting that the FEC change its earlier position that Yar’Adua was fit to continue in office and therefore does not need to hand over power to his deputy.
According to a minister who did not wish to be named, after Mrs. Akunyili presented her circular to the FEC yesterday, Yar’Adua's loyalists led by the Minister of Agriculture, Sayyad Abba Ruma, shouted her down, but Akunyili stood her ground and insisted that the memo be discussed. Things reportedly got out of hand as a majority of the ministers said she had not properly presented the document to the body through the office of the Secretary to the Federal Government, Ahmed Yayale.
Sensing that the memo might be sabotaged, Akunyili agreed to withdraw the circular and went out of the council chamber to call on one of her aides to present it as a memo. She succeeded in submitting it to the FEC before the meeting was over.
She is insisting that the memo be discussed next week and our sources confirm it is now part of the agenda for next week’s FEC meeting. Her memo specifically asked the cabinet to rescind its 3 December 2009 declaration that the President is not incapacitated.
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