(Omoyele Sowore. Photo by Daily Post)
A politician named Omoyele Sowore who is running for president said the National Assembly should make Vice President Kashim Shettima act as the president.
He said this because President Bola Tinubu has been outside Nigeria for more than three weeks.
Tinubu left Nigeria on August 30 for a vacation that was supposed to last three weeks.
But on September 21, the president’s office said he was staying away a few more days.
Sowore said the Constitution has a rule about this situation.
He said when a president goes on vacation or cannot do his job, he must write a letter to the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives telling them he is going away.
He said the Constitution gives the president 21 days to send this letter.
Sowore said if the president does not send this letter within 21 days, then the National Assembly can vote to make the vice president take over the president’s job.
Sowore said nobody has said publicly that the president sent such a letter.
He asked the Senate President and the House Speaker if they received this letter.
If they did not get the letter, he said, then the 21 days have passed and the vice president should take over.
Sowore said the president’s office is calling the time away a working vacation, but the Constitution does not have an exception for working vacations.
He said a vacation is a vacation.
He said even though the president’s office says the president is still working and giving orders from outside Nigeria, this does not fix the constitutional problem of the president being away.
Sowore said the question is not whether the president is working from abroad.
The real question is whether the president followed the Constitution’s rules about what to do when the president is not in the country.
