By Jane Okafor Abuja
Former President Goodluck Jonathan has revealed shocking circumstances leading to the pall of constitutional crisis that fell upon Nigeria during the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s prolonged illness, claiming that one of the presidential aides willfully refused to submit a crucial handover letter to the National Assembly.
Jonathan claimed that Yar’Adua had written a formal letter empowering him as acting president before travelled abroad for medical treatment in 2010, but the presidential aide who the letter was handed over to withheld it from the National Assembly – the Senate and House of Representatives.
The Daily Crucible reports that Yar’Adua died abroad in May 2010 after months of illness, and Jonathan eventually completed his term before running and winning the 2011 presidential election where former President Muhammadu Buhari was his major opponent at the time.
The ex – president who declined to mention this particular aide of Yar’Adua, made the startling revelations in an interview with the Rainbow Book Club in a video that has been trending since Saturday, June 28, 2025.
He noted that the aide’s deliberate act of withholding the Yar’Adua’s handover letter plunged the country into a constitutional crisis, leaving Nigeria without an acting president or commander-in-chief for months.
According to him, while he could perform executive functions as vice president, including presiding over Federal Executive Council meetings and approving ministerial memos, he lacked the constitutional authority to act as commander-in-chief without the formal handing over document.
Jonathan explained that the crisis compelled the National Assembly to invoke the “doctrine of necessity,” which empowered him to act as president without an official letter, a development he likened to the swift transition protocols in the US.
He said: “There’s always a balancing between North and South, Muslims and Christians. And Yar’Adua was a Northern Muslim, serving as president. He took over from a Southern Christian, Obasanjo, who ruled for eight years.
“Definitely the Northern Muslims wanted Yar’Adua to at least do eight years before power would return to the South, likely to another Christian. But his health issues came up and it was a problem. That’s why even allowing me to act as president became an issue.
“One year that Yar’Adua was going for the medical checkup. Actually, a letter was written. Of course, the constitution says that for the vice president to act, the president would send a letter to the Senate and the House of Rep informing them.
“That letter was written, but the person who the letter was handed over to, I will not mention the name to you now, was one of the aides of Yar’Adua, refused to submit the letter to the National Assembly. And Yar’Adua became so ill that he had no control of issues.
“So we had a country where the president was not available, and there was no acting president. Yes,” as a vice president, you can take over the responsibilities of, some responsibilities of the president. You know the president of Nigeria has two main responsibilities.
“First, you are the chief executive of the country, so like a prime minister of a country. That, the vice president can assume, you don’t need any transfer. And I was doing that because we were having an executive council meeting, we were approving memos from ministers, so the government was going on.
“But there was no commander-in-chief. What is the second responsibility of the president of Nigeria, besides being the executive head of the country? And there’s nothing like acting commander-in-chief. Either you’re a commander-in-chief or not.
“But when you become an acting president, you are at the same time a commander-in-chief. So that was lacking, and no country allows that gap. A country like America, they don’t allow that gap at all.
“If an American president wants to, even if it’s a whitlow, that he requires an extension, that he will be off for five minutes, he will hand over to the vice president before that procedure. Immediately he regains consciousness, he takes over. But we stayed for some time.
“And that led to what they call the doctrine of necessity. When the National Assembly felt that the country was in a situation where it was not expected, they now have to initiate this doctrine of necessity. And they now made me to act as a president without a letter from Yar’Adua.”
