The prolonged medical vacation of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2010 and his seeming inability to transmit a letter to the National Assembly transferring presidential power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, in acting capacity, in line with the requirements of the Constitution, created a power vacuum. For a leader who preached and practiced the gospel of the due process of the rule of law, presidential historians are yet to dig out the truth behind the fact of President Yar’Adua’s uncharacteristic constitutional indiscretion. Ten years after, the circumstances surrounding former President Yar’Adua’s failure to transmit power to then Vice President Jonathan remains an unresolved mystery. 
It was widely speculated that, before he left Nigeria on November 23, 2009, for his last foreign medical trip to Saudi Arabia to treat pericarditis, President Yar’Adua may have transmitted a letter to the National Assembly through his presidential liaison officer, Senator Abba Aji. Unfortunately, this letter never got to the National Assembly as it was believed to have been intercepted by the infamous power-mongering cabal within his administration that exploited his illness and the power vacuum it created to further their parochial self-interests.
However, what is clearly known was that a certain Senator Ike Ekweremadu from Enugu State, south-east Nigeria, who was also the Deputy President of the Senate of Federal Republic of Nigeria, was the first to draw the attention of the his colleagues to the constitutional aberration of President Yar’Adua’s prolonged absence from his duty post without notifying the National Assembly and handing over power to his vice in acting capacity. By this time, there was a groundswell of dissatisfaction among Nigerians about the violation of the Constitution in a manner that left the ship of the Nigerian state without a captain, hence rudderless. Ekweremadu’s timely intervention on the floor of the Senate would trigger a chain of legislative reactions that eventually culminated in the famous Doctrine of Necessity.
To dispel the widespread rumour of his death, a voice note attributed to President Yar’Adua was broadcast on the BBC network reassuring Nigerians he was alive but on medical vacation. It was this broadcast that the Senate relied on to break the ice and wriggle Nigeria out of a constitutional crisis through the Doctrine of Necessity. In coming up with the Doctrine of Necessity on February 10, 2010, in an extraordinary time in the life of Nigeria’s constitutional democracy, the Senate essentially activated the spirit and intention behind the crafting of the letters of the relevant laws of the Nigerian state when it deemed the President’s broadcast to Nigerians as a communication to the National Assembly about his medical vacation; a move that eventually paved the way for then Vice President Jonathan to act as President. Senator Bala Mohammed, one of the prime promoters of the Doctrine of Necessity, which birthed the Jonathan acting presidency, would reveal Senator Ike Ekweremadu as the author of the Doctrine of Necessity, at a public event organised in his honour by colleagues upon his appointment as the minister in charge of the Federal Capital Territory.
As Ekweremadu turned 58 on May 12, 2020, I have decided to celebrate him less for the love, faithfulness, truthfulness, fidelity, kindness, warmth and generosity that define my personal relationship with him. I shall instead focus on his accomplishments in public-spirited service to the Nigerian people. As a lawyer, legal scholar, administrator, politician and parliamentarian who has served Nigeria in various capacities, from local government chairman of his native Ani Nri Council to Chief of Staff and Secretary to Enugu State government before his election to the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for a record fifth term beginning from 2003, Ekweremadu would be remembered more for his legacies of quality public service and much less for his good deeds to his family, friends and associates.
As the longest-serving presiding officer in the history of Nigeria’s parliamentary democracy, having served as the Deputy Senate President for 12 unbroken years, between 2007 and 2015, Ekweremadu’s most enduring legacies have been deploying his streak of legalistic ingenuity to guide the serial amendment of the military-decreed 1999 Constitution into a truly “We the people” self-governing legal frame. In his role as the chairman of the National Assembly Constitution Review Committee, between 2007 and 2015, Senator Ekweremadu has pushed the frontiers of Nigeria’s constitutional development through a series of amendments aimed at improving the defective structure of the Nigerian federation. With a thesis on fiscal federalism for his Ph.D in Law programme, Ekweremadu qualifies as one of the fathers of Nigerian constitutionalism for his commitment and uncommon passion for strengthening the federating units in Nigeria by way of systemic devolution of powers from the centre as a condition preceding the attainment of fiscal decentralisation to spur competitive socio-economic development of the Nigerian state through quality legislations.
As the Deputy President of the Senate, Ekweremadu occupied the highest political office zoned to the South East geo-political zone of Nigeria, a position that bestowed on him a heavy burden of the political leadership of Nigeria’s ethnic Igbo within Nigeria’s elite power equation. Shortly after he became Deputy Senate President in 2007, Ekweremadu led a delegation to then President Yar’Adua to appeal for the release from detention of Biafra separatist leader, Ralph Uwazurike, from detention as a demonstration of rapprochement between Nigeria’s ethnic Igbo, who were feeling marginalised, and the Nigerian government at the centre. To solidify this rapprochement, Ekweremadu also led a delegation of the South East caucus of the National Assembly to President Yar’Adua and secured his approval for an international airport in the South East zone. And to his eternal credit, former President Yar’Adua, in 2009, appointed a Nigerian of South East origin, Ogbonna Onovo, as the Inspector-General of Police for the first time, after Louis Edet in 1966. For these, the amnesty programme for Niger Delta militants and other genuine gestures at peace and reconciliation of the Nigerian people, Ekweremadu nominated his beloved friend, ally, and compatriot for the award of a Nobel Peace Prize on his sick bed.
Whereas the principles of zoning and rotation of political leadership of a plural country like Nigeria may have deviated from the original intention of equitable distribution of resources to equitable distribution of loot by Nigeria’s ruling elite, it would appear as though Ekweremadu has managed to remain faithful to the original ideals of this stabilizing power affirmative action in Nigeria. On a visit to his country home in his native Mpu village in Ani Nri Local Government of Enugu West senatorial district in December 2018, I drove on several kilometres of asphalt nylon tarred road with bridges across many villages right to his door step; but I also observed the road network stretched beyond his house for as far as my eyes could see in different directions. This network of quality road infrastructure across his senatorial district and other parts of the South East, along with electricity, dams, vocational centres, and many others, are Ekweremadu’s zonal and constituency legacy intervention projects. As a widely travelled Nigerian across the country, Ekweremadu can easily be credited as the parliamentarian with the largest attraction of regional and constituency infrastructural as well as human capital developmental projects in the history of the Fouth Republic.
Over the years, Ekweremadu has remained one of the most influential voices championing and defending the political and economic interests of Nigeria’s Igbo within an integrated framework of socio-economic development of a united Nigeria. Ekweremadu also redefined personal integrity and strong political convictions when he remained firmly in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, even when it was no longer fashionable, by resisting the temptation to join the ruling All Progressives Congress like most politicians without principles did. Despite his personal challenges, trials and tribulations as the leading opposition figure in Nigeria after the fall of PDP from power in 2015, Ekweremadu has not only remained resolutely firm and steadfast to his ideals and principles, he helped nurse a dying opposition back to life to keep our polity vibrant and healthy.