Fears of a debilitating power struggle sprang up last week in Africa’s most populous nation, a major oil exporter, when ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua returned unexpectedly from three months in a Saudi hospital still too frail to rule. .

Jonathan said he was naming a Presidential Advisory Committee to provide input on government policy. A statement said the panel would “promote good governance in the areas of power, economy, security, infrastructure, social sector, the electoral process, and the fight against corruption, among others”. It will start work on Thursday, March 4, 2010.

The council will be headed by Theophilus Danjuma, a retired general who served as defence minister under former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He fell out with Nigeria’s then leader, who picked Yar’Adua to succeed him in 2007. Jonathan also approved the restructuring of a committee monitoring the volatile oil producing Niger Delta region and initiated a panel to assess ongoing government projects. .

Jonathan assumed executive powers on February 9, ending months of widely perceived state of paralysis in governance. As it stands now, what the Acting President needs now is not the sycophantic calls for cabinet sacks, in the usual Nigerian way of bandying to the whims of political contractors. The acting President’s focus should be on the issues that of utmost urgent interest to the Nigerian people such as the Niger Delta peace process, power supplies and electoral preparations. Anything other than this, will merely launch the Presidency into a shadow chase that may cast the luck Acting President into the dark anals of posterity and history.