Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar is at the centre of a bitter power struggle that threatens to disrupt the April general elections and plunge Africa’s most populous nation into a constitutional crisis.

He has been a leading candidate for president but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has barred him from running on grounds that he has been indicted on charges of corruption. He says the charges are trumped up. Although the Federal High Court in the capital, Abuja, ruled on Tuesday that INEC lacked the authority to bar Abubakar, a superior court ruled to the contrary. The outcome was not immediately clear, but the superior court is a higher authority.

Abubakar, who is known across Nigeria by his first name, Atiku, was one of the founding members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that brought President Olusegun Obasanjo to power in 1999 but the two men fell out last year. President Obasanjo has accused Abubakar of corruption, although the vice president says it is because he did not support the president’s bid to run for a third term in office. Abubakar also defected from the PDP, joining the newly formed Action Congress (AC).

Obasanjo dismissed Abubakar as vice president but the courts decided that the president was not acting in line with the constitution and ordered him to be reinstated. Officially Abubakar is still Nigeria’s vice president but it is clear that he is no longer working with the president.

Other institutions of government are also in jeopardy, and the international community is expressing concerns that democracy could be under threat. Nigeria has a history of military takeovers following problematic elections.

IRIN spoke with Abubakar at his home in Abuja recently and asked him about the current political crisis. The following are excerpts.

ABUBAKAR: In some ways I am to blame. I was one of the framers of the [1999] constitution. We should have done more to strengthen the national assembly, which is still dependant on the president. We should have strengthened the independent electoral commission so the president cannot say to the commission ‘do this’ or ‘do that, otherwise you’re fired’.

What about tensions between the state and federal governments? Is that part of the problem?

It is a big problem. [President Obasanjo] does not allow the states autonomy. He still has a military mentality in which everything has to be centralised through him. Legally the land use law [which Obasanjo enacted in 1978 when he was a military head of state] has been superseded by state land laws but Obasanjo has not allowed that. In the northern [Muslim] states, all land belongs to Allah while in the south, land belongs to the communities. But Obasanjo took the land law in the north and applied it everywhere. This is wrong. It is one of the reasons for the problems we have had in the [oil rich] Delta region.

But you were vice president. Why did you not do more to change the system?

We tried to make some constitutional amendments but they were all hijacked, so we decided to wait until this president was out of power.

The ruling PDP says you and your party [the Action Congress] are rejects from the PDP. How do you respond?

The people of AC were the ones who fought all our lives for democracy. We had been the founding fathers of the PDP. We had very lofty ideas for the party. We fought to free the president when he was in jail, getting him an official pardon [from the military head of state at the time]. We find it incredible now that he would allow the situation to deteriorate as it has.

It must be hard to run a presidential campaign while defending yourself against all the allegations?

I find it exciting. I am a politician. I enjoy it but it is all a ruse: You cannot accuse me of corruption if there is no corruption. I am the most investigated politician in this country - my family and my children - but we have done nothing. Certainly what is happening is very disappointing.

In many ways these last eight years of civilian rule have been a test for democracy in Nigeria. Do you thing the test has already failed?

The test has already failed. And it is clear that the [upcoming] elections are not going to be free and fair. We have had the worst voter registration exercise in the history of this country.

Do you believe the elections should be postponed?

I don’t believe so. Only if there is a state of emergency but if the elections are held and they are not free and fair then afterwards I will contest them at the supreme court. If it decides that I should not have been excluded then that is grounds for nullifying the elections.

And that could bring instability?

It is unfortunate but we have had instability in this country in the past.

What will it take to fix the problems?

Nothing, short of a miracle. Do you know the kind of miracle I am talking about? One in which the president wakes up and says ‘[controlling] the outcome of the elections is no longer a life and death issue for me, anyone who has been excluded can now run and I will step down from office happy to become an elder statesman’. But that will not happen. Obasanjo wants to keep ruling this country indirectly. I don’t see how things will change.

So how do you feel about these coming months?

Challenged, very challenged, and I think all Nigerians are going to feel challenged.