Five months after a serious heart condition kept him away from the public eye, Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has died at age 58.
Presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi confirmed Yar’Adua’s death at 9 PM Wednesday night at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, adding that his remains would be flown for an Islamic burial at his home state of Katsina Thursday afternoon.
Vice President Goodluck Jonathan - who has been acting president since February – has announced seven days of mourning, saying "Nigeria has lost the jewel on its crown." Jonathan will be sworn in as head of state at around 0700 GMT. He is expected to appoint a new vice president and serve out the remaining part of Yar’Adua’s term until the next elections in April 2011.
In addition to his heart problem, Yar’Adua was known to suffer from a chronic kidney ailment. In November 2008 he was flown to King Faisal Hospital in Saudi Arabia and remained there before returning to Nigeria two months ago.
Yar'Adua leaves behind his wife Turai, five daughters and two sons.
Born into an aristocratic Fulani family in Katsina, Yar’Adua was elected president in a controversial 2007 election that was disputed by opposition parties after he won a 70 per cent majority despite having been a relatively obscure governor of a remote northern state before his presidential nomination.
Critics said Yar’Adua was shooed in by the then outgoing president, Olusegun Obasanjo, as a “puppet” who would enable him retain influence after leaving office while upholding the North-South rotation of the Nigerian presidency. His supporters said he was handpicked by President Obasanjo because he was one of the few serving state governors with a clean record and no association with corruption.
Yar’Adua’s father, Musa Yar'Adua, was a cabinet minister in the 1960s while his older brother, Major-General Shehu Yar’Adua, served as Nigeria’s vice president between 1976 and 1979. Shehu died in prison in 1997, two years after being sentenced to life for calling on Nigeria’s then military ruler Sani Abacha to restore civilian rule.
The late president had a master’s degree in Analytical Chemistry from Ahmadu Bello University in Kaduna State, Nigeria, and was a university lecturer before joining the corporate sector in a series of lucrative directorships.
He became politically active in the late 1970s but was first elected into office in 1999 as governor of Katsina before becoming president of Africa’s most populous country in 2007.
He was Nigeria’s first university educated president, and the first to declare his assets publicly, revealing that he was worthy US$5.8 million. His landslide election, though marred by claims of fraud, marked the first time power was being transferred from one civilian leader to another since independence in 1960.
Yar’Adua’s death however stokes division in the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which has an unwritten agreement that alternates the presidency between the Muslim north and the Christian south.
Yar’Adua was a northerner, and he has served only one term. His successor, Jonathan, who hails from the south, has not ruled out a possible run in 2011, yet influential northern leaders have demanded that the PDP fronts a northerner as its presidential choice to serve out what would have been Yar’Adua’s second term.
Yar’Adua’s greatest legacy is arguably in the troubled oil-rich Niger Delta region, where militant attacks against oil installations cost Nigeria millions in lost revenue. Yar’Adua offered an amnesty to the militant groups and offered to negotiate long term solutions to their grievances, which included complaints that local communities were not benefiting from the region’s abundant oil wealth.
The main militant group in the Niger Delta, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said it was saddened by Yar'Adua's death.
In another message of condolence, US President Barack Obama lauded Yar’Adua as a man of "profound personal decency and integrity". [PE]
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