Spokesman: Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua has died after long illness

Nigeria President Yar’Adua dies after long illness

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, long plagued by poor health, has died at age 58, almost three months after his vice president assumed control of Africa’s most populous nation, Yar’Adua’s spokesman said.

Yar’Adua died at 9 p.m. (2000 GMT) Wednesday at the Aso Rock presidential villa with his wife Turai at his side, presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi told The Associated Press, his voice cracking with emotion. Adeniyi did not give a cause of death.

A Muslim, Yar’Adua will be buried before sundown Thursday afternoon in his home state of Katsina, said Ima Niboro, a spokesman for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan. Niboro said Thursday also would be a national holiday and the country would observe seven days of mourning for Yar’Adua.

In a statement, Jonathan said all the nation could do is “take solace in the fact that the Almighty is the giver and taker of all life.”

“Nigeria has lost the jewel on its crown, and even the heavens mourn with our nation tonight,” Jonathan said.

Nigeria’s national security adviser and other ministers flooded into the presidential villa late Wednesday night to meet with Jonathan, who offered condolences to Yar’Adua’s wife before beginning work as the country’s head of state, Niboro said.

“The acting president is very sad with what has happened,” Niboro told reporters. “The nation is mourning.”

NTA, the state broadcaster, broke into its broadcast just before 11:30 p.m. local time to announce Yar’Adua’s death. Private television stations ran scrolling announcements about the death while the country remained calm and quiet.

Yar’Adua took office in 2007 in a country notorious for corruption and gained accolades for being the first leader to publicly declare his personal assets when taking office — setting up a benchmark for comparison later to see if he misappropriated funds. But enthusiasm for his presidency waned as time passed and he made no headway in fighting entrenched corruption.

He had tried to peacefully end an insurgency in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta that had attacked the petroleum infrastructure, allowing Angola to overtake Nigeria as Africa’s no. 1 oil exporter. Those efforts frayed after Yar’Adua became gravely ill.

Yar’Adua went to a Saudi Arabian hospital on Nov. 24 to receive treatment for what officials described as a severe case of pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart that can cause a fatal complication. He failed to formally transfer his powers to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, sparking a constitutional crisis in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 150 million people.

Jonathan assumed the presidency Feb. 9 after a vote by the National Assembly while Yar’Adua was still in Saudi Arabia. Lawmakers left open the possibility for Yar’Adua to regain power if he returned to the country in good health. He returned on Feb. 24 but never reappeared in public and did not assume power again.

Charles Dokubo, an analyst at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, said Yar’Adua would leave a mixed legacy. Dokubo said many would remember how Yar’Adua never fulfilled his promises of increasing energy supplies and fixing the nation’s shaky electoral system.

Yar’Adua, a soft-spoken former chemistry professor, was propelled into Nigeria’s highest through flawed elections but it marked the first time a civilian won the presidency from another civilian in a nation once plagued by military coups.

As president, Yar’Adua was also unable to stem religious violence that has long plagued Nigeria.

The country is split between the Christian-dominated south and its Muslim north. The country’s “middle belt,” where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands, has become an epicenter of violence where more than 500 have died since the beginning of the year in tit-for-tat massacres of Muslims and Christians. Politics, jobs and land often motivate the killings.

Yar’Adua was committed to ending the violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta had been attacking oil installations, kidnapping petroleum company employees and fighting government troops. MEND began its fight in January 2006 to protest the unrelenting poverty of people in the Niger Delta.

The unrest had cut Nigeria’s oil production by about a million barrels a day. Yar’Adua started formal peace talks earlier this year with MEND and met with Henry Okah, the group’s longtime leader. The negotiations drew more than 8,000 militants into surrendering their arms as part of a government amnesty program.

“The general amnesty I extended to all militants in the Niger Delta has led to the laying down of arms and a return of peace,” Yar’Adua said in October. But militants later resumed attacks, saying the government had failed to own up to its commitments under the amnesty — such as sharing the nation’s oil wealth with the delta.

Born into one of Nigeria’s best-known political families in northern Nigeria in 1951, Yar’Adua earlier worked as a chemistry professor at a university in his home state of Katsina. He became Katsina’s governor and later emerged as the consensus pick among the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, run by then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military dictator.

The 2007 presidential election was meant to end a cycle of military takeovers while cementing democratic rule with Nigeria’s first-ever peaceful transfer of power between civilian rulers. International observers said the vote was rigged. Thugs stole ballot boxes and electoral officials thumb-printed stacks of voting cards with police looking on. However, Yar’Adua wasn’t widely considered to have arranged the stolen vote.

“We acknowledge that our elections were not perfect and had lapses and shortcomings,” Yar’Adua said in his May 29, 2007, inaugural address. “I also believe that out experiences represent an opportunity to learn from our mistakes.”

That admission alone offered a break from the bluster that characterized Yar’Adua’s predecessors, including some of Africa’s most famous “Big Men.” Many in Nigeria hailed his announcement that he would be a “servant-leader.”

While a careful approach to governance distinguished Yar’Adua from his predecessor, it failed to move the machinery of government, and the public soured on the president as electric power remained scarce and blocks-long gasoline queues remained common in Nigeria’s major cities.

Yar’Adua also fell ill repeatedly. He flew away on long overseas trips to Germany and Saudi Arabia, where he availed himself of first-class medical treatment for his chronic kidney ailments. Meanwhile Nigerians saw little improvement in their own country’s hospitals and health care system.

Even after Yar’Adua moved into the presidential palace, Aso Rock, many of his family members continued living in the modest family compound where Yar’Adua was born. He leaves behind his wife, Turai, and nine children.