Lagos: Nigeria's ruling political party has said it wants a Muslim from the north to stand as its candidate for the oil-rich nation's presidential election next year, blocking the country's Christian acting president from seeking the office.
The announcement by Vincent Ogbulafor, national chairman
of the People's Democratic Party, late Tuesday appears to cut
acting President Goodluck Jonathan adrift as he manages a
nation that saw its elected president disappear into a Saudi
Arabian hospital for three months. The country of 150 million
people still have yet to see President Umaru Yar'Adua, who
apparently returned to Nigeria's capital last week in an
ambulance during a nighttime military convoy.
Nigeria splits roughly in half between Christians in the
south and Muslims in the north. Under a power-sharing
agreement in the PDP, candidates for the presidency must
alternate between the two faiths. Yar'Adua, a Muslim, is still
in his first four-year term. Former President Olusegun
Obasanjo, a former dictator who became the civilian elected
leader in 1999 and preceded Yar'Adua, is a Christian who
served two terms.
"The south had the president for eight years and it is
proper to allow the north to have the presidency," Ogbulafor
told reporters last night.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, March 03, 2010, 23:27