Nigerian President dies after long illness

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua died late yesterday, aged 58, after a long battle with kidney and heart ailments, paving the way for the most hotly contested succession since the country's return to democracy a decade ago.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan - who has been running Africa's most populous nation for months during Yar'Adua's illness - will be sworn in as head of state at around 0700 GMT, Information Minister Dora Akunyili told Reuters.

He will appoint a new deputy and the pair will then complete the unexpired presidential term in the oil-producing nation of more than 140 million people until elections due by April 2011.

"Nigeria has lost the jewel on its crown," Jonathan said, announcing seven days of national mourning.

Yar'Adua will be buried in his northern home town of Katsina at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Thursday.

Akunyili said he had died at around 2000 GMT on Wednesday in the presidential villa.

US President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with Yar'Adua's family and remembered his "profound personal decency and integrity".

Yar'Adua had been absent from the political scene since November, when he left for medical treatment for a heart condition in Saudi Arabia. He returned to Nigeria in February but remained too sick to govern.

Jonathan assumed executive powers in February and has since consolidated his hold on power, appointing a new cabinet and his own team of advisers. But Yar'Adua's death raises the stakes in the run-up to the next election.

It is unclear if Jonathan, who is from the southern Niger Delta, will run for president because of an unwritten agreement in the ruling party that power rotates between north and south. The next four-year term is due to go to Yar'Adua's Muslim north.

"The paramount issue will be who the new vice president will be. It'll probably be a northerner (who) will be front runner for the presidency in 2011," said Kayode Akindele, a director at Lagos-based consultancy Greengate Strategic Partners.

Yar'Adua, who pledged respect for the rule of law when he took office, initially was seen by many Nigerians as a breath of fresh air after eight years of former president Olusegun Obasanjo, an overbearing ex-military ruler with a penchant for disregarding court orders and legal detail.

Yar'Adua was Nigeria's first university-educated leader and won victory in April 2007 polls which, though marred by intimidation and ballot-stuffing, marked the first transfer of power from one civilian president to another since independence in 1960.

But the optimism quickly faded.

Yar'Adua earned the nickname "Baba Go-Slow", a reference to the local term for Nigeria's crippling traffic jams, for what critics said was slow progress on everything from economic reforms to restoring the shambolic energy sector.

His biggest achievement was in the restive Niger Delta, the heartland of Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.

Militant attacks rumbled on during the early part of his tenure, but his offer of amnesty last year led thousands of gunmen to lay down their weapons and has brought more than six months of relative peace in the region.

The main militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said it was saddened by Yar'Adua's death.

"MEND considers the late president a genuine peacemaker whose initiatives, humility and respect began to bring confidence to the peace process," the group said in an email to Reuters. "His death may leave a vacuum that may not be filled."