Nigeria: Yar'Adua is Sick, Country is on Life Support

4 September 2008
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I will begin with a story; it might even be apocryphal, but it doesn't really deduct from the general tenor of the issue at hand. The story goes that after the defeat of the Third Term Agenda, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, decided he must make a choice of who to succeed him at Aso Villa.

He got his security henchmen to draw up a list of candidates, and after a long session of pruning down, the search light was beamed on Malam Umar Yar'adua and former governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna state. There was a caveat: the two were said to be battling with ill-health; but Obasanjo asked which of them had the most difficult health problem. The answer was Malam Umaru Yar'adua. Obasanjo decided that Umaru Yar'adua was the man he would impose on the PDP and INEC was given the order to rig the man into office.

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