Nigeria names acting president

Feb 9th, 2010 9:28 AM UTC
By Chris Scott

The New York Times reports that earlier today the Nigerian Parliament voted to make Vice President Goodluck Jonathan the acting president of Nigeria.

The vote ended weeks of political uncertainty, with [President Umaru] Yar’Adua’s cabinet and supporters insisting there was no need to replace him, little word from the president himself about his condition, and outbreaks of citizen discontent over what many said was the government’s failure to follow the Constitution, which prescribes a handover in the president’s absence.

With Mr. Yar’Adua in a hospital in Saudia Arabia, a tenuous truce in the restive, oil-producing south of the country has fallen apart, and religious and ethnic clashes have broken out in the north in which hundreds have been killed.

Mr. Jonathan, 53, is a former governor of oil-producing Bayelsa state whose calm demeanor and southern background are regarded as assets in tackling what both he and Mr. Yar’Adua have described as their top objective, solving the conflict over oil in the south. As de facto president in recent weeks, he sent extra troops to the north to help quell the violence there.

TAGS: Nigeria