Tussle for Obasanjo's seat: Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, governor of Katsina State, is likely to become the next president of Nigeria after winning the ruling People's Democratic Party's presidential ticket on 16 December. Lindsay Barrett and Tom Mbakwe report.

Until late November, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua was not even a factor in the presidential race. His sudden rise to the top of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) has President Olusegun Obasanjo's hands written all over it.

Umaru Yar'Adua, 55, is the younger brother of the late (and prominent Northern politician and strategist) General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua who was imprisoned in 1995 with Obasanjo on trumped up charges of staging a military coup and died in detention in 1999 at the hands of the late military dictator, Gen Sani Abacha.

Shehu, who tried in vain several times in the 1990s to rule Nigeria, was Obasanjo's deputy and confidant when Obasanjo was military head of state between 1976 and 1979, and served Obasanjo well. He is credited with being very instrumental in Obasanjo's second-coming in 1999 and the landslide victory that sealed Obasanjo's place in Nigerian politics and history.

"Obasanjo appreciates loyalty," said Gbenga Aliu, a Nigerian political commentator after news broke on 16 December that Shehu's brother, Umaru, had been picked by the PDP national convention in Abuja to succeed Obasanjo. "It's now pay-back time", Aliu added.

But this last-minute manoeuvre by Obasanjo only surprised the uninitiated in Nigerian politics. Keen observers, however, had known a week before Umaru's "victory" that Obasanjo had handpicked Yar'Adua (as presidential candidate).

It, thus, came as no surprise to the initiated when a day to the convention, 28 governors of the 36 states controlled by the PDP issued a statement calling on party members to choose Yar'Adua, who had hitherto shown little or no interest in the presidential race, as their "consensus candidate" from among the 30 aspirants vying for the post.

"The governors of PDP-controlled states and governorship candidates," the statement said, "recognise the need to narrow the search for the PDP presidential candidates to the one [person] who, in our opinion, presents the best credentials and is generally acceptable across the country. We have resolved to support the candidature of Umaru Yar'Adua. He now becomes the party's consensus candidate."

This, observers said, was to save face both for Obasanjo and the PDP which had reached a "gentleman's agreement" in 1999 to return power to the North once Obasanjo (a Southerner) had finished his term. Power had been in the hands of the North since independence in 1960 and Obasanjo was the first "civilian" democratically-elected president to have come from the South.

The "agreement", and especially its main clause--power returning to the North--had been a divisive subject for the past several years, with Southerners vowing to fight against it all the way.

"This is a very important event because whosoever emerges [from the PDP convention] will definitely be Nigeria's next president to consolidate the achievements of Obasanjo," said Toye Olofintuyi, chairman of the PDP convention committee, a day before Umaru's victory

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As it panned out, a PDP screening committee whittled down its 30 aspirants to 20, and asked some of them to stand down for Yar'Adua. Eight did, leaving 12 in the race. Among the heavyweights who stood down were Peter Odili, governor of Rivers State who, from his campaign, wanted the number one slot so badly; and Donald Duke, governor of the nearby Cross River State, who is now touted as likely to become Yar'Adua's running mate.

In the end, Yar'Adua, a father of six, won hands down, taking 3,024 out of a total of 4,007 valid votes cast. His closest challenger, Rochas Okorocha, a former special advisor to Obasanjo, got only 372 votes, and Aliyu Muhammed Gusau, former national security chief who also served Obasanjo, came third with 271 votes.

In his acceptance speech, Yar'Adua said he would "hold widespread consultations within the party to determine a running mate". But this was only to hide the fact that Obasanjo had already anointed a vice president to be announced later by Yar'Adua, who told the convention that he would continue Obasanjo's economic reform and anti-corruption policies if he wins the May 2007 elections.

"What we have today is not the beginning of a journey but a continuation of the journey," Yar'Adua said. "I enjoin Nigerians to continue to give us support so that we can build on the achievements that we have made."

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Before Obasanjo played his latest trump card, political observers had feared that the survival of Nigeria's democratic culture (which Obasanjo himself had nurtured for nearly eight years) was heavily dependent on the country being able to endure another set of elections and achieve a smooth transition from one leader to another.

But there is now a sense of uncertainty hanging over the outcome of the most important elections in the country--which are the presidential election, and those for state governors. It is now clear that certain rivalries within the PDP reflect deep-seated divisions within Nigerian society.

On the opposition front, by the time New African went to press, the two leading parties--All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Alliance Congress (AC)--were yet to conclude their presidential primaries. But the former military ruler, Major-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, appeared to be the candidate likely to secure the ANPP ticket. Buhari has twice contested the presidency against Obasanjo and lost. On both occasions, he went to court, alleging widespread fraud on the part of Obasanjo and his PDP.

Opposed to Buhari (within the ANPP) was a team of younger Northern politicians, led by the Zamfara State governor, Sani Ahmed, who, for some time, appeared to have seized the party from the older group of conscientious opponents of Obasanjo's government.

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Buhari re-emerged as a Northern candidate with national appeal largely because he insisted on raising the issue of electoral probity as the main obstacle to the survival of democracy in Nigeria. In fact, after the ANPP held its Northern zonal rally in Jos in early December, Buhari's campaign gained a boost because of the noticeable popularity of his views at that venue. It was only then that he openly announced his intention to seek the ANPP ticket again.

In the end, Ahmed Sani declared his willingness to forfeit his own ambitions and support Buhari's candidacy if the party's executive council gave him the nod. Other candidates in at least six other parties also said they would step down in Buhari's favour. It, thus, became clear that on the Northern front, some consensus had been built in support of the Buhari agenda.

The fundamental issues at stake in the May 2007 elections continue to be based on regional, or what is now characterised as "zonal", representation. Because of this, the main focus of the Nigerian populace has remained the battle for supremacy among the PDP aspirants.

Among the high profile contestants, the former military president, Ibrahim Babangida (popularly known as IBB), withdrew from the PDP primaries to avoid competing against two of his close friends, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau and Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. But he hinted that he himself might well contest under a different banner.

Before the contest heated up, the supporters of the Northern aspirants seemed to be largely divided between those who regarded Babangida as the mastermind of the "power returning to the North" agenda and those who believed that Vice President Abubakar Atiku would be endorsed to succeed Obasanjo as a matter of course.

When Atiku lost the support of Obasanjo early in the run-up to the race, many of his supporters felt that he would be besieged with charges of corruption and administrative incompetence, and that he would be unable to mount an effective counter attack. Because of this, many of them felt compelled to transfer their loyalty to anyone who could still bear the Northern mantle.

This appeared to be a reasonable set of assumptions until Atiku began to gain some credibility for his oft-repeated claim that he had been framed and made a scapegoat. In early December, a Lagos high court threw out some of the most damaging allegations made against him. This brought Atiku's candidacy back to life and many observers believed a berth was being prepared for him in the Alliance Congress, a party made up of mainly disgruntled PDP members and a faction of the Alliance for Democracy.

Now, with Yar'Adua's victory, there is hardly any doubt that many of the small and so-far ineffectual opposition parties will be only too happy to provide a platform for any disenchanted loser.

The May elections might very well be a tournament that would confuse those unaccustomed to the complexities of Nigerian politics, but even the most learned pundits admit that this time the twists and turns are almost too confusing to keep track of.