Just days after a Nigerian court cleared President Goodluck Jonathan to run for a second term as his party’s candidate, a controversial circumstance because of his Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) policy of rotating its candidates between the North and South, he won the PDP primary and thus the party’s nomination to stand in April’s national elections. Jonathan will be a fairly heavy favorite both because of the PDP’s heft in national politics and because he is widely seen as having done a quite effective job as president after stepping in for Umaru Yar-Adua when the former president fell ill and then died, leaving the potential for political chaos in a country that can ill afford it.
One interesting rival has emerged to try to derail Jonathan’s presumed victory, however. Nuhu Ribadu earned acclaim as the head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the country’s anti-corruption body, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and last week won the nomination of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the country’s major opposition party, to challenge Jonathan. In addition to being a respected crusader against the corruption that has longed plagued his country. Ribadu also is a Muslim from the North, which will make him an interesting foil against the Christian Jonathan, who comes from the country’s South.