Nigeria's new President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday vowed that electoral reform and fighting graft would be his top priorities as he steers the nation to its most fiercely contested polls since the end of military rule.
Jonathan was sworn in as head of state in Africa's most populous country following the death late on Wednesday of Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua, who died peacefully aged 58 after a long battle with kidney and heart ailments.
“Our total commitment to good governance, electoral reform and the fight against corruption will be pursued with greater vigor,” Jonathan said after taking the oath of office in front of ministers, governors and ambassadors in Abuja.
Maintaining peace in the Niger Delta, the heartland of the OPEC member's 2 million barrels per day oil industry, would also be a top priority, he said after being sworn in by Nigerian Chief Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu.
Jonathan had already been running affairs of state as acting president for several months and few expect any policy changes.
Yar'Adua had been absent from the political scene since November, when he went to Saudi Arabia for treatment for a heart condition. He returned to Nigeria in February, but remained too sick to govern and never made another public appearance.
Jonathan assumed executive powers three months ago and has since appointed a new Cabinet and his own team of advisers. He will now appoint a vice president and the pair will complete the remainder of the presidential term until elections in April next year.
His choice of vice president could determine the outcome of those polls.
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 was scheduled to be buried in his home town of Katsina at 2pm yesterday, the first of seven days of national mourning. US President Barack Obama praised his “profound personal decency and integrity.”
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS