A chemistry lecturer who became Nigeria's president, then set out to fix its elections
Umaru Musa Yar'Adua trained as a chemist and taught in classrooms before entering politics. As governor of Katsina State he became the first Nigerian governor to publicly declare his assets. Yet the 2007 vote that made him president was widely condemned as rigged, and he responded by ordering a review of how Nigeria runs its elections.
Born in Katsina in 1951, Yar'Adua came from a prominent family: his father was a federal minister and held a hereditary title as custodian of the emirate's royal treasury, which the son later inherited. He studied education and chemistry at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, returned for a master's in analytical chemistry, and taught at colleges in Lagos and Katsina. As a student he moved in leftist circles around the Marxist historian Yusufu Bala Usman.
In 1983 he switched to business, becoming the first general manager of Sambo Farms in Funtua and later sitting on the boards of banks, a construction firm and a dairy company. His elder brother, Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, led a political movement he joined; Shehu later died in prison under General Sani Abacha's regime. After losing a governorship race in 1991, Umaru won Katsina in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003. His administration was known for thrift, reportedly paying off inherited debt and building a surplus of 50 million dollars.
In December 2006 the ruling party chose him as its presidential candidate with 3,024 delegate votes against 372 for his nearest rival, largely thanks to backing from outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo. Official results gave him 70 percent in the April 2007 election, but observers and his main opponents rejected the outcome. He invited opposition parties into a unity government and set up an electoral reform committee led by former chief justice Mohammed Uwais, which urged making the electoral commission genuinely independent.
His health cut the presidency short. In 2009 he travelled to Saudi Arabia for treatment of pericarditis, returned on 24 February 2010 and died that May, leaving his seven-point development agenda largely unfinished.
Source: Umaru Musa Yar'Adua
