Obasanjo warning to Nigeria’s ailing leader

Abuja, 22 Jan-(ANA)-Nigeria's former President Olusegun Obasanjo has suggested that his successor, Umaru Yar'Adua, should resign if he is too ill for office.

He said there was "a path of honour and morality" for an office-holder unable to deliver because of his health.

Mr Yar'Adua, handpicked by Mr Obasanjo to run for president in 2007, is in a Saudi hospital for a heart condition.

It is Mr Obasanjo's first statement on the president's two-month absence which has prompted fears of a power vacuum.

Mr Obasanjo was answering questions at a public lecture when he made the comments about the president's ill health.

He denied that he had been irresponsible when choosing his successor, AFP news agency reports.

"To say that I, Olusegun Obasanjo, deliberately picked somebody who is an invalid, is the height of insult," he said.

In 2007, he put Mr Yar'Adua, who was known to suffer from a kidney complaint, forward as the ruling People's Democratic Party's presidential candidate when his own attempts to run for a third term floundered.

Analysts said that by backing Mr Yar'Adua to succeed him, Mr Obasanjo had hoped to continue pulling the strings after leaving office.

But it has not turned out this way and since then Mr Yar'Adua has proved to be his own man.(ANA)

FA/ANA/22 January 2010-----