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Goodluck Nigeria

The bombs that exploded in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, as the country was celebrating its golden jubilee this year are a disturbing portent of the unprecedented political territory that the country is entering. Indeed, President Goodluck Jonathan's bid for a second term in 2011 could break up the ruling party and plunge Nigeria into ethnic and religious turmoil.

LAGOS – The bombs that exploded in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, as the country was celebrating its golden jubilee earlier this month are a disturbing portent of the unprecedented political territory that the country is entering.

The death last May of Umaru Yar’Adua, Nigeria’s president, upended the informal agreement between members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to rotate power between northern Muslims and their southern, mainly Christian counterparts. Yar’Adua’s deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, from the oil-rich Niger Delta in the south, overcame resistance from members of the late president’s cabinet and was sworn in as Yar’Adua’s successor, as stipulated by the constitution. In September, he told Nigerians of his intention to run for another presidential term in 2011.

President Jonathan’s announcement triggered furious protests from his northern rivals, including Ibrahim Babangida, a former military dictator who reminded him that Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner, had served as president from 1999, when military rule ended, to 2007, with northern support. Yar’Adua had completed only three years of his first four-year term when he died, and it was expected that all southerners, including Jonathan, would unite behind another northerner for next year’s vote.

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