Goodluck Jonathan, sworn in as president of the oil rich nation on Thursday, is a fedora-wearing former zoologist with a reputation for cultivating a low profile.
The 52-year-old has effectively been in charge since February when parliament voted to force Umaru Yar’Adua to temporarily hand over power until the ailing president was well enough to return to office.
Yar’Adua died late Wednesday, having effectively been sidelined since last November by a heart ailment that forced his hopitalisation in Saudi Arabia for several months.
Despite being described by one magazine as “hardly the man to set the pulse racing,” Jonathan has enjoyed a steady to rise to power since ditching his job with a government agency in the oil-rich Niger Delta in 1998.
The following year, he became a deputy governor for the key southern oil-producing Bayelsa State. In 2005, he became the governor, replacing his boss who had been impeached over money laundering charges in Britain.
Picked as Yar’Adua’s vice president in 2007, the Christian southerner has characteristically steered clear of controversy in recent months, allowing others to wage his political battles for him.
In a rare, strongly-worded statement last month, he told members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to stop dragging his name into “premature” suggestions that he could be the candidate for next year’s election.
As things stand, he will complete Yar’Adua’s term till May 2011, but has not made his future political intentions known.
Jonathan is the first native of the Niger Delta region to ascend to the presidency, where power has mostly rested with northerners.
The Ijaws, his tribe, have long complained of political marginalisation.
As a southerner, Jonathan instantly became a beneficiary of an unwritten agreement in the ruling PDP that seeks to balance power between Nigeria’s Muslim north and largely Christian south.
His nomination by the PDP to be Yar’Adua’s running mate in the April 2007 polls came as a surprise amid some strong contenders.
Observers said Jonathan was the favourite because he was seen as the cleanest of all the governors of the southern states of Nigeria. The west African state is also among the world’s most corrupt countries.
He was also perceived to have been picked for the job to help pacify the disgruntled militants in the restive Niger Delta region who have played havoc with oil output in the world’s eighth-largest exporter of crude.
Thousands of rebels in the delta have laid down their arms under an amnesty deal last year championed by Yar’Adua.
But in January the rebels called off a three-month ceasefire saying post-amnesty promises had been ignored, in the process handing Jonathan one of his biggest challenges, to maintain the delta’s fragile peace and its oil output at current or better levels.
The most active of the delta’s armed groups, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), said in an email that Yar’Adua’s passing should give a “fresh impetus” to the region’s agitation.
“The fact that he comes from the region will make us bear harder on him to address the root issues once and for all,” said MEND of Jonathan.
Rarely without an elegant dark robe and his fedora, a trademark of most Niger Delta natives, Jonathan, was born to a family of canoe-makers on November 20, 1957.
He is married with several children.