SOUTH AFRICA: Nigeria's president-elect Umaru Yar'Adua visits President Thabo Mbeki

Nigeria's newly elected president Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua pledges to work closely with opposition party leaders after winning disputed elections last month. Nigeria's president-elect Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua arrived in South Africa today (May 9) in the latest stopover of the first international trip he's made since winning controversial elections in Africa's most populous nation last month. After being warmly welcomed by South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki and told the media that he had already invited the opposition leaders to join him in nation building. "On the issue of uniting the opposition, you see, we need to work a lot in Nigeria, and I have already extended a hand of fellowship to my opponents. Normally and generally, whenever elections are held in place in Nigeria, there seems to be all the time these kind of disputes. But at the end of day we all come together to form a government and work together, both the winners and the opposition work together to move the country forward until the next general elections. That is what I intend to do. I have already sent emissaries to the leading contenders to come and join me in making sure that I form a government which they will support. I have a clear programme for the nation, in which I hope they will come and participate in implementing that programme in the next four years. I am expecting positive responses from my two brothers," Yar'Adua said at the presidential guest house in Pretoria. The former governor of the northern Katsina state won elections which international observers and opposition party leaders alike decried as fraudulent and marred by violence. South Africa was the first country to offer its congratulations to Yar'Adua after his landslide victory was announced. "We had discussed before the elections that we needed to get together, and indeed, when I got the message that he'd like to come, I was very happy about that. Because I think everybody knows the relationship between South Africa and Nigeria, and indeed we've been working very, very well with President Obasanjo. And I am quite sure we will continue to with that, to address the bilateral issues, to address African questions and so on. And I was very, very glad that he could come so early, before inauguration later this month," said South African president Thabo Mbeki. Yar'Adua's inauguration is scheduled for May 29 in what will be the first handover from one civilian president to another in Nigeria's history.

ITN Source | May 11, 2007

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