Anti-graft czar to be opposition in Nigerian poll

Nigeria's former anti-corruption czar, who won international acclaim for seeking charges against members of the oil-rich nation's political elite, was chosen Friday as the presidential candidate of the country's strongest opposition party.

Nuhu Ribadu's entry into the race comes hours after the nation's ruling People's Democratic Party overwhelmingly endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan in a primary election decided just before dawn on Friday.

The two likely will be the strongest competitors in the April 8 election, though Jonathan's party remains the only one with the money and political connections necessary to manipulate flawed elections in Africa's most populous nation. Since the handover in 1999 from military rule to a civilian government, that party has dominated politics in the West African nation.

Ribadu's candidacy received a resounding "yes" vote during a convention held Friday afternoon in Nigeria's commercial capital of Lagos, the power base of the opposition party. The former police official became the party's candidate after two other candidates withdrew from the race at the presidential primaries convention.

"It is clear that the ruling party is on its way out," Ribadu told delegates. "There is nothing remaining in the (ruling party) and we are the beneficiaries."

Ribadu served as the head of the country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission under former President Olusegun Obasanjo. First appointed in 2003, Ribadu began investigating the powerful politicians who populate the country's ruling party. While Ribadu won international support for fighting graft in a country considered as one of the world's most corrupt, others criticized him for only pursuing the perceived political enemies of Obasanjo.

He also once estimated that corruption had cost Nigeria - a nation where most people live on less than $2 a day - more than $380 billion since it gained its independence from Britain in 1960.

"The (ruling party's) administration has earned much more money than any other administration in the history of this country," Ribadu said in his acceptance speech. "The question that any rational mind will logically ask is this: 'What positive value has the PDP legacy (added to our) lives?' Sadly, zero, none."

The consensus candidate said he would prioritize the war against poverty if he became the president. Borrowing from U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign slogan, Ribadu told delegates: "It is time for us to say 'Change has come.'"

Ribadu saw his political fortunes wane after the election of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua in 2007. At the time, he had begun investigations into senior ruling-party politicians believed to have bankrolled the deeply flawed elections that brought Yar'Adua to office.

Officials later reduced Ribadu's police rank and refused to grant him a graduation certificate from the police training program. Ribadu left Nigeria for the U.S. after he said he was the target of a drive-by shooting.

Ribadu enters the race after the nation's Christian president won a decisive victory in his own party's primaries against a Muslim candidate. By being a Muslim from the country's north, Ribadu might be able to woo some support for his party, which remains powerful only in southwestern states dominated by the Yoruba ethnic group. Religion and ethnic identities still carry tremendous power in a nation of 150 million that came out of a civil war more than 40 years ago.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this report.