Vice-president takes reins from ailing Leader

Nigeria’s parliament empowered Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to run Africa’s most populous nation in place of an ill and absent president, striving for a political end to a crisis that ground the government to a virtual halt and triggered the resumption of an insurgency in the vital oil sector.

But the move is not contemplated in the constitution, legal experts say, and could cause more friction between the Christian south, which gains the presidency at least temporarily, and Muslim north, which finds itself out of the seat of power.