In 2009, then-Nigerian President Musa Yar Adua granted an amnesty to thousands of militants wreaking havoc in the oil-rich Niger Delta in the south.
"It's just a mark of appreciation from the good people of Nigeria, " Yar'Adua said during a state reception in the country's capital Abuja on Saturday.
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After nearly seven weeks away from home, apparently in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria's president, Umaru Yar'Adua, broke his silence in a radio interview.
Before he was unexpectedly chosen to succeed Olusegun Obasanjo, Mr Yar'Adua, a former chemistry teacher, was a little-known governor of the remote northern state of Katsina.
Among the presidents, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, Israel's Shimon Peres, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, Nigeria's Umaru Yar'Adua and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, are likely to draw attention.
In order to provide an air of legitimacy for his administration, Yar'Adua must get a handle on current conflicts and simmering tensions located throughout the country.
The Nigerian feds have been investigating, and in August the press reported that new President Umar Musa Yar'Adua was considering the revocation of some recently granted licenses.
This might be possible considering that unlike his predecessor, Yar'Adua has the temperament to make as much concession as is reasonable and necessary to accommodate the opposition.
Yar'Adua unfortunately will not have that luxury and will have to address this issue directly if he wants to start establishing peace and security in his failing state.
Some proposed new members had been sidelined under Mr Yar'Adua.
In the Niger Delta region, his homeland, where militants have long campaigned for a greater share of their land's oil revenues, he vowed to build on Mr Yar'Adua's amnesty of last summer.
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Moreover, it increased the anger of many Nigerians, who asked why Mr Yar'Adua gave his first public statement in almost two months to the Western media rather than to the press at home.
But Mr Yar'Adua's admirers say his deliberative style is right for a country with a feeble infrastructure and an array of problems that cannot be solved simply by having oil cash thrown at them.
Despite continuing calls by disgruntled opposition candidates and an array of foreign observers for last month's Nigerian presidential election to be run again, Umaru Yar'Adua was certified by the electoral commission to have won.
If Yar'Adua wants to continue Obasanjo's mission to increase the economy while decreasing the violence, he will have to arrange peace talks between the militant groups from the Delta, the oil companies, and the Nigerian government.
The fall in tax revenues, as a result of illegal bunkering and the sabotage of pipelines, means that Mr Yar'Adua has even less chance of tackling his country's other problems, such as a chronic lack of electricity.
Goodluck Jonathan, Mr Yar'Adua's southern deputy, who became acting president in February as the country grew impatient, has already been sworn in and will soon appoint a vice-president, who may then be groomed as next year's candidate.
Ibori was not only a state governor when he committed the alleged crimes, he was also a powerful member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) and a financier of the presidential campaign of President Shehu Yar'Adua, now late.
He is unlikely to stand in next year's election because of the ruling party's unofficial rotation system: Mr Jonathan is from the Christian south and it will be the Muslim north's turn to nominate a candidate to serve out the once-expected second term of Mr Yar'Adua's presidency.
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