I`m alive, fit to contest ...Yar`adua refutes death rumour from Germany
From MUA’WUYA B. IDRIS, Katsina & BBC report

Nigeria’s ruling party presidential contender, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua, 55, says he is well enough to run in April’s polls.
Speaking to the BBC from Germany, where he was flown for a medical check-up, he scotched speculation that he was unfit to continue in the contest.
He said reports that he had collapsed and was rushed to hospital were “not true” and he would return home soon.
Yar’adua has been the frontrunner to win the elections and has previously suffered from a kidney illness.
The BBC’s Alex Last says there has been increasing speculation that he could be replaced as the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate.
He declared his candidacy after being backed by President Olusegun Obasanjo - who steps down in April after eight years in power.
Yar’adua said he had suffered from breathlessness and had taken his doctor’s advice to have a thorough medical check-up abroad.
“I am only human, as they are,” he said about his critics.
“I don’t think a human being has control over his health or ill-health, life or death and therefore they should not create conclusions on any other human being,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.
His transfer to Germany led to a spate of rumours in Nigeria about the state of his health and the possibility that he could be replaced.
The state deputy governor, Abdullahi Aminchi, who spoke to newsmen in Katsina yesterday said, “ Yar’adua is receiving treatment in Germany and I spoke to him last night”.
He said the rumour of the governor’s death was unfounded and false and urged the people of the state and all Nigerians to treat the matter as such.
Not least, our reporter says, because being president of a country like Nigeria is such a gruelling task and presidential elections are only a month away.
“There are speculations all the time since the year 2000 surrounding my health,” Yar’adua said.
In January, he sought to quash rumours about his health, inviting his critics to a game of squash if they could play 12 straight sets.
A tall, thin, quietly-spoken man, Yar’adua was a relatively unknown Northern Muslim governor before he won the governing party primaries with the backing of President Obasanjo.
As the governing party’s candidate, with access to its money and power, he is widely considered to be the favourite to become Nigeria’s next president in elections in April.
Political gossips have suggested a number of alternatives should Yar’adua be replaced as the PDP’s candidate, our correspondent says.
Among them is the immensely wealthy former military ruler, Gen