FACTBOX: Nigerian President Yar'Adua's election upheld

(Reuters) - A Nigerian tribunal upheld the 2007 election of President Umaru Yar'Adua on Tuesday, rejecting challenges from rivals.

Following are some key facts about Yar'Adua.

* Umaru Yar'Adua, a former chemistry teacher born in 1951 to a well-known northern Nigerian political dynasty, was governor of the remote northern Katsina state from May 1999 to May 2007.

* A little-known figure in national politics, he was plucked from obscurity in December 2006 by then President Olusegun Obasanjo to be the ruling party's presidential candidate in 2007.

* Yar'Adua got nearly four times as many votes as his closest opponent, but EU observers said the election was "not credible" because of fraud and intimidation by the ruling party.

* Yar'Adua has recognized the elections were flawed and promised electoral reform, but has said he believed he had a popular mandate to govern.

* Yar'Adua won early plaudits when he publicly declared his assets, the first president to do so in a country that consistently ranks among the most corrupt in the world.

* The slow pace of reform however has disappointed many Nigerians. Yar'Adua promised to declare a national emergency in the power sector but has yet to do so and has only just set up a committee to advise on solving chronic power shortages.

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(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon and David Cutler)