President Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria has chosen a new central bank governor with a strong reputation for risk management, a move that could help allay investor concerns over the health of the country’s banks.

A senior government source told the Financial Times that the president will announce this week that Lamido Sanusi, the head of First Bank, Nigeria’s biggest bank by market capitalisation, will replace Chukwuma Soludo, whose five-year term expires on Friday.