Nigerian Information Minister, Professor Dora Akunyili, has dropped another bombshell, saying she was fed up with the lies’ told by some presidential aides about the health of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, according to local media reports.
She also says the president’s return on Wednesday had âœactually exaggerated uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, fear and concern, not just by Nigerians but by the international community’.
According to the reports, four American doctors are due in Nigeria this weekend to attend to the ailing President.
They are expected to collaborate with some Nigerian doctors to re-appraise the President’s health status.
Professor Akunyili whose 5 February memo to the Executive Council of the Federation (EXCOF), forced a change in the official position on the President’s health, told Sunday Vanguard and two other newspapers in Abuja that the confusion trai l ing the return of the President from Saudi Arabia could not be blamed on him because âœhe is peace loving’ and the rule of law he preaches’ is from his heart’.
I believe that it is people around him that are gaining from the confusion; people around him that are doing to him today what 100 million political enemies cannot do to him’, she said, adding: He has done a lot for this country and suddenly, a few people are rubbishing it. They stole him into this country in the night’.
Expressing personal frustration at her inaccessibility to information on the Pre sident’s health status, she said: âœYou manage information if you have information. We did not have information that our President was travelling to Saudi Arabia until we read it in the news, and when he was in Saudi Arabia we hardly got information.
We never had a comprehensive channel of getting information that we are sure of and most of the information sometimes, they don’t add up and it gets very di sturbing. When they don’t add up, you feel very awkward reporting such information.
The invitation of the four-man medical team is to the knowledge of Acting Presid ent Goodluck Jonathan, the4 paper said.
The Americans are to work in collaboration with some Nigerians medical experts, with a view to reviewing the Yar’Adua’s health status.
Their findings will determine to a large extent the next line of action of Acting President Goodluck Jonathan this week.