President Umaru Yar’Adua will travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday for medical checks, his office said.
“President Umaru Yar’Adua will leave Abuja today for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While there, the president will call on his personal physicians in Jeddah for follow-up medical checks,” presidency spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi said in a statement.
Yar’Adua has travelled to Saudi Arabia in the past for treatment for a chronic kidney problem, raising questions about whether he will be fit enough to stand for a second term in 2011 elections.
Adeniyi said Yar’Adua had forwarded copies of the 2010 budget, which he had been due to present to parliament last week, to the heads of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The presentation of the spending plans for sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy was postponed because of a row between the two chambers of parliament over which one should host the event.
Government sources have said Yar’Adua will seek approval to breach a 3 percent deficit target for the second year in a row in 2010, due to the cost of development projects in the Niger Delta and rehabilitating the country’s ailing power sector.
Yar’Adua has had regular medical treatment in Germany and Saudi Arabia and his health was a source of concern even before he assumed the presidency.
He has not yet confirmed whether he plans to stand again in presidential election in 2011 but key figures in the ruling party have pledged their support if he decides to do so.