The last is yet to be heard about the Leadership newspaper report on the alleged failing health of President Umaru Yar’Adua as the newspaper’s top management staff have become guests of the Nigeria Police Command and the State Security Service (SSS).
On Tuesday, the police command under the leadership of the Inspector-General of Police, Sir Mike Okiro invited all the title editors of the newspapers to the police headquarters in Abuja.
The IG held a closed door meeting with the editors and were allowed to go later. The editors’ parley with the IG was meant to resolve the newspaper’s controversial report on Yar’Adua’s state of health, which embarrassed the presidency. Having realised the graft of the embarrassment the story had caused the presidency, the newspaper tendered an apology, retracting its earlier reports.
But the situation took another dimension yesterday as the SSS invited the newspaper’s Executive Director, Abraham Nda-Isaiah to its head office in Abuja.
The executive director was quizzed for more than two hours and was later released. But he was asked to report back to the SSS office the next day (yesterday) with the Weekend Editor of the newspaper, Lara Gbemisola and the writer of the story.
The trio went to the SSS office yesterday at about 11, but were yet to be released as at the time of filing this report.
When the newspaper’s Chairman, John Nda-Isaiah got the wind of the news, he rushed out of the meeting of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) he was attending in Lagos and took the next available flight back to Abuja. He got to the SSS office around 4pm yesterday but was yet to be also released as at the time of this report.
President Yar’Adua had directed his lawyers to sue the Leadership newspapers for libel over what he termed “malicious rumours and outright falsehood” over his health.
In a statement by the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, the planned legal battle against the Leadership newspapers was in furtherance to the President’s belief in the rule of law.
“In keeping with his commitment to upholding the rule of law at all times, Yar’Adua has directed his lawyers to take appropriate legal action against the Leadership newspaper and pursue the case to its logical conclusion,” he said
The presidential spokesperson noted that since the inception of the present administration, “its political opponents and their allies in the media have persistently assailed the nation with malicious rumours and outright falsehoods about Yar’Adua’s state of health.”
“Well after Yar’Adua had personally addressed the so-called ambiguities about his health on national television, affirming that while, like all humankind, he was by no means immune to ill-health, but fit enough to lead Nigeria effectively; the political opposition and their cronies in the media have willfully refused to let the issue go.
“The regular fare of baseless rumours, speculations and malevolent lies about the President’s health and its alleged effect on his ability to govern came to a head this morning (yesterday) when the Leadership newspaper published on its front-page, a manifestly false report titled: “Yar’Adua Sick Again”.
Dismissing the newspaper’s report, Adeniyi said: “There is no truth in the entire report and the lies on which it hangs are so easy to disprove that the only reasonable conclusion is that the publishers of the newspapers ran the report in furtherance of their reprehensible efforts to embarrass the President and destabilise his administration.
“If it had any regard for the truth at all and made the least effort to confirm the veracity of the assertions in its report, Leadership newspaper would know that the claim that “Yar’Adua has not attended any public function in the last two days” is a big lie.
“It is one of the creeds of the journalism profession that comment is free but facts are sacred. If Leadership subscribes to this creed at all, it would not have published a patently false report about the President’s “absence” from Jumma’at prayers at the National Mosque or from the ongoing Germany-Africa Forum at the Sheraton Hotel, Abuja.”
The weekend title of the newspaper, Leadership Weekend, had published that Yar’Adua, has “fallen critically ill and this has prevented him from attending public functions in the last two days including Jumma’at prayer at the National Mosque Friday and 4th Africa/German Forum at Sheraton Hotel.”