President Umaru Yar’Adua Saturday ordered his lawyers to sue the local ‘Leadership’ newspaper after it reported in the day’s edition that the President has taken ill again and has not attended public functions in the past two days.
”The President has graciously tolerated over twenty months of false rumours, speculations and innuendoes about his health, but the Leadership newspaper report of today crosses all acceptable lines of professional ethics, decency, decorum and respect for others’ rights and feelings.
”There are laws against libel, defamation of character and publication of falsehoods in our statute books.
”In keeping with his commitment to upholding the rule of law at all times, President Yar’Adua has directed his lawyers to take appropriate legal action against the Leadership newspaper and pursue the case to its logical conclusion,” presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi said in a statement obtained by PANA.
The statement said there was 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 destabilize his Administration”.
It described as a ”big lie” the claim by the Abuja-based newspaper that “Yar’Adua has not attended any public function in the last two days”, saying that apart from attending the weekly prayers at the National Mosque in the capital city of Abuja on Friday, the President also attended the ongoing Germany-Africa Forum in the city.
”The truth is that the President is in good health and has been attending to all his official duties in full view of the media in the past week,” the spokesman said.
The President’s health has remained an issue in the local media since he assumed office 29 May 2007, as he (Yar’Adua) has travelled out of the country a number of times to seek medical attention to what reports described as a kidney-related ailment.
Recently, the privately-owned television news station, Channel, was shut for several days after its licence was withdrawn for reporting that President Yar’Adua might step down due to ill health.
Several journalists from the station as well as the official News Agency of Nigeria – which was credited with the story but denied it emanated from it – were also locked up for some days over the report.
It is rare for a Nigerian leader to sue a media organisation, as past leaders have easily resorted to shutting down erring media organisations.