Nigeria’s cabinet, under pressure to declare the ailing president permanently unfit to hold onto office, is to dispatch a six-man team to his Jeddah hospital, a minister said Wednesday.
President Umaru Yar’Adua has been hospitalised in Saudi Arabia for almost three months for an acute heart condition.
Apart from a radio interview he gave last month, no images of him have been seen since he left for treatment on November 23.
Government has put together “a six-man team to go to Saudi Arabia to visit Mr President and his family,” Information Minister Dora Akunyili told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting.
Parliament last week thrust Yar’Adua’s deputy Goodluck Jonathan into office as acting president,in a controversial vote endorsed by cabinet a day later.
Activists, including Nobel Literature laureate Wole Soyinka, at the weekend called on the government to take the bold move to state that Yar’Adua is too ill to remain in office altogether.
Nigeria’s constitution states that the head of state shall cease to hold office if two-thirds of the cabinet declare him unfit to discharge his duties.
The declaration, however, has to be verified by a medical team appointed by the senate president and the speaker of the house of representatives.
Yar’Adua’s protracted absence had raised fears of a constitutional crisis in the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.
A group of lawmakers who tried to visit Yar’Adua to determine his state of health returned at the weekend after five days without seeing him.
Akunyili did not specify a departure date of the delegation which comprises the government secretary, and the ministers of justice, health, petroleum, foreign affairs and agriculture.