LEADERSHIP SUNDAY gathered that contrary to the presidency’s recent position that the ailing president was responding to treatment and was even watching a game of football, he is not responding well to treatment and his current health condition may keep him in the hospital for the next three months.
LEADERSHIP SUNDAY further gathered that options weighed by Saudi medical specialists of transferring the president to either the United States or Germany for further intensive intervention was dropped because the patient is not in a state to withstand the added stress.
Sources disclosed that the president’s health worsened due to his body’s inability to respond to treatment in the intensive care unit of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre. The longer stay is to enable doctors to closely monitor his response to treatment and possibly administer new ones.
Meanwhile, LEADERSHIP SUNDAY has learned that First Lady Turai Yar’Adua, who has dutifully kept her husband company all this time, is expected back in the country this week, ostensibly with a message for Vice President Goodluck Jonathan. But it was not confirmed whether the message is from the president or herself.
Sources disclosed that the message would likely contain no dramatic departure from the status quo: Vice Presidnt Jonathan should continue in his current administrative footing. But a significant dimension of the First Lady’s message could be that any serious governance decisions must be referred to the ailing president in Saudi for approval. As a major linchpin in the unfolding development, she would have to be shuttling between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia within the period of the president’s stay.
Following the emergency evacuation of Yar’Adua to a Saudi medical facility on November 23, the presidency, in a major departure from its normal secretive fashion, told the nation the specific medical condition of the president. This time around, presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi stated that the president was suffering from acute pericarditis – an inflammation of the covering of the heart. He said the president was expected to recover soon and return to the country, but no specific day has been fixed. According to Adeniyi, the president was very sad over his rumoured death.
The kernel of Adeniyi’s information was specific: it was according to the chief physician to Yar’Adua, Dr. Salisu Banye: “At about 3pm on Friday, November 20, after he returned from the Abuja Central Mosque where he performed the Juma’at prayers, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua complained of left-sided severe chest pain. Preliminary medical examinations suggested acute pericarditis (an inflammatory condition of the coverings of the heart).
“It was then decided that he should undertake confirmatory checks at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he had his last medical check-up in August.
“The medical review and tests undertaken at the hospital have confirmed the initial diagnosis that the president is indeed suffering from acute pericarditis.
“He is now receiving treatment for the ailment and is responding remarkably well.”
Before this novel clarification from the presidency, rumours had swept the country like wildfire that the president had passed on. But Adeniyi captured the presidency’s dilemma when he stated that rumour-mongering cannot be legislated away.
Since his latest health crisis unfolded, a major controversy driven by political calculations and constitutional imperatives over succession fears has gripped the country.
But mounting calls for the president’s resignation on account of his sickness was rebuffed by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) which met in Abuja last Wednesday. The council resolved that the president was fit to continue in office.
Some prominent citizens had insisted that the president was too ill to continue in office and called on FEC to invoke Section 144 of the 1999 Constitution for the Senate to investigate the president’s health condition and declare his seat vacant.
But the FEC members declared that they would continue to provide information on the president’s health to douse anxiety and curiosity over the health controversy. They have not kept that promise