Aso Rock’s refusal to disclose the nature of President Umar Yar’Adua’s ailment and his frequent medical trips to Germany spark huge public anxiety

By Francis Ottah Agbo

For over five months, the Nigerian public watched in anxiety, as President Umar Yar’Adua and the National Assembly flexed muscles over the 2008 Appropriation Bill. The anxiety ended on 14 April, when the President signed the Bill into law to a backdrop of self-congratulatory messages from the Presidency and the National Assembly.

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But no sooner had the apprehension ended than Nigerians were back in the same mode. Just after the unusually low-key budget signing ceremony, Yar’Adua travelled to Wiesbaden, Germany, to get treatment for an undisclosed ailment.

The official spiel was that the President was suffering from allergic reactions to undisclosed malaria drugs, cold and exhaustion. Segun Adeniyi, Yar’Adua’s spokesman, assured the country that the President would return to his seat in a few days time.

Seven days after, Yar’ Adua did not come. Adeniyi then announced a shift in the date of the President’s return to 22 April. The day also passed, with Yar’Adua still in Germany. Curiously too, the name of the hospital where he is receiving medical attention has been kept top secret. The foggy situation has spawned a wide range of speculations and palpable public apprehension about the President’s state of health. While giving reasons for the postponement of the return of the President to the country last Wednesday, Adeniyi who had all along been with his boss in Germany, insisted that Yar’Adua was fine. The presidential spokesman told an Abuja-based newspaper that though Yar’Adua had concluded all the necessary arrangements to return home, his doctor advised him to have some more rest. “Mr. President is fine,” Adeniyi said.

But not many Nigerians are reassured. Last week, a newspaper article by Joel Nwokeoma, a public affairs commentator, asked: “One, what is not okay with the President’s health, which the nation he leads does still not know, but really deserves to, which took him, and takes, him to Germany,” to be keeping his appointment at the hospital? Two, if the President “will be keeping his appointment”, as declared by Adeniyi, who then certified him “okay”? And, okay on what? Three, what is this “indisposition” and “allergic reaction” of Mr. President that cannot be treated in all the specialist and teaching hospitals in the country he happily presides over, except in Germany? Four, “does the nation deserve to know the mental, emotional, psychic and physical state of health of its leaders?”

In a similar vein, Olatunji Dare, a columnist with The Nation, wondered why the President has refused to tell Nigerians the ailments he is suffering from. Dare added that if it is true that Yar’Adua was flown abroad for allergic reactions, as claimed by his spokesperson, the nation’s “health care delivery system, even at its most sophisticated state, is in far greater distress than it is generally supposed”.
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