The president’s health is back on the national radar, as he travelled last night to Saudi Arabia for a medical check-up, according to Olusegun Adeniyi, his special adviser on media and publicity, in a statement yesterday in Abuja. However, the statement was loudly silent on the ailment affecting President Umaru Yar’Adua.
“President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua will leave Abuja today for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, while there; the President will call on his personal physicians in Jeddah for follow-up medical checks,” Mr. Adeniyi’s statement said.
This is the third trip the president is making in four months, to treat an ailment that has not been fully disclosed to the nation. On August 14th when he made a two-week trip to Germany, public opinion was sharply critical of managing information processes in the presidency, regarding the health of Mr. Yar’Adua.
On September 22 when he left for another trip to Saudi Arabia, the presidency officially claimed he had gone to commission the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, during which he would also receive medical attention for an asthmatic situation. He was billed to attend the United Nations’ General Assembly meeting in New York at the same time.
The reason for yesterday’s trip, coming appropriately during the Hajj season when Muslims gather in Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage, was carefully worded to suggest that a medical treatment was merely incidental.
Leaving work behind
Mr. Yar Adua’s departure leaves two assignments on the cliff edge: his planned meeting to resolve the ego-feud between the House of Representatives and the Senate; and the presentation of the 2010 National Appropriation Bill.
However, Mr. Adeniyi dispelled any alarm regarding the Appropriation Bill, saying “President Yar’Adua has forwarded copies of the 2010 National Appropriation Bill to the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.”
The spokesman of the House of Representatives, Esieme Eyibo, confirmed this by saying “the president will lay the budget proposal” today with ‘substantial compliance with section 81 of the constitution’ which does not require him to convene a joint session of the two houses of the National Assembly before a budget proposal is handed in.
In a telephone interview with NEXT, the senate spokesman, Ayogu Eze, corroborated Mr. Eyibo’s position. He said the prerogative to interpret the constitution and define how the budget proposal is presented ‘now lies with the president.’
The week-long feud between the two law-making chambers had been on which of them would host the president as he presents the budget.
An unofficial account of the President’s health, however, says he had been treating a degenerative form of asthma for which he had been visiting German hospitals even as governor of Katsina State. The president had not been openly active in the past few weeks, including the missing the finals of the just concluded Under-17 Soccer World Cup in Abuja.
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