Yar’Adua Bans Close-up Pictures to Prevent Public from Observing His Physical Condition. Due to his gaunt and emaciated appearance occasioned by sickness¸ Nigeria’s “Supreme Court President”, Umaru Yar'Adua, has taken unprecedented steps to prevent his image and likeness from appearing in the press.
First, he has banned photojournalists from taking close shots of him and publishing such in any newspaper. And the communication department at the presidency has stopped uploading photographs of Yar'Adua to the website of the State house (www.nigeriafirst.org) pending the time its principal subject would have gained enough weight to look like the doctor, not the patient.
Saharareporters has learned that a photojournalist at the New Agency of Nigeria (NAN) has been queried for "taking and circulating pictures of Mr. Yar'Adua that his office considers embarrassing."
The new policy was devised after a series of photos emerged in several newspapers following Yar'Adua’s so-called two-week vacation. When accurate but unflattering reports of Yar’Adua’s preparations for a medical leave surfaced in SaharaReporters and other media, those arrangements were cancelled at the last minute and a “vacation” announced in its place.
But although spokesman Segun Adeniyi told the press his boss would spend the vacation at the Obudu Ranch in Cross River State, Dodan Barracks in Lagos, and Yar’Adua’s home state of Katsina, Yar’Adua was instead marooned in the Aso Rock villa residence in Abuja. Reports said he had been too weak to travel. A medical source had also told Saharareporters that given the state of Yar’Adua’s weakened lungs, his doctors would not medically permit travel to Obudu Ranch, where the high altitude heights would have made breathing a nightmare for him.
The state of Yar'Adua's health has reduced State activities to the barest minimum. One of his ministers told Saharareporters after yesterday's Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting that Yar'Adua could not stay longer than 30 minutes in what he said was the shortest FEC he had ever attended.
At that meeting, photojournalists were forbidden from taking close shots of Yar'Adua. A number of newspaper editors were warned to carry embarrassing photos of Yar'Adua at their own risk. Since Yar’Adua does not have a choice in whether or in what circumstances public pictures of him are published, it remains to be seen if editors nationwide will go along with what amounts to providing the nation with part of the truth. For today, a majority of the mainstream newspapers only settled for front-page photos of ministers as they engaged in staged-managed "photo ops" banter at the State House . It is not clear how the television stations plan to report public appearances of Yar’Adua, if any.
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