Umaru Yar’Adua, the sickly Nigerian leader hospitalized in a Saudi hospital in Jeddah as a result of a heart ailment arising from complications of Churg Strauss Syndrome, is vehemently refusing to hand over to his vice, Goodluck Jonathan. Yar’Adua, who last week admitted to suffering from Acute Pericarditis, following years of refusing to talk about his health issues, is receiving treatment at the Jeddah hospital after he was hurriedly evacuated from Abuja last Monday night.
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Saharareporters authoritatively reported that he was unconscious for several hours the following day, Tuesday, fueling a frenzy of rumors that he had already died.
Saharareporters spoke to several sources in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria today and no one could confirm his current condition. There are claims that he is “feeling better,” but no one could say with any certainty when he would return to Nigeria, or exactly what “feeling better” means.
Yar'adua suffers from Churg Strauss disease which has progressed to his heart- ( Medical studies reveal that when CSS goes to the heart, the patient might experience fatigue, dyspnea (shortness of breath), chest pain, irregular heartbeat, increased blood pressure, difficulty in breathing except when upright, swollen legs, appetite loss and fainting episodes. Some of these symptoms are related to pericarditis, which is inflammation of the sac-like covering of the heart, where others are related to congestive heart failure. Heart problems are a leading cause of death in Churg Strauss Syndrome.)
In Nigeria, several political forces are known to be at work already, trying to take advantage of Yar’Adua’s ill-health to locate themselves within possible power centers.
Yar’Adua most powerful political circle has so far refused to encourage him to give up power as result of his pathetic state of his condition. Their strategy is to manoeuvre him back to power, even if it has to be in a vegetative state. The same strategy was carefully employed to return him to control in Abuja late last year after he disappeared to Saudi Arabia for 17 days. Government officials and his aides insisted for the duration of that trip that Yar’Adua was attending “Hajj’.
But since returning from that trip to Saudi Arabia, Yar’Adua has barely managed to attend to state matters. As his health deteriorated further, his doctors, some of them foreigners, resorted to pumping him up on anabolic steroids that sometimes left him disoriented and bloated in the face: the result of his kidneys becoming unable to process the waste arising from those heavy dose of strong steroids. In recent times, Yar’Adua has abruptly departed from State matters. At the last ECOWAS meeting in Abuja, for instance, he had to be rushed to the ante room following a fainting spell. He was never able to partake in group photos with other ECOWAS leaders afterwards.
In another instance, Yar’Adua collapsed at a meeting where he was discussing oil block allocations with Rilwan Lukman, the Oil minister, his minister of state , Ajumogobia and NNPC officials. A source at the meeting said after Yar’Adua collapsed and was rushed to the Aso Rock clinic, First Lady Turai insisted that the meeting must continue. But a miffed Lukman said he couldn’t be at a meeting presided over by Yar’Adua’s wife, and left the meeting. A few days later, Lukman was being posted aside: to Austria as Ambassador, while his minister of state, Ajumogobia, was being given responsibility for the ministry. Although he seemed to have survived that, Lukman was going to be fired on December 1st, had Yar’Adua not taken ill again.
For the past two and a half years, Yar’Adua’s health has been more important than state policy. He increasingly relied on propaganda, not the truth, to give the impression he was in charge, with the help of government or compromised local media that reproduced reports claiming that he looked “refreshed” or “hale and hearty” even as his ministers and aides privately insisted that Yar’Adua did not pay attention to state matters.
Yar’Adua rarely attends to memos or hold one-on-one meetings with his ministers. Before finally collapsing two Fridays ago, Yar’Adua had not made many public appearances. In September, he abruptly canceled his trip to the United Nations General Assembly and headed to Saudi Arabia instead, purportedly to open the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST). Yar’Adua’s spin masters went to work by claiming that Yar’Adua’s inability to attend the UNGA was aimed at punishing Obama for skipping Nigeria during his first trip to Africa, as if the UN belongs to Obama. Each time his health failed in public, his aides and Nigeria’s compromised media was on hand to provide an excuse or an explanation. Last week, the level of deceit reach a serious level when both arms of the National Assembly engaged a fake war of words in order to save Yar’Adua an embarrassing public appearance that could have seen him collapse publicly for the first time. Soon after Yar’Adua left for his so-called medical check-up in Saudi Arabia, the National Assembly put aside their differences and welcomed his Special Assistants to submit an unprecedented four-page PowerPoint budget proposal to the NASS. Investigations showed that the aides actually did not have the bulk of the budget proposal because the budget was not ready in the first place.
Following Yar’Adua’s admission, for the first time, of a life-threatening condition, the battle for the soul of Nigerian politics has now broken out in two cities on two continents: Jeddah and Abuja, with Abuja as the epicenter.
In Abuja, a group loyal to Yar’Adua, led by his Chief Economic Adviser, Tanimu Kurfi and Abba Ruma has sworn to frustrate any talk of handing over of power to Yar’adua’s vice, Goodluck Jonathan. Even though Jonathan Goodluck claims publicly that everything is okay with him, people knowledgeable about his status told Saharareporters that the report in The Punch newspaper of November 28 that he is being threatened with forced resignation is completely truthful.
Meanwhile, a splinter segment of the pro-Yar’Adua group, led by James Ibori, has moved to Dubai. Ibori has been operational there since Thursday, and his plan is to keep in close contact with Yar’Adua in Saudi Arabia and help coordinate the anti-Goodluck forces outside the shores of Nigeria. This group has also vowed to convince Yar’Adua not to hand over power. They calculate that Yar’Adua would be superficially healthy enough to return to Nigeria in December or early in 2010 without officially handing over to Goodluck Jonathan. Ibori, who seems to have been assured by someone in the current administration that he will never be convicted for any of his corruption and money-laundering cases, is eyeing the Vice Presidency in 2011, either under Yar’Adua or someone else from the north.
Late last night, the Abuja pro-Yar’Adua group sent an emissary directly to Jeddah to meet with Yar’Adua in the hospital. The group comprises three persons: Yar’Adua’s son-in-law, Isah Yuguda, businessman Aliko Dangote, and the governor of Kwara State, Bukola Saraki. They arrived in Jeddah but our source said a face-to-face meeting had not taken place by the close of today. Isah Yuguda is being positioned to become Jonathan’s VP in case Yar’Adua resigns.
Another group of political manoeuvres is led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who discreetly moved to Abuja last night to start working quietly with Jonathan. That group proposes that should Yar’Adua not make it back to power, Jonathan Goodluck should choose Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, as his deputy.
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is also considering conducting their presidential primaries in June next year, a few months earlier than scheduled. It is now almost certain that Yar’Adua cannot be a candidate in the 2011 elections, but his supporters are hell-bent on propping him in place until the PDP can conduct its primaries in 2010.
Meanwhile, in Jeddah, Yar’Adua is surrounded by his immediate family, his daughters, wife as well as the governor of Katsina State, Ibrahim Shema. Turai, it is known, is determined that her husband remain in office.
But the true state of his health remains shrouded in high secrecy following the leak in a local Saudi newspaper last week which forced his doctor and aides to partially reveal his immediate condition. It did not escape Nigerians that the announcement did not reveal the full story about other conditions Yar’Adua is suffering from, or their possible consequences.
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