Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua for Medical Check-Up in Saudi Arabia

Published on Tuesday 11th August 2009

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua is to travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday, August 14, 2009, for a scheduled medical check-up.

A statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, explained that in the course of his trip, the President would perform the Lesser Hajj (Umra).

It further said that Yar'Adua would be away for one week. The statement will foreclose any speculation about the President's whereabouts during the one week.

Previous overseas trip allegedly on health ground had been shrouded in secrecy.

For instance, Yar'Adua had in August last year traveled abroad without a word about his whereabouts. His aides claimed, after much public criticism, that he was in Jedda, Saudi-Arabia to perform the lesser Hajj, after which he sought medical attention.

A delegation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by the National Chairman, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor and two other executives, Ahmed Rufai Alkali and Musa Bayero, flew to Saudi Arabia during the period to meet with the President.

Ogbulafor would later tell reporters that the President was "responding positvely" to treatment. Yar'Adua returned to the country in September.

In January, the President was away on a two-week vacation. His leave was formally announced in a statement signed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed.

His medical condition has been an issue right from the time of his presidential campaign in 2007. At a point in the build-up to the election he was rumoured to have died, during a medical check-up in Germany.

But responding to former President Olusegun Obas-anjo who put a telephone call through to him at a campaign rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State Yar'Adua dispelled rumours of his death from abroad.

Yar'Adua has always said that he is in good health, can hold the office of President and that the matter of life and death is in God's hands.