A man claiming to be Yar'Adua speaks to the BBC

January 12, 2010 01:25PMT



Exactly 50 days after Umaru Yar'Adua disappeared from public view on a medical trip to Saudi Arabia, the BBC is reporting that it spoke to a man purporting to be our president. The one minute clip which has been used in various programmes and can be accessed via the BBC ‘s website, has a man who presented himself as the president saying he is recuperating , "at the moment I am undergoing treatment and I'm getting better from the treatment. I hope that very soon there will be tremendous progress, which will allow me to get back home."

However there has been no independent verification of the authenticity of the voice on the tape.

The BBC story is coming on the back of a story by NEXT reporting that President Yar'Adua is brain damaged and unable to function as president.

In reaction to the BBC report, NEXT editors said, ‘'we stand by our story, to wit: we have it on good authority that the president has suffered brain damage and other impairments, and is no longer able to effectively discharge the office of president.

Anyone who claims we are wrong should please produce our president, so that he can speak to us directly as Nigerians, and not via an audio clip through a foreign news organization.''

NEXT also said it is willing to immediately dispatch journalists to meet the president in Saudi Arabia as soon as his kitchen cabinet permits access to him. ‘'We would like to see for ourselves and talk directly to our president.

This is one occasion where we would be happily wrong. So we call on those keeping the president hidden from the Nigerian people to produce him immediately for all to see,'' the media organisation said.

Yar’adua’s health status: The lies, cover up and manipulation continue



Written by Sahara Reporters, New York Monday, 11 January 2010 20:19

Umaru Yar'adua
Rumors that Umaru Yar’adua, Nigeria’s sickly “president", had died swept through Nigeria and among Nigerians abroad after a hitherto little known website, “American Chronicles,” claimed in a report that the Nigerian “leader” had passed on December 10 2009 at the King Faisal Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The report, which turned to be false, quickly spread amongst Nigerians through the Internet and phone calls. Saharareporters received numerous telephone and email inquiries as to whether we could confirm the report.

The speculation about Yar’adua’s demise came on the heels of another news report carried by Lagos-based newspaper, Next, reports from sources that told the publication that Yar’adua was “brain-dead”.

A source in government in Abuja told Saharareporters that members of Yar’adua’s cabinet could not scramble to come up with a response to the Next story yesterday because Yar’adua’s absence had paralyzed governmental operations, and many ministers had skipped out of town, some of them abroad.

Segun Adeniyi, Yar’adua’s spokesperson, had traveled to watch the African Cup of Nations in Luanda while Information Minister, Dora Akunyili, had gone to Germany “to meet with her doctors and beauticians,” according to a presidency source. Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe was away in Ghana.

Last week, Ahmed Yayale, Secretary to the Federal Government, made what a source described as a “futile trip to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to assess Yar’adua’s condition.” This source said Yayale spent five days in Jeddah, but was not allowed to see Yar’adua. Our source said that, on his return three nights ago, Yayale voiced private fears to a few confidants that he feared Yar’adua was comatose.

Yayale’s failure to see Yar’adua also further exposed the lies orchestrated by Yar’adua’s handlers that the bed-bound “president” made phone calls to numerous officials, including VP Goodluck Jonathan, House Speaker Dimeji Bankole, and Senate President David Mark. Accounts of the alleged calls were leaked to the Nigerian press by Yar’adua’s Chief Economic adviser, Tanimu Yakubu Kurfi. The hoax was part of Mr. Kurfi’s effort to convince Nigerians that “Yar’adua was now recuperating well and well on his way to work and.”

Our investigations revealed that the so-called phone calls lasted two minutes each, and came from a barely audible and hardly recognizable voice. A source told Saharareporters that neither the VP nor the other recipients of the calls could make out what the voice was saying.

However, a source told us that Tanimu Kurfi’s hasty leak of the ostensible calls to the press was designed to “shape the story before the three principal officers could tell their side of the story.” The source added that former Governor James Ibori helped to orchestrate the ruse and went to town to tell the media that Yar’adua had spoken to the VP, speaker and Senate president. With the story already in the local media, the officials were boxed into admitting that they had held serious conversations. Still, both Tanimu and Speaker Bankole have admitted that the so-called conversations lasted only four minutes.

Even more disturbing is that the questionable conversation was the first time Yar’adua – or his inner circle – had tried to communicate by phone with any officials in Abuja since the usurper president was flown out 49 days ago.

Once Next reported that Yar’adua was brain-damaged, members of his kitchen cabinet led by Tanimu sought to recruit newspaper editors and pro-government blogs to claim that Yar’adua was recuperating in a special suite at the King Faisal Hospital in Jeddah and was planning to return home at the end of January. Tanimu provided no evidence to support these claims; even so, he enlisted some associates of Ibori’s, including Lulu Enobaifo (a fugitive who is wanted in America) and Chiedu Ebie , Ibori’s young sidekick, to send text messages directing some influential politicians to check out the reports in cooperative newspapers or on the blog.

So far, Tanimu has presented only one person, Mr. Badamosi, a member of the House of Representatives from Katsina, who he claimed visited Yar’adua in Saudi Arabia four days ago. Badamosi, who is married to Yar’adua’s first daughter, Zainab, is currently in London. Interviewed today on the BBC Hausa Service, Badamosi claimed that he had met Yar’adua on a visit to Jeddah four days ago and that the “president” was showing “signs of recovery”.

Tanimu also spoke to the BBC Hausa Service to douse early morning rumors that Yar’adua was dead. He said in Hausa that the “President is alive, he is conscious and being looked after by doctors.” In response to opposition argument that Yar’adua has been away from Abuja for too long and should step down, Tanimu rambled off, stating that the numerous contracts awarded by the Federal Executive Council in Yar’adua’s absence represented progress. In his confused and disconnected manner, he stated that, “Even the police is an extension of the president's work.” He also cited alleged instances when former Nigerian military dictator Ibrahim Babangida was away for more than two months and Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s treatment lasted a year.

“It’s as if Tanimu was telling the world that Yar’adua need not return to Nigeria or speak to Nigerians about his condition,” said a Nigeria senator over the telephone call from Abuja.

Asked by the BBC reporter about Yar’adua’s whereabouts and whether the ailing “president” was in a position to speak, Tanimu responded with, “You will be in a position to speak to him.”

Tanimu’s promise to arrange for Yar’adua to speak to BBC and Voice of America since last Friday has yet to materialize, said a VOA source.

And the drama continues