"When President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua departed the shores of Nigeria for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia on November 23, 2009, I served as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the National Life newspaper. The publication was owned by then Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, national leader of the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and today the President of Nigeria. Official releases claimed Yar’Adua suffered from acute pericarditis, compounded by a chronic renal condition. What was framed as a brief consultation stretched into an agonizing, month-long absence. In February 2010, Yar’Adua was clandestinely smuggled back at nocturne, shielded from the citizens he was elected to govern. Barely three months later, on May 5, 2010, his passage came like a rude awakening. He was said to have caved in to the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma disease. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo later vehemently denied deliberately imposing a terminally ill candidate.
Yet, he conceded a critical truth: he was fully aware of Yar’Adua’s severe health challenges prior to handpicking him. Yar’Adua’s declining health was never a state secret. During the presidential campaign in early March 2007, his health failed dramatically, necessitating an emergency evacuation to Germany.
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