Date Published: 11/30/09

Yar'Adua: Akunyili, Aondoakaa fight over who is in charge …As Adeniyi prepares to return to Thisday

Prof. Dora Akunyili, Minister for Information and Communication

It has emerged how the editor of a Lagos-based newspaper averted what would have been a bitter battle between Attorney-general and minister of justice, Mr. Michael Andooaka and his colleague in the information ministry, Prof. Dora Akunyili over the handling of the rumour last week that President Umaru Yar’Adua died in the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Andooaka had shortly after rumours that Yar’Adua died filtered in last Wednesday, issued a widely circulated statement dispelling the rumour. He claimed that the president’s presence in the hospital was “normal.” For emphasis, the attorney-general, who stated he just returned from an official assignment to Trinidad and Tobago, at the president’s behest, claimed that he spoke with Yar’Adua shortly before issuing the statement.

“He (Yar’Adua) is due back in the country as soon as he completes his medical checkup and short vacation, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” added Andooaka.

The statement by the attorney-general, even though considered in some quarters as “very dumb” since he was neither the minister of information nor minister of health, reportedly upset Akunyili.

“Andooaka’s statement took the wind off the sail of Aunty Dora, making her feel ‘grossly incompetent.’ And if you put that beside the fact that she was investigated for kick-starting the ‘Yar’Adua is dead’ rumour in 2007, you can understand why there is pressure on her to save her neck,” a top security source told Pointblanknews.com.

The discomfort of the garrulous minister of information was helped by the realization that she had earlier in the day, spent over an hour briefing State House correspondents on the various decisions taken by Federal Executive Council, but didn’t say a word on Yar’Adua even when the rumour had spread like wild fire. In the briefing, Akunyili spoke elaborately of the planned purchase of additional four aircraft for the presidential air fleet at a whopping $210 million, planned purchase of five fairly used Supa Puma helicopters from France, and another planned purchase of a fast patrol craft for the Nigerian Navy for $8.8 million, among other approvals by FEC.

“Isn’t it strange that this usually loquacious woman decided to put the cart before the horse? Why would you be talking of buying one, two, three, no, four presidential jets for a man rumoured to have died? The logical thing to have done was to have, first, cleared the air on the man’s health before talking about aeroplanes. After all, dead men don’t enjoy the comfort of aircrafts,” a Presidency source told Pointblanknews.com.

Instead, Minister of Finance, Dr. Mansur Mukhtar chose the briefing to subtly blackmail Senate President David Mark, House of Representatives’ Speaker Dimeji Bankole and “other top serving Federal Government officials,” by claiming that the new aircrafts for the presidential fleet would be deployed to their exclusive use.

It was gathered that shortly after Akunyili FEC story got to Lagos, some editors on her payroll pointed out that her silence on Yar’Adua was a serious oversight which the AG had noted and taken advantage of. “Andooaka has beaten madam to it (issuing a statement on Yar’Adua’s state of health),” one of the editors reportedly told Akunyili’s aide. The time was past 9 pm, and most editors had concluded production for the day.

Pointblanknews.com gleaned that Akunyili put a call through to the editor of a Lagos based newspaper with a very strong presence in Abuja, who reportedly advised the minister against it.

The editor, whose newspaper has become the unofficial mouthpiece of the Yar’Adua administration, and has also been responsible for “packaging” Central Bank Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, reportedly told Akunyili that the venture wouldn’t be worth the trouble if she hadn’t had any direct telephone contact with the ailing president.

The editor, whose newspaper has of late been responsible for flying US-based artistes into Nigeria, was said to have told Madam Akunyili to mind her business in information telecommunications, and leave out the controversial subject of Yar’Adua’s health to his overwhelmed media aide, Segun Adeniyi.

Adeniyi, who penultimate Monday confirmed that “President Umaru Yar‘Adua will leave Abuja …for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” to “call on his personal physicians in Jeddah for follow-up medical checks,” on the same Wednesday put up a very unusual appearance at his former office, Thisday newspaper’s corporate headquarters on 35, Creek Road, Apapa, Lagos. Adeniyi claimed he popped in to simply say “Hello” because he was in the vicinity to visit a sick relative.

According to some top editors of Thisday newspaper, there is a raging debate on Adeniyi’s visit to his former workplace, the first since he was appointed presidential spokesman in June 2007. While there is this morbid fear in some school of thought that Adeniyi is trying to get back to “base” because he fears his boss’ days in the Aso Rock Villa are numbered, others contend that it was a mere coincidence that the former editor visited when his boss was down with an ailment.