ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua is being treated in Saudi Arabia for acute pericarditis and the vice president has assumed presidential powers in his absence, Yar’Adua’s spokesman said yesterday.
Yar’Adua, 58, went to Saudi Arabia suddenly on Monday for medical checks after complaining of severe chest pains and his office said it was not clear when he would return home.
Pericarditis is an inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart that can restrict normal beating.
Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has assumed presidential powers in the leading sub-Saharan oil producer and OPEC member nation during Yar’Adua’s treatment, presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi told Reuters.
“The vice president is now acting on behalf of the president,” he said.
Yar’Adua has travelled to Saudi Arabia in the past for treatment for a chronic kidney problem, raising questions about whether he will be fit enough to stand for a second term in 2011 elections. “The medical review and tests undertaken at the hospital have confirmed the initial diagnosis that the president is indeed suffering from acute pericarditis,” Adeniyi said after speaking with the president’s chief physician.
“He is now receiving treatment for the illness and he is responding remarkably well,” Adeniyi said, adding he was unsure when Yar’Adua would be able to return to Nigeria.
Pericarditis usually lasts one to three weeks, but is treatable with drugs or, in extreme cases, surgery. About 20 per cent of pericarditis patients have a recurrence within months, according to the American Heart Association.
A governor of remote northern Katsina State, Yar’Adua was plucked from obscurity in December 2006 by then President Olusegun Obasanjo to be the ruling party’s presidential candidate in 2007. Obasanjo used his influence in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to ensure Yar’Adua won the ticket.
Despite complaints from the opposition, many Nigerians accepted the flawed poll as the price to be paid for the first handover from one civilian president to another since Africa’s most populous country gained independence in 1960.