Ambassador: Ill Nigerian president has returned home from Saudi Arabia after 3 months

Official: Ill Nigerian president has returned home

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s ill President Umaru Yar’Adua returned home Wednesday to his West African nation after three months abroad receiving treatment for a heart condition at a Saudi Arabian hospital, an ambassador said.

Abdullah Aminchi, Nigeria’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told The Associated Press that Yar’Adua returned home on an early morning flight that arrived in Abuja, the country’s capital.

Shaky television footage showed an ambulance leaving the airport’s presidential wing, but offered no images of the sick president, who hasn’t been seen publicly since leaving Nigeria on Nov. 23.

Aminchi said Yar’Adua would need time to recuperate before assuming presidential powers.

“He’s already walking. He eats. He can move about,” the ambassador said. “I think he just needs some time to rest and he can go back to his work as president of Nigeria.”

Reporters at the presidential villa saw Yar’Adua’s chief aide, Col. Onoyveta Mustapha, before a scheduled meeting of the federal cabinet Wednesday. However, they caught no glimpse of the nation’s ailing president.

Yar’Adua was admitted into the hospital the day after he left Nigeria. As questions mounted, his physician released a statement saying Yar’Adua suffered from acute pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart.

The Nigerian government ground to a halt in Yar’Adua absence as oil contracts went unsigned and people in the streets worried about the future of Africa’s most populous nation.

After more than two months of a standstill, the National Assembly voted to empower Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to take over as acting president. However, the parliament’s action specified that Jonathan had to cede power to Yar’Adua upon his return if he’s medically capable of leading the nation of 150 million.

Yar’Adua long has been plagued by poor health and kidney ailments. During his 2007 presidential campaign, he left the country two weeks before the vote to receive medical care in Germany after experiencing what he described as a shortness of breath. His absence sparked enough concern then that outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo even made a telephone call to Yar’Adua during a political rally to ask his candidate: “Umaru, are you dead?”

Despite those health concerns, Yar’Adua became president through an election marred by fraud, intimidation and violence. Still, it marked the first time power was transferred from one elected civilian to another in the country, which became independent from Britain in 1960.

Associated Press Writer Bashir Adigun contributed to this report from Abuja, Nigeria.