A little over two years ago, the Nigerian leader was flown to Germany for similar treatment and was discharged a couple of days later after doctors declared him fit to return home and assume his task.
This is the third time that President Yar'Adua is in hospital for an acute pericarditis - an inflammation of the covering of the heart - since he won a troubled election to succeed former President Olusegun Obasanjo nearly three years ago.
Local media today quoted the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the leader is being treated as saying that Mr Yar'Adua would have to stay in hospital for the next three months.
This report is in sharp contrast to the Nigerian government press statement at the weekend which alleged that Mr Yar'Adua was "responding well to treatment and was watching football matches from his hospital bed."
A media outfit report monitored today quoted the Saudi medical officials of saying that their decision to eventually transfer the ailing president abroad stems from his "body's inability to respond to treatment in the intensive care unit" of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre.
President Yar'Adua would have to stay longer in hospital "to enable doctors to closely monitor his response to treatment and possibly administer new ones," the report said.
Since nearly a month now, there has been a huge controversy about the exact condition of President Yar'Adua's heart ailment as pandemonium steamed up within the political class over calls for his resignation.
Several leading opposition politicians and lawmakers in the country have been agitating for President Yar'Adua's resignation in order to allow him stay abroad as long as possible for treatment once Vice President Goodluck Jonathan replaces him.
But the country's supreme decision-making body, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has maintained the Vice President in his position while pledging full allegiance to the ailing president.
Source: Daily Nation
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