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 On Thursday, June 28, a month after assuming office as Nigeria's President, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua did something extraordinary. He became the first sitting President in the history of Nigeria to declare his assets, publicly.
He went against the counsel of Code of Conduct Bureau, which reportedly advised him against the declaration, as it said, such action would put pressure on other categories of public officers to do same, even when the Constitution makes the exercise a confidential matter. Yar'Adua had hinged his stand on his earlier campaign promise to do so if elected and that the war against corruption cannot have meaning until those at the helm of affairs began to live by example.
Releasing the copies of the completed CCB form to State House correspondents, Segun Adeniyi, Senior Adviser on Communications to President Yar'Adua, said his boss had been in a dilemma on whether to follow the advice of the bureau or his campaign pledge to Nigerians. Adeniyi disclosed that thePresident having weighed the two sides has come to the conclusion that since he will not be breaking any law, he cannot go back on his promise to the nation and has therefore decided to make public the assets he declared to the bureau.
“With these few remarks, I release to the public the photocopies of his duly and honestly completed Assets Declaration Form,” Adeniyi said.
 With the form, the correspondents went back to their various duty posts to file in their reports. Because of their mode of operations, it was the broadcast stations that first broke the news of the declaration to their listeners at their various news bulletins.
Curious Nigerians, eager to have the figures for posterity sake had to wait for the dailies the following morning.
When the papers came out with their reports, many readers were confused as the papers quoted different figures and gave conflicting interpretations of how much Yar'Adua is worth. While trying to look at the declaration from different angles giving their own interpretation, the papers plunged into a din of calculations, many of which were inaccurate and misleading.
These were how the papers reported the story in their headlines on June 29. “Yar'Adua declares N945.4million assets”, says Punch, Daily Trust had “Yar'Adua declares N.9 b”
Champion, Vanguard, The Nation, The Sun headlines were similar. Champion headline read, “Yar'Adua: I'm worth N.856bn”,
Vanguard version was “Yar'Adua worth N856m,” The Nation had, “Yar'Adua worth 856m, The Sun, “I'm worth 856m. This Day had a similar headline but a different figure “Yar'Adua, I'm worth 850m.”
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