In our series of viewpoints from African journalists, Elizabeth Ohene, a minister in Ghana's former NPP government, flicks her thermometer and wonders when the personal should become public. Should we or should we not be told about the state of the president's health? In Ghana we have always gone for the extreme privacy option. Our leaders are never ill and indeed as I have said in these columns on another occasion, our leaders do not even get tired. And they certainly do not die. The chief or king in the traditional set-up only ever "goes to his village" - it is treasonable to say he has died. We all watched painfully the theatre of the absurd played out in Nigeria when President Umaru Yar'Adua was ill. To the bitter end, it was never acknowledged that he was ill. I told myself those around President Yar' Adua must be well versed in the history of illness of African leaders and they were taking no chances. Lessons learnt Cast your mind back to 1982, President Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon was persuaded by a team of doctors in France, at least that was the informed gossip, that his health was so bad he was not likely to make it to the end of the year. Ahidjo stepped down and handed over power to his prime minister and preferred successor, Paul Biya. Two years later, Ahidjo found himself still alive, indeed, in good health and being ignored by Mr Biya. He then tried to stage a coup d'etat; it failed and he ended up in lonely exile in Senegal where he died almost 20 years later. The lesson was not lost on leaders around the continent. Then there was the unmatchable first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba. As his health failed, Tunisian officials found ever more ingenious ways of describing the president's incapacity: He had a chill, an indisposition, exhaustion, a minor illness, a respiratory ailment and a slight deterioration in his health. While officially suffering from insomnia, Bourguiba often medicated himself and was a veritable walking drugstore between self-administered drugs and the medications his various physicians were prescribing. Finally, Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali galvanised the inner circle of officials who called a panel of physicians to certify Bourguiba's permanent inability, in what has been called a constitutionally sanctioned, medically facilitated coup d'etat. Mr Ben Ali became president. That was in 1987, Mr Ben Ali is still president - Bourguiba lingered on and only died in the year 2000.