Nigeria is sick. And so are many of its leaders. Sometimes, the stories surrounding some of these ailments sound more like Mama Eliza’s tales by moonlight. Or, how do we explain that the United Kingdom (UK) invited our President, Muhammadu Buhari, to the coronation of King Charles III on May 6, 2023. Buhari, like many other world leaders, attended. But, while other leaders have since gone home to attend to other issues in their countries, our own President decided to stay back.
The official explanation was that he had appointment with his dentist and would stay extra one week. Perhaps, he decided to kill two birds with one stone. That’s okay. My little worry is this penchant by our leaders for foreign medical treatment for every ailment. In 2017, the President spent 103 days on medical vacation in the UK. He has been visiting from time to time to treat one sickness or the other.
While the outgoing President stayed back in London to attend to his tooth, the ‘President-elect’, Bola Tinubu, also jetted out of the country last week to attend to some other issues. This was barely two weeks after he returned from a similar trip to France, Saudi Arabia and UK. The official explanation for this latest trip was that he had gone to fine-tune the transition plans and programmes, and his policy options with some of his key aides without unnecessary pressure and distractions.
His media aide, Tunde Rahman, added that during the visit, Tinubu “will engage with investors and other key allies with the goal of marketing investment opportunities in the country and his administration’s readiness to enable a business-friendly climate through policies and regulations.” He said Tinubu had promised to hit the ground running. The visit “is reflective of his commitment to the promise.”
I don’t know whether we should clap or cry. But, is it proper that someone who is yet to be sworn in and whose ‘victory’ is highly contentious, should junket abroad in order to meet with investors? What if the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) upturns his presumed victory?
Is it even true that he travelled to meet investors? Perhaps, like Buhari, he also wanted to use one stone to kill two birds. Some media reports indicated that Tinubu actually returned to France to boost his health in preparation for May 29. According to an online medium, SaharaReporters, Tinubu’s earlier trip to France some three weeks ago was not for vacation as some of his aides claimed but for medical treatment. While in France, SaharaReporters claimed its sources revealed that Tinubu’s tongue was sticking out when his condition was severe. Upon his return from France, the former Lagos governor raised his hands while speaking with journalists. Lo and behold, pictures of him with what was suspected to be Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC) attached to his upper arm showed and instantly went viral on social media. PICC is a medical device inserted through a vein in the arm and used to give medications or liquid nutrition.
I don’t know what his ailment is. Whatever it is, it is Nigeria and Nigerians that will suffer the consequences more. This illness may have been the reason he dodged requests for debates or media interaction during his campaigns for the presidency. He has also not been able to attend any of the sessions of the PEPC so far. We went through this phase with the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. He was ill. But he claimed to be fit and even challenged whoever cared, to a game of squash. Three years into his presidency, the man died.
It is shameful that both the outgoing and the ‘incoming’ presidents have continued to waste scarce resources on medical tourism abroad. It means that the eight years of the All Progressives Congress (APC) government has not set the Nigerian health clock to its rightful position as promised. Sadly, our hospitals have not significantly changed from being mere consulting clinics that Buhari’s military regime called them in 1983.
Two weeks ago, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) issued a 14-day ultimatum to the government to increase their gross salary by 200 per cent or risk a strike. The ultimatum expired on Saturday, May 13. The doctors are not happy that the government has reneged on almost all the agreements it reached with them in the past. They are not happy that despite dwindling economic situation in Nigeria, the government has refused to upwardly review their Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS), last reviewed over 10 years ago. Among others, they are asking for payment of salary arrears owed them in 2014, 2015 and 2016, a review of hazard allowance by state governments and private tertiary health institutions where residency training is done, and immediate infrastructural development in our hospitals.
These are not too much to ask for. Nigeria has money. Our bane has been the wrong application of this money. Is it not laughable that these same stupendously rich leaders still collect hardship allowances while the about 133 million Nigerians who live in multidimensional poverty get nothing? Buhari, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, state governors and their deputies reportedly collected hardship allowance amounting to N651.2 million in eight years of Buhari’s regime. Hardship indeed! This is not to talk about the furniture allowance and other allowances, including life pensions they have appropriated to themselves.
Nigerians have been pushed to the wall. They toil day and night hoping for a messiah and a miracle that may never come. A few individuals have hijacked power and have continued to lord it over others. We practise democracy whereby we have opportunity to vote out bad leaders. But, we have not been allowed to exercise that franchise freely.
In the last general election, citizens came out in their numbers to cast their votes. They hoped for a change. They hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the same power mongers, who promised free and fair election, truncated the electoral process such that the people’s votes did not count. The rigging was so glaring and blatant that even the blind could see it vividly.
The hope is now in the judiciary. Will the judges take the bull by the horns and deliver justice to the people? Will they save Nigeria by looking dispassionately at the cases before them irrespective of the pressures being mounted on them?
We keep our fingers crossed. For now, it is my sincere hope that the incoming government should, in no distant time, change the negative narratives in our political and health systems. It should increase our health budget from the annual average of a miserable five per cent to 15 per cent which African governments agreed to in Abuja in 2001. It is also my desire that our doctor-patient ratio, which currently stands at about 1:5,000, will soon get to the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation of 1:600. Above all, it is my sincere prayer that our present and future presidents will have no cause again to spend millions of dollars or pounds abroad for toothache, waist pain, headache, tongue pain, conjunctivitis, stomach upset or even erectile dysfunction both now and forever. Amen!
Re: Buhari’s delusions on 2023 election
Dear Casy, on hindsight, methinks that God allowed Buhari to rule Nigeria in order to expose his emptiness, shallowness and apparently corrupt personality. Even a supposedly erudite late Prof. Tam David West believed that Buhari would bring down the cost of petrol to #40 per litre. The man apparently died of heart break and disappointment when the same Buhari that he believed so much in wrecked Nigeria the more. God may have allowed Buhari to lead Nigeria again so that his so-called ardent followers would not deify him whenever he leaves the earth. Where are those who allegedly trekked from the northern to southern end of Nigeria celebrating Buhari’s victory in 2015? The truth of the matter is that Buhari’s eight years will go down in history as the locust years. Just as Alhaji Buba Galadimma recently posited and I concur, “Buhari has moved Nigeria 100 years backward and may the country never again experience his type. Amen!
– Ifeanyi, Owerri, +234 806 156 2735
Dear Casy, it is most unfortunate that the President, who ought to see himself as father of the nation, could throw conscience to the dogs and repeatedly engage in self-delusion of calling the electoral malfeasance by his party, the APC, in cahoots with their comrade-in-electoral heist, the INEC, that was the 2023 (s)election as hard work. If the President could unabashedly descend so low from his exalted position to describe such despicable desperation to clinch political power as ‘hard work’, then the stage is set for well-meaning Nigerians to make a hard choice between ‘SNIPER’ and ‘OTAPIAPIA’ for the next ‘4’, if not,’8’ undeservedly discomforting years!
– Steve Okoye, Awka, 08036630731.
Casmir, a careful dissection of the choice of words of PMB reveals a concrete proof that the Feb 25 election was not about organizing a free and fair election. It was more about ‘egocentrism’. With this sort of mindset by PMB, we can only have ‘one result’ as the president must not be on the losing side! The INEC chairman decoded the body language of PMB after publicly displaying his voter’s slip and worked in tandem with it. A day of reckoning is coming somehow and someday! We hope and pray that with God’s guidance and high moral conscience coupled with their integrity at stake, that the courts will get it right. Going forward, Nigeria deserves a ‘president elect’ and not a ‘president select’!
– Mike, Mushin, Lagos, +234 816 111 4572
The second coming of Buhari in 2015 was received with pomp and ceremony. Nigerians desperately wanted a change; they wanted to do away with the PDP, and so the election outcome was not unexpected. The same Nigerians who have since been preaching for a change were sadly greeted by APC’s miraculous retention of power via February 25 Presidential Election. The APC knew before hand that they were on their way out: hence, the resort to issuance of threat to voters, shameless changing of figures, mutilation of results and deliberate act of not effecting a live upload of Presidential Election result by INEC. All these conscious acts formed the process of the ‘hard work’ of Buhari’s APC while the opposition were overconfident, complacent and tactically deficient. It is laughable that the purported winner who also said ‘if you are not satisfied, go to court’, now gags and harasses the opposition for daring to file a legal challenge. The matter is now subjudice: the court must be allowed to enjoy its independence. The court, too, owes Nigerians a duty to be resolute, impartial and independent.
– Edet Essien Esq. Cal South, +234 810 809 5633
Casmir, the astronomical rise in crime and various social problems are the results of APC and PMB culture of governance. PMB, on assumption of office assured all that he would be for all and not for any particular one. He ended up doing the opposite. It’s in his administration that a particular tribe could carry dangerous weapons, killing people and the law enforcement agencies would look the other way but went on to arrest those that rose up to challenge the onslaught. It’s also in the APC-led administration that a candidate who came 4th in an election magically became governor. It’s also alleged that within his administration, snakes could comfortably swallow huge sum of money and yet not seen. It’s not also surprising that in his administration a candidate who could not identify his school mates or even the school he attended, has drugs related issues, has dubious health status and worst still magical electoral figures could be announced as the President-elect despite not getting the required 25% votes cast in FCT.
– Pharm. Okwuchukwu Njike, +234 803 885 4922