It is, indeed, a fitting metaphor that the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari is ending with a tooth ache. It has been a very painful ordeal. Nothing, perhaps, could have been more symbolic in summing up the Buhari presidency than the almost perfectly designed scenario of the President returning to London for medical attention on the eve of the end of his presidency. That was exactly the style and place he virtually teed off on his presidency. At the beginning the problem was with his ears. In the end, the problem was with his teeth. London remains constant.
Buhari had initially travelled to London, this time, to participate in the coronation of King Charles III of Britain, on Saturday May 6, 2023. While almost all the other heads of state who attended the royal function departed London immediately after the event, the Nigerian President stayed back to see his dentist, according to the uncharacteristic detail released to the Nigerian public by his information aides. Nigerians were definitely not expecting the information about why the president was staying back in London after the coronation. The people had become accustomed to their President going and coming without the courtesy of such details, especially in matters of his medical needs. Most other countries, especially democracies, whether powerful or small, have, over time evolved a culture of their elected presidents informing the citizens of their health status, whenever there is need for the leader to see a doctor for medical attention. Not so with Nigeria and Buhari. In the eight years of his imperial reign, Buhari and his minders, never deemed it necessary to give any details of his health status to Nigerians, not even in the situation where he had to spend months away from the country, for medical reasons.
The recent statement on the president’s appointment with the dentist must count as the clearest his team has come to according Nigerians the dignity of receiving detail for his travel abroad on medical ground.
As it turned out, the president’s dental tourism was initially projected to last for one week, after the Coronation. Then it extended to two weeks. Of course, dental matters can be complicated, apart from being a pain, up or down. If the president’s dentist decides in the course of treatment, to keep him in London, beyond may 29th, Nigerians will, as always, understand. Why not? Prolonged insidious manipulation of the fault lines of the country by the political class, has condemned the fractious society to live with any absurdity of a political leader. There will always be enough jackals to advance justification and defend ‘their own’.
For the one decade less two years that he has been an elected president of Nigeria, Buhari has been fetching London like water, to use that common local parlance, meaning that he frequented the city. By the account of Buhari himself, this same King Charles, then Prince, once inquired from him in one of his stays in London, if he had a house in the city. The Nigerian leader obviously missed the actual import of the prince’s laconic question. The prince must have noticed the uncommon regularity of a President of a foreign country going and returning to his domain, like a tennis ball, so he had to wonder.
Buhari’s frequent travels and sojourn in London, for medical reasons, were a profound statement not only on his presidency but also on the Nigerian society he presided over. It remains remarkably odd that a democratically-elected president never found it necessary to tell those who elected him and paid his bills what exactly ailed him at any points he had to keep an appointment with his doctor.
Much more bizarre, the people themselves, their parliament, the ruling political party and the media, never pushed to know the very nature of the health challenges of their president, which took him to London intermittently, sometimes for an extended stay. Everybody was complaisant. The emperor went and came as he pleased. As it seemed, Nigeria owed the president the duty of providing him the executive jet and resources whenever he needed them, entitlements for which the user owed the providers no word of appreciation in form of information, on what exactly he was going to do with their resources, wherever he had to go
In a certain sense, it may seem unfair to begin to raise questions at this point about President Buhari’s dental tourism, this time around, just because he was magnanimous enough to get his aides to say why he is staying put in London. All the while that he offered no explanation for his medical trips, did anybody bother him?
But for this consideration, it would have been apropos to ask about the State House Medical centre at the Villa, on which over N20 billion was reportedly spent to raise it to what Nigerians call ultra-modern status? Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if the President who started out his presidency with attending to his medical needs in London ended it at the Presidential Clinic in Abuja?
The possibility that the London dentist, may, subject to the behaviour of the president’s teeth, decide to keep him in London till the very last day of his presidency, or even beyond, is quite disheartening. But that is not even the issue now.
Barely two weeks to the end of the Buhari presidency and the inauguration of a new one, lightening is about to strike twice at the same spot. The new man declared as Buhari’s successor by the Independent National Electoral Commission, expected to be coronated on May 29, 2023, seems destined to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor. At this critical juncture, even with contestation of the validity of the presidential election result in session, the president who is departing is not in the country, the declared president-elect who will be taking over is also not in the country. One is with his dentist, the other is neither here nor there, literally. He too is in London, where his aides said he has gone to hide, for the important assignment of fine-tuning his transition plan. Wonderful.
Instructively, on the matter of where the two missing critical political leaders are, at the moment, more Nigerians believe the departing president on his whereabout. He is with his dentist. Not a few Nigerians, on the other hand, outrightly dismiss the Bola Tinubu alibi of his going to London to find shelter to fine-tune his transition. That is a tale for the marines. But then, tradition dies hard. Hide and seek by the leadership of the country with the people, seems now, to be a new culture which the All Progressives Congress (APC) is determined to impose on Nigeria. One got away with it, why can’t the other?