Playing politics with the president’s health

President Muhammadu Buhari is alive, ill but not bedridden. He is not being fed through the nose as some online newspapers have reported. Some social media activists even claimed that the president had become so sick, could neither eat nor drink and had to be fed intravenously. The president’s non-attendance of the Federal Executive Council meeting for three consecutive weeks and his few public appearances after his return from the medical vacation in London had helped to fuel wild speculations about his health.
First Lady, Aisha Buhari’s tweets last Tuesday that the president’s health was not as bad as being perceived was believable. Seeing him at the Jumat service at the State House mosque last Friday was more reassuring. The president’s attendance of the Muslim prayers showed that although he was ill, but he was not bedridden and could still perform his roles.
The public appearance has helped in dousing the anxiety and calls by those who would have us believe that the president is incapacitated and, therefore, should resign from office.
Managing information about the ill-health of a president particularly in a country as polarized as Nigeria is a daunting task and the president’s media handlers have had to contend with criticisms on this matter from people who believe that they are hiding from the citizens the truth about the condition of their leader. The truth is that some Nigerians have made up their minds that whatever the president’s aides say about Buhari’s health can never be the truth. The only story they are waiting for is that the president has passed on. What such people need to know is that the decision about who dies or lives rests only with God.
Some notable Nigerians including Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka had demanded full disclosure of the president’s ailment. There is trouble in keeping the nation in the dark, but I see a bigger trouble in revealing what ails the president. Making full disclosure, which is not even a constitutional requirement, would precipitate agitation for his resignation, which may further polarize the nation.
Already, the president’s health condition has been politicized. But it became a more troubling political matter with the statement by former chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Bisi Akande, which not only suggested that the president’s health had taken the turn for the worse, but that there was a looming danger over the manner some unnamed people were trying to undermine the constitution on succession.
Akande had asserted that, “Certain Nigerian leaders, having been blindfolded by corruption, assume the possibility of using money in manipulating the national security agencies to intimidate, suppress and hold down certain ethnic nationalities or playing one ethnic nationality against the other with a view to undermining the constitution and perversely upturning the rule of law.
“Let me warn today that those who wish to harvest political gains out of the health of the president are mistaken.
“This is not Nigeria of 1993. We are in a new national and global era of constitutionalism and order. We hope Nigerians have enough patience to learn from history.
“My greatest fear, however, is that the country should not be allowed to slide into anarchy and disorder of a “monumental proportion.”
Hmmm. Each time I read and re-read the above, I keep wondering whether we have got to the stage on the issue of the president’s infirmity that warnings as sounded by Chief Akande had become necessary. Or is it that there is something that the APC chieftain knew that some of us who are watching from the sideline don’t know?
Does one need any soothsayer to know that the leaders that Akande alleged are planning to undermine the constitution and use security agencies to play one ethnic group against the other over the president’s health belong to the ruling party? Or could he have been referring to PDP leaders?
We have always known that there are divisions in the APC. But I could not imagine that anyone or group in the party would be playing politics with the president’s health.
What  Akande’s  statement suggests is that all is not well, not just with the president’s health, but also those who are already deep into succession plot.  What more evidence does anyone need to cite that the APC isn’t a party after the wellbeing of Nigerians. The ruling party has continued to behave as if it was formed only to grab power and for certain individuals to improve their political career at the expense of the masses.
The APC has since it came to power two years ago been embroiled in one controversy or the other most of the time involving its leaders and chieftains. If its chieftains in the National Assembly are not quarreling with the executive on national matters, one leader or the other is fighting another over position or control of power levers. With the APC, it’s been more politics and less governance. This is the reason the ruling party has not been impressive. Even where the government is doing well, the success is overshadowed by party wrangling.  Unfortunately, the president who is the party’s leader and who should infuse the positive change he is selling to the nation into his own party is hampered by his health challenge.
I still hold the view that if nothing changes, APC will rule the country for 16 years like the PDP and Nigerians would be wondering why they voted the party.