President Buhari’s overseas sojourn originally billed as “medical check-up” prompted protests by Nigerians on the streets of London. In condemning the protestors as “unpatriotic”, presidential spokespersons failed to answer two basic questions: Firstly, why are protests taking place overseas and not in Nigeria? Secondly, do the protestors have justifiable grievances?
The answers are simple. Firstly, protests take place in London because in England Nigerians are free to exercise their democratic rights, whereas in Nigeria peaceful protestors are routinely shot, killed, brutalised or detained without trial. Secondly, the protests are justified because despite well-documented election promises our president failed to improve the nation’s deplorable healthcare system and routinely travels overseas at public expense for his own treatment.
In 2015, then-candidate Buhari pledged to improve the nation’s healthcare system by prioritising the reduction of infant mortality rate; improving life expectancy; lowering the ratio of physicians to patients; increasing the availability of hospital bed space; investing in cutting edge medical technology; boosting local manufacture of pharmaceuticals; and banning medical tourism for politicians. Despite failing to fulfill any of these promises he was re-elected in 2029.
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In light of this, all 2015 pledges can be deemed to have lapsed into political oblivion! More worrisome is that even as the nation is burdened with the cost of presidential overseas medical tours, the State House Clinic built to address all his health needs and maintained at an annual cost of billions remains ill-equipped and basically non-functional.
It’s scandalous that the Clinic’s budget of N11.1 billion between 2015 and 2018 was almost double the N6.7 billion budgeted for the nation’s 16 Teaching Hospitals in the same period! Nigerians who don’t hold political office believe public officials should only be treated at public expense inside Nigerian public hospitals.
However, the Minister for Labour, Chris Ngige, himself a medical doctor, claims that overseas medical treatment is one of the perks of the president’s office. He is wrong. The president’s “perk” is supposed to be access to the best medical treatment in the world. The issue being protested is why such treatment is not available for all Nigerians within their country and only to their president overseas?
In recent memory, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalised for COVID-19. He insisted on being admitted into a British government hospital to show confidence in the system he controls and prove that the standard of care given to political office holders is no different from that given to ordinary citizens who pay their salaries.
Nigerian political office holders adamantly refuse to be held to such high moral and ethical standards, rejecting the notion that the true measure of a great country is determined by how it treats its most vulnerable, not its political elites.
The simple truth is that any nation, which pays health workers a N5,000 hazard allowance and lawmakers a N1.23 million newspaper allowance will suffer consequences from such deliberate greed and stupidity.
It’s no surprise that Nigeria continues to experience a brain drain of its top medical personnel to the very UK our president is fond of visiting for treatment! The only objectionable aspect of the London protests is that it’s taboo in any Nigerian culture to harass sick people. Nigerians of all ethnic nationalities will condemn anyone who visits a man in the hospital to recover debts! But this is a moot point because the story of our president’s absence changed from “medical check-up” to taking a “short rest”.
The leaked letter to the King of Jordan in which the issue of short rest came to light was a public relations blunder. It only served to switch criticism from issues surrounding healthcare in Nigeria, to questions over how and why our president decided he needed rest at a time of nationwide unrest. The letter gave the impression that he is far more concerned about other people’s personal matters than about Nigeria’s deteriorating situation where in addition to rampaging insecurity, Nigerian Resident Doctors, the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), and the Judiciary Staff Union (JUSUN) were all on strike grounding hospitals, polytechnics and the courts respectively.
Indeed, the overriding impression was that our president either couldn’t care less or is someone from whom the truth is hidden rendering him uninformed and oblivious to how bad things have become under his leadership. As is now the norm, senior presidential aides struggled to outdo each other in raining insults upon Nigerians who complained. It’s increasingly apparent that our president has surrounded himself with people who believe that ordinary Nigerians have no right to question the manner in which their nation is being governed. His special adviser on media pompously asked critics what they have achieved in life that permits them criticise his boss. He feigns ignorance of the fact that in a democracy the only “achievement” needed to criticise a sitting president is that of being a citizen! Another presidential appointee, the senior special assistant on social media abandoned civility and called protestors “wailers”. This most inappropriate terminology was an unforgivable insult.
Wailers are defined as people uttering screams or crying over tragic occurrences which they are unable to reverse. Nobody wails over something which is good! Calling Nigerian citizens “wailers” is an assertion that public opinion is of no consequence to those who find themselves temporarily in charge of the nation’s affairs and will not make one iota of difference to the manner in which they intend to proceed in office.
It is understandable even though pitiable that presidential appointees get carried away with their tasks, after all, they are working for their daily bread at their principal’s pleasure, and only the most principled can be expected to prioritise ethics, morality and civility over and above their personal welfare!
However, political leaders outside the Presidency should be more circumspect in their statements. Regrettably, the Zamfara State governor joined the group of political leaders fuelling the flames of disunity and discontent by quite absurdly claiming that protests were an attack on “Northern interests”. He did not explain how it’s in “northern interests” for a president to luxuriate abroad while hospitals in the North are closed! The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) must be commended for their condemnation of the governor’s baseless, reckless, insensitive and irresponsible statement. Zamfara is the banditry capital of Nigeria and insecurity, increasing poverty, and mismanagement of resources are turning the state into an economic wasteland. Yet the governor waffles on about “interests of the North” as if it only involves preserving his privileges, and not actually improving the lot of his people.
Placing such extraneous matters aside, the real issues revolve around our president resting in the middle of massive unrest. The unanswered question is that taking into consideration the burdens and exertions of office and the need for a vigorous approach toward solving the nation’s ever-expanding problems, and bearing in mind his age does our president require less rest or indeed more?
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