The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described as appalling the decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to travel to the United Kingdom for the Global Education Summit on Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021-2025.
The PDP in a statement on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan questioned why Buhari would “deploy the nation’s resources to travel to London when the meeting is scheduled to be virtual.”
PDP alleged that Buhari’s Presidency is trying “to hide his private appointment with his doctors under the virtual meeting in a bid to launder his “consistent failure” to honour his pre-2015 campaign promise not to embark on medical tourism, if elected President.
“The party insists that President Buhari has no justification to travel to far-away London, since the meeting is virtual or for a medical checkup, which he could have done at home, if his administration had not wrecked our healthcare system.
“Mr. President’s action has confirmed the stand by majority of Nigerians that he is wasteful, thinks only about himself and cares less about millions of our citizens, who do not have access to foreign medical treatment, but who are dying on daily basis because the Buhari administration has crippled our health sector.
“It is disheartening that while Mr. President is spending tax payers’ money relishing the expertise of London doctors and the luxury of medical facilities in that country, millions of Nigerians are dying in decrepit medical facilities at home.
“Moreover, is it not atrocious that Mr. President is more interested in going to London for a virtual education summit when hundreds of students, who ought to be beneficiaries of the meeting, are languishing in kidnappers’ dens, with the Buhari administration taking no concrete steps to rescue them and end incessant abduction of students in Nigeria?
“Indeed, there is no way history will be kind with President Buhari, as he has always wished, if he continue in his manner of thinking only about his needs at the expense of the generality of Nigerians.
“Our party however urges Nigerian not to resign to despondency in the face of such incompetent, selfish and insensitive Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, but to remain resilient in rallying on the platform of the PDP to rescue our nation from misrule,” the statement read.