Govt Source: Nigerian Government Won’t Provide Updates On President Buhari’s Health Treatment

Govt Source: Nigerian Government Won't Provide Updates On President Buhari's Health Treatment

 The President had traveled to Londo
n last Sunday, just two months after returning from the European country for medical treatment.

However, it seems the Federal Government has ruled out the possibility of providing daily update on President Muhammdu Buhari's health status and treatment while in London, the United Kingdom. Top Federal Government sources revealed to PUNCH that there was no need for such updates since Buhari had handed over to his deputy, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who is now the acting President. The President had traveled to London last Sunday, almost two months after returning from the European country for medical treatment.

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, said Buhari should take the bull by the horn and not be seen to be controlled by a cabal.

He said Buhari should tell anyone who wants to pay him a visit that he (the President) is not a tourist center.

He said, "Buhari is not a small boy for a cabal to be controlling him. He should say to people who decide to visit him that he is not Mecca, Jerusalem or Rome.

"The President should be able to tell the peddlers, the bootlickers, and pretenders who want to be seen to be close to him that he is not Jerusalem or Rome, where people go to for pilgrimage.

"He should tell them that he is not Yankari Games Reserve or Obudu Cattle Ranch where people go to have fun. He is not Badagry or Kuramo Beach in Lagos. He has gone abroad to seek proper medical attention, to get treated by expert doctors. He looks sick. He has served the country well and there is nothing more for him to prove by remaining in office. So he needs to take care of his health. Dead men don't govern."

Lagos-based lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, said politicians traveling to London to visit Buhari would make the country a laughing stock in the comity of nations.

He said, "First, I believe the trip of the President abroad for treatment is a direct indictment on the APC regime because what is happening is contrary to what the party promised in its manifesto in 2015. The party had promised to rehabilitate teaching hospitals to become world-class. If they had done this, there would be no need for President Buhari to travel to London.

"Now that the President has traveled again without telling us the specific place he went to and the nature of his illness, it will be totally hypocritical for some politicians to try to use their visit to bribe Nigerians, making us to believe they care.

"Politicians who do so would be making a mockery of us abroad. They should not make us a laughing stock again; they should conserve the resources they would use to travel abroad to make Nigeria the kind of place they all rush to. It is not reasonable to be wasting our hard-earned foreign exchange on such trips."

"He needs rest. This is why we have been calling for transparency, we need to know what's happening to our President," he said.

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Yusuf Ali describe such trips as an act of sycophancy.

He said, "Sometimes, politicians want to promote sycophancy to the level of loyalty; meanwhile, sycophancy is not the same thing as loyalty. It's just that in this part of the world, anyone who is not seen with the leader is seen as an opponent.

"We saw what happened the other time the President was abroad for treatment — everyone started trying to overdo one another in showing that they cared for the President. Most of them also probably used state resources to do so.

"If someone is ill, they deserve rest. Even on medical ground, people should be discouraged from going there. Let's keep praying for him here and our prayers will work for him over there. Politicians should let the President be. Their going there will not heal him."