The decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to travel abroad for medical tourism has been described as hypocritical.
President Muhammadu Buhari
It now seems obvious that those who sold the idea of change to
President Muhammadu Buhari did not reach what lawyers call ad idem with
him from the outset.
Ad idem refers to a meeting of minds of parties involved in a
contract on the very essence of that agreement. It is a critical
ingredient whose absence is able to vitiate any contract subjected to
the test of law.
Over the past 20 months, it has become increasingly discernable
that those who hawked Buhari to Nigerians as the agent of transformation
only successfully communicated half of the elements of Buhari’s agency
to him.
This half, from what one perceives, ends with the urgent need for a
change in leadership. That critical part wherein the desire to reform a
country is followed through by a series of policies and actions was
either not conveyed at all or got lost at some point during the
conversation.
This is why it is impossible to reconcile the President’s avowed
commitment to revolutionalise the way Nigerians think and conduct
themselves with some of his actions. All of this makes you wonder
whether Nigerians and members of the All Progressives Congress had the
same understanding of change as they worked towards the definitive 2015
elections.
And please, no one should raise that already overstretched argument
about change being a tedious, long process which an impatient nature
makes Nigerians misunderstands.
That suggestion by itself, is a reprehensible slight on the
resilient determination of millions of Nigerians who defied all odds to
vote in Buhari about 21 months ago. What those who market this idea
should realise is that even the long process of instilling effective
transformation should be signposted by incontrovertible evidences of a
deep, research-based understanding of the problem, a theoretical and
practicable framework for the reversal of the problem, a palpable
determination of the leader to solve the problem without fear and favour
as well as an undisguised ability of custodians of the people’s mandate
to lead by example!
Subjected to any objective evaluation, it is doubtful that the
Buhari administration will exceed the very base of assessments on most
of these fronts. The administration has, to say the least, wallowed in
uninspiring ineptitude that should currently worry every Nigerian
conversant with the urgency with which this country should get of the
gallows of underdevelopment.
For example, Buhari and his party men have regaled us with tales of
how we found ourselves in the current economic deep pit because past
leaders of Nigeria allowed the importation of everything and anything to
the detriment of production at home. They have gone further to promise
to redress the situation and set Nigeria on the path of irreversible
development.
Part of their design to achieve this is weaning the nation off its
dependence on oil through relentless diversification and the
encouragement of local manufacturing. A clear way to go, everyone would
agree.
Towards the achievement of the latter in particular, this
government has almost since inception imposed capital controls which
have seen to the restriction of the importation of a number of items and
the ability of many hardworking Nigerians to transact legitimate
business, attend to their health care needs or send their children to
school regardless of the import of the latter to the country’s future.
The President coverts the collaboration and sacrifice of all
Nigerians on these but he and some of his close aides are not exactly
inclined to subjecting themselves to the very demands they make of their
compatriots.
He would show total disregard for the sensibilities of Nigerians
when he made that comment about being able to send his daughter to
school abroad because he could afford it while insisting that those who
could no longer afford it, even if through no fault of theirs, would get
no help from government. A veiled suggestion that they should withdraw
their children from schools abroad. Yet, he indulges in this venture
that costs Nigerians a whopping N1.5tn annually. What about bringing
your children back home as a sign of your commitment to improving
standards at home?
It is this same rationale that would make the President jump on a
plane to seek medical attention in the United Kingdom, a second time in
his less than two years in office.
And here one must acknowledge the clarification by his Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, to the effect that his
principal’s primary mission to the UK is a vacation and that the
medical checkup is a mere adjunct. He went on in his usual manner to
denigrate Nigerians for trying to reverse the President’s scale of
priority.
But the joke here is on Adesina and the government he serves. The
bitter truth is that there could never be any acceptable reason for
Buhari to embark on any of these missions out of the country at this
time. I will explain.
Why should a President who desires to bestow a variegated economy
on his country think of a holiday abroad? In his administration research
into ways in which Nigerians “waste” billions of dollars on
unproductive ventures annually, did it not encounter foreign travels for
holidays? Doesn’t this administration understand how much could accrue
as well as how much it could save from a thriving tourism industry? What
better way exists for a President to encourage his people to holiday
in-country than for him to lead by that example? After all, the late
Umaru Yar’Adua once did that in 2009!
And for the subsidiary purpose admitted by Adesina, this
administration is gradually becoming a most pathetic failure at living
to the reality of the expectations that it raised.
In two years and in spite of humongous budgetary allocations to the
Aso Rock Clinic, Buhari’s government has been unable to build a
world-class hospital that could treat the President and his staff and
save us occasions of rushed transfers in air ambulances as was recently
reported concerning his Chief of Staff, Mr. Abba Kyari!
A country in dire economic straits and bogged down by an epochal
scarcity of foreign exchange should think of nothing but a conservation
of its resources. It should work assiduously towards being able to treat
its people and developing the capacity for medical tourism.
Rather than go out of the country to consult with medical doctors
who emigrated out of the frustrations of a comatose system, the
President should lead the mobilisation for the return of close to 10,
000 Nigerian medical experts in western and Middle East countries. Even
if we do not have the vision to become a medical tourism hub, we could
at least conserve monies in the excess of $1bn spent on this cause by
our compatriots in 2013.
It is not clear whether the President’s decision to seek medical
attention abroad came out of distrust of the Nigerian medical system, or
the age-long honest error of seeing everything foreign as better, but
it is certainly not a project that the leader of a country of Nigeria’s
current travails, size and resources should invest resources, even if
they were personal, in.
I do not think Buhari has left anyone in doubt about his desire to
lead a turnaround in the fortunes of the country, but then this is not
one of those things that you wish into reality.
The President must realise that transformational leadership isn’t
just about the title; it is more about the judicious use of the
opportunity and scarce resources to show positive action and examples.
Before Buhari can hope to fix Nigeria, he must first fix himself
and then show the way to go. He must continually improve himself in
areas that he plans to improve the country before hoping to achieve
success.
Anything less will place him on the same row with every other past
leader that he always gleefully disparages. It is a prospect that the
President should avoid like a plague.
-Niran Adedokun
Twitter @niranadedokun
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