Why President Buhari Keeps Shaming All Of Us With His Constant Search for Medical Treatments Abroad

Writer, Samuel Daniel, in this piece tackles the age-long tradition of Nigerian leaders seeking medical treatments in foreign lands.

President Muhammadu Buhari embarking on a trip

 

I had just finished speaking with someone on the phone and was dropping the mobile device back on my table when I heard an angry voice bawling, almost screaming outside my door.

 

"It's a shame. Its really a big shame, I'm telling you. Why do they keep doing this to us?"

 

I had not seen the person speaking yet, but I knew it was my friend, Alex. He was the only one who could talk so loudly and scream out like that, especially when he gets angry.

 

I rushed to door and opened it, wondering what was up with my friend this time. Alex's face was contorted into an angry grimace as shriveled lines appeared on his forehead, drawn across it in zigzagged shades. He was brimming with obvious annoyance. 

 

"Dude, what's up, man?" I asked him. "Why are you so worked up?" 

 

"Is it not this Buhari?"  Alex bellowed, his lips quivering with fury.

 

"Wetin Buhari do na?"

 

"The man has just written the Senate. He wants to go on a 10-day vacation" Alex said

 

I laughed. Was this why he was so worked up? What was so unusual about President Buhari taking a vacation?

 

"Dude, it's normal na." I told him "The man needs some rest. Let him go on vacation jor" 

 

"Oga, that's not the point!" Alex screamed, making a face and balling his fists as if he was going to punch the words back into mouth "the man wants to go to London for medical evaluation. Can you imagine that? He is going to London, Britain to treat himself. Just imagine. This is coming after a total of N3.87billion was allocated for capital projects at the State House Clinic. That is more money than was allocated to all the 16 teaching hospitals in Nigeria. And Buhari is still going abroad. Chai. Chineke"

 

I watched as Alex spoke angrily, fuming with displeasure so that his mouth began to move faster than it normally did. His mouth reminded me of my Aunt, Ugwa and how she usually ate hot yam; she would move her lips very rapidly to crush the delicacy and then pause to pout her lips in order to let out the hot air, then begin to chew again.

 

I almost laughed out. But I knew Alex was not unnecessarily angry. He was right. Why would any sane country allocate such amount of money to State House clinic only for the president to seek treatments in other countries? It is indeed such a shame! 

 

The history of Nigeria is replete with tales of leaders who shamelessly travelled to other countries for treatment whenever they fell ill. During the administration of Ibrahim Babangida, he flew in and out of Europe for medical check-ups as if his ancestral lineage were traced to the continent. It is even argued that the amount of money the man embezzled in the name of treatments abroad is enough to build another Nigeria!

 

As time went on, President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice President, Atiku Abubakar took the cue from Babangida and other leaders before them and travelled with reckless abandon to foreign hospitals during their eight-year rule. At a time, Atiku Abubakar was flown to the United States on account of a mere muscle pull injury he sustained while warming up in the gymnasium! This was so ridiculous and it passed a very sensitive message to the world at the time. The message passed then was that a country as rich as Nigeria did not have a single hospital that could treat an ordinary strain to the ankle. When former president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua collapsed during his campaign, he was rushed off abroad for treatment.

 

These cases are too numerous to mention, not to talk of those frequent visits Europe by our dear former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his wife Dame Patience, for treatments.

 

Now it has gotten out of hand. It is a shame that a man of Buhari's standing who rode to power on the back of his widely publicised integrity and stern disregard for corruption, would break his promise to end "medical tourism" by seeking treatment in the UK. Nigerians are said to have spent about $1bn (£690m) on foreign medical trips in 2013, most of which was unnecessary and President Buhari had promised to end all that, only for him to renege on his word and stormed the UK to seek treatment for ear infection. 

 

At the time President Buhari sought treatment for his ear infection in the UK, it was widely agreed that his action brought us "national shame" considering the fact that Nigeria had more than 250 ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists, as well as a National Ear Centre. But no, he just had to follow in the footseps of his predecessors and visit the UK.

 

This has gotten me wondering. I've been wondering about many things since Alex came to my room to speak to me about Buhari's trip to London.

 

Dear President Buhari, I'm wondering why you and other Nigerian leaders cannot take a cue from Nelson Mandela who allowed himself to be treated the whole time he was ill right in his own country! If Nelson Mandela was a former Nigerian leader, would he not been flown to Paris for medical attention?

 

I'm just wondering why your policies on health are besieged with loopholes such that their implementation is inept due to unnecessary bureaucracies, lack of quality improvement foresight and corrupt political leadership in the country.

 

I'm wondering why you and other leaders cannot trust the very medical institutions built within the shores of our country. Should the ordinary man then be condemned to wallow in an abandoned project?

 

Dear President Buhari, when you travel to London for treatments, I wonder if you ever think about why you cannot subject your 'superior selves' to receiving treatments in Nigeria.

 

The truth is that you cannot receive treatments in Nigeria because you fear the system will fail you. You fear the equipment are not good and standard enough, you fear your life is in danger if you do not run abroad to receive care in the hands of those you consider to be powerful medics with powerful life saving instruments at their disposal to revive your broken bodies.

 

I wonder if you have bothered to consider the average man in the suburbs who is compelled to resort to the mercy of our local hospitals. We ‘wonder‘ if you ever think of how his life is in danger because he is using our outdated, moribund equipment and the hugely dilapidated 19th century Medical facilities that are now your legacies. Have you thought about how we feel betrayed, abandoned, r*ped, short-changed, exploited and forsaken when you leave us to rot in our squalour? What about US?

 

I am wondering  if you consider at all how insensitive it is to surrender yourselves to foreigners in foreign lands for treatment. You keep putting us to shame! What will they think about us as a Nation, the gi-ANT of Africa?

 

I ‘wonder’ if you cannot build us good hospitals with good medical facilities if and when you channel all that money you use for foreign trips and foreign treatments, into reconstructing and standardizing our crumbled infrastructures.

 

When you travel abroad for treatment, do you often consider that these hospitals to which you go for treatment are built by other leaders for their own people? If these leaders had abandoned their hospitals for treatment in foreign lands, would their hospitals be good enough for you to go to? Do you not feel a pang of pain gnaw at your liver for letting your people down, for letting them suffer alone? Think about that! Do you also consider that the poor, suffering man at the corner also has the right to health facilities like you?

 

I am just wondering why our Nigeria cannot boast of good hospitals effective enough to host our leaders, 54 years into freedom! I am wondering too, if our hospitals will not be better off when you, our leaders, go to be treated in them. Will you see reason to correct every wrong there if you don’t go to be witnesses of the horrors yourselves? If it is only the poor, unprivileged masses who keep on going to these hospitals, will they ever get better? Will the rot not continue to deepen?

 

I am just wondering how it could be such a very great thing if our leaders could channel all the monies they use in flying abroad for treatment, into building good hospitals and revamping crumbled ones in Nigeria, would we not all be better off?

 

If truly you have spent millions in making our hospital facilities into modern standards, if what we have are as good as you have claimed many times, I wonder why you would never use them for yourselves. It is only the ordinary man of course who has no money to fly to India and London and France that is condemned to use these things.

 

Will Nigeria not be better off if our leaders care a little less for themselves and show some more love for the groaning and dying masses. Would we not all have a better country and lead better lives if they reduce their deep-seated self-concentration?

 

Think about it sir!

  

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Written by Samuel Daniel, a Content Writer and Editor at tori.ng

Email: danielsamuel366@gmail.com