Professor
of Political Communication, Ayo Olukotun has added his voice to the
controversy trailing the decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to
travel on medical vacation.
President Muhammadu Buhari
If President Muhammadu Buhari arrives in Abuja tomorrow, and
regales the nation with phenomenal sprints, reminiscent of an Olympic
athletics gold medallist, the lingering controversy about his health
status and rumoured death will remain with us for several months to
come.
Traumatised, along with Buhari’s family members, is a nation agog
with rumours and social media frenzy announcing the President’s death or
abject health status, painting scenarios of every conceivable stripe.
New websites sprung up to amplify deafening rumours about the coming
Armageddon in the event of the President’s death. It is difficult to
know what to believe in the midst of so much conflicting information,
official denials through photographs dismissed by some as exhumed from
old files and other photographs circulated on social media showing
Buhari as vegetating. Rumour, communication scholars tell us,
predominates in societies where information is artificially made scarce,
and officialdom speaks in muffled tones or engages in blatant
doublespeak. The information managers of President Buhari are without
doubt splendid professionals but their skills would appear to have been
tested to their very limits with the way and manner they have so far
handled this admittedly sensitive national issue.
It all began with the use of the word “medical vacation”, which
naturally provoked the question: What is a medical vacation? A vacation
is planned well ahead of time especially for executives with heavy work
schedules; but there were suggestions of an emergency in the way the
Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, rushed back from an international
conference in Europe to direct the nation’s affairs. Medical vacation?
Does this remind anyone of the expression “alternative facts”, recently
popularised by Kellyanne Conway, Senior White House official, in the
Donald Trump presidency in the United States?
When you factor too that Buhari had gone on two earlier “medical
vacations” to London in the course of a Presidency that is less than two
years old, then you begin to see some of the reasons for concern and
what the US-based Professor, Farooq Kperogi, once described as the
“Yaraduanisation of Buhari’s health”. Kperogi’s article published in the
Daily Trust in June last year expressed the alarm at the way in which
Buhari’s media handlers more or less misled the public on his June 2016
trip to the United Kingdom. The trip occurred only a few days after
information officials had insisted that “the President is as fit as a
fiddle”. Subsequent events, of course, contradicted this “alternative
fact”. A similar scenario would appear to have played out in the current
imbroglio, to the extent that the government information department
consistently downplayed what would appear to have been a somewhat
serious medical condition.
Another issue raised in Kperogi’s article is also pertinent here.
This concerns Buhari’s persistent recourse to overseas treatment,
despite spending so much, N4bn, in 2016, on the upgrade of the Aso Rock
Clinic. The scholar, quoting a British journalist, had asked humorously
how the President would feel were he to be treated by one of the many
Nigerian doctors in the UK. This point should be taken in the context of
an earlier directive by the President concerning public officials not
going for overseas medical treatment at public expense. In other words,
is this a case of one set of rules for the rulers and another set of
rules for the citizens? Whatever the arguments drummed up in its
support, there is a hint of national embarrassment and abasement in our
persistent failure to build a world class medical facility in Nigeria
where our leaders would feel comfortable to be treated.
There are several ways of reading the ongoing drama and national
frenzy surrounding Buhari’s rumoured death or terminal incapacity. The
heated discourse, laced with huge doses of irrationality, has tapped
into the national question especially the North-South divide and
religious polarisation, with conspiracy theory mushrooming about the
North seeking to frustrate an Osinbajo Presidency if matters came to
that. It is to Buhari’s credit however that he made a proper handover to
Osinbajo before leaving for London.
There, also, is the fact that this saga is occurring in the midst
of a heated debate concerning the governance record of the Buhari
administration especially as soar away inflation continues to ravage the
pockets of Nigerians. Illustrative of this ferment is the proposed
march spearheaded by award winning hip pop star, 2face Idibia, scheduled
for next Sunday and Monday, as well as the alternate march being
organised by the Buhari Nationwide Solidarity Group. This apart, one
encounters these days an audacity of diatribe against Buhari’s
performance on the part of activists, some of whom advertised themselves
as disillusioned former supporters of the President (see Sunday PUNCH,
January 29, 2017).True, it is uncharitable and ill-mannered to wish
anyone who is languishing death or grave illness. As some commentators
have noted however, there may be a covert link between the uncharitable
proclamations and the nation’s current doldrums in which very few things
seem to work. Of course, it is stupid to imagine that if Buhari, God
forbid, is out of the way, the nation will suddenly recover.
Nonetheless, we must pity those who are seeking escapes into death
wishes and fantasy in order to feel good.
All said and done, there is the feeling that a veil of secrecy
hangs around the health status of the number one citizen, with the
possible implication that those who know or ought to know are complicit
in a conspiracy of half-truths. For as long as this state of affairs
persists, rumours of every kind will feast on the veil of silence or
reticence. Once the lid is lifted and information begins to circulate
about the true state of things, the vendors of the rumour mills and
social media fabricators will lose their jobs. Before the election that
produced the Buhari Presidency, this columnist admonished due diligence
with respect to Candidate Buhari as he was at the time (The raging
controversy about Buhari’s health, The PUNCH, January 23, 2015).Warning
that “Nigeria has a history of sleep-walking into avoidable crises”, I
drew attention to certain comments concerning the state of the
President’s health, and the need for the nation to have full disclosure.
Nothing of the sort happened as my voice was drowned in a din of
partisan noises, made shrill by the exigencies of the campaign season.
Even as of today, we are none the wiser concerning the status of
the President’s health except as we infer it from his overseas “medical
vacation”. The ongoing controversy and crude death wishes should serve
as a turning point for reversing the gap in communication, especially in
a democracy. Only the President, not his advisers, can shed complete
light on his medical history. It is possible, even likely that in a
polarised polity such as ours, full disclosure may well lead to calls
for the President’s impeachment, especially if he does not have a clean
bill. But even at that, legislators are discerning enough to
differentiate a very bad case from one that grudgingly passes the mark.
The bottom line is that Nigerians should no longer feel deceived or
cheated concerning the facts about a President who, his weaknesses
notwithstanding, has contributed his bit to the unfinished task of
redeeming Nigeria.
-By Prof. Ayo Olukotun
A Professor of Political Communication; Holds a PhD from the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University)
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