As
Nigerians eagerly expect President Muhammadu Buhari back to the
country, Okey Ndibe has compared the president's sick leave with a
"Theresa May" scenario.
President Muhammadu Buhari
On January 21, I was having drinks and talking literature with some
friends at 805 Restaurant in old Kent Road, London when my phone rang.
The caller was a friend resident in Sweden.
“Is it true that President Buhari died?” he asked the instant I answered his call.
“It’s news to me,” I said. “Where did you hear it?”
He’d seen it from an online British newspaper called the “Metro,”
he said. The “newspaper” reported that the Nigeria High Commission in
London had confirmed the news.
I suspected that the whole affair had to do with one of the world’s
latest scourges: blatant falsehood and rumors packaged as credible
news. I told my friend I was going to check and get back to him.
I shared conversation with my friends at the restaurant. Two of
them happened to know two high-level officials at the Nigeria High
Commission. They called those contacts. Within seconds the verdict was
in: there was no substance to the report. It was false, an invention of
mischievous minds. The so-called source, the “Metro,” was a brutish
clone of a venerable British press.
The next day, the Presidency in Abuja officially denied the report.
In the intervening days, I had expected that President Buhari and his
handlers would do more to lay the rumor to rest. Instead, the
president’s spokesmen went into arrogant mode. One of them, in the vein
of a cane-wielding stern teacher, scolded Nigerians for their habit of
wishing their leaders dead. Another, justifying the president’s unwise
silence, simply said nobody could compel Mr. Buhari to speak if he chose
not to.
In the event, the Presidency’s choice of silence was unwarranted
and ungolden. It all amounted to poor statecraft on the part of the
Nigerian president and his advisors. If those around Mr. Buhari had
counseled him to remain taciturn, then, pure and simple, they gave him
wretched advice.
In electing to be tightlipped in the face of rumors of his death or
his grave illness, the Nigerian president displayed a habit of disdain
for his country, its citizens and their collective fortune. Serious
leaders recognize that such rumors do have real consequences for a
country’s economy and politics. In many instances, stock traders and
other investors become fidgety when the health of a country’s leader is
perceived to be shaky. That’s why astute leaders move with alacrity to
dispel such.
Last week, one of the president’s spokesmen told the media that he
believed Mr. Buhari was in fine shape because the president’s chaperons
in London had told him so. He revealed that, in numerous attempts, he
had not spoken directly to the president, only to those around him.
Unless the president was awfully sick, his failure to get on the phone
to his main spokesman was irresponsible.
One isn’t arguing that President Buhari should give Nigerians a
blow-by-blow account of his state of health. My argument is that he owes
us far more transparency than he and his handlers have exhibited. That
point should be underlined: It is not up to Mr. Buhari to decide whether
we receive reliable information or not. He has an ethical and political
obligation to provide that information.
Heck, we, the citizens of Nigeria, are paying for every second of
his time in the UK. I bet his medical bills are paid from Nigeria’s
public funds. We’re paying for his accommodation, his food, his
transportation, and his electricity, in the UK. And we pay for the
retinue of officials who attend to him during any foreign mission he
undertakes for medical treatment.
Imagine for a (ridiculous) moment that British Prime Minister
Theresa Mary May were to fly to Nigeria to receive medical care from
some state-of-the-art hospital in Shomolu-Bariga. You can bet that, on a
daily business, the PM’s staff and the medical doctors handling her
treatment will issue bulletins on Ms. May’s progress. Reporters from
Britain and elsewhere in the world would know the specific condition for
which she was being treated, the location of the hospital, and the
identities of the doctors overseeing her care. You would not see
anything resembling the secrecy that President Buhari and his associates
have orchestrated. If she could, Ms. May would speak to her
spokespersons and even reporters.
President Buhari’s silence translates as nonchalance towards his
creditors, all Nigerians. Sadly, this indifference is the default, if
feckless, attitude of those who occupy the space of leadership in
Nigeria. These are the men and women who take the most from Nigeria but
give back the least. Think about it: since assuming the presidency, has
Mr. Buhari offered a serious policy statement about his country’s
healthcare sector? Has he articulated a vision for providing sound
healthcare for Nigerians? I’m yet to see proof that he has given even
passing thought to the subject.
Yet, when his ear aches, off he runs to London. When he needs
medical checkup, again the presidential jets are revved up for the jaunt
to the UK. Do Nigerian leaders have no sense of shame—or, even, of
irony? When was it heard that a councilor in Germany, France or Britain
flew to Nigeria for treatment? Yet, Nigerian ministers, governors and
presidents, men and women who inflate themselves into “transformational”
leaders, who boast of having “totally transformed” this or that space
in Nigeria, gleefully announce their departure to the UK and other
foreign addresses for medical care. When did Britain become part and
parcel of Nigeria’s medical landscape?
With all the billions budgeted for the presidential clinic in Aso
Rock, why doesn’t the president receive medical care there? Why must he
repair to London for rest? Why won’t he do what other leaders do,
retreat to spaces within their own countries when they desire quietude?
In 2012, former First Lady Patience Jonathan spent six weeks in a
German hospital receiving treatment for an undisclosed ailment.
Nigerians paid for her treatment, yet neither her office nor her
husband’s considered us deserving of being told the truth about her
whereabouts. It took online reporters to reveal that Mrs. Jonathan was
sick, and hospitalized in far-away Germany.
In a facile response, her then spokesman declared that Mrs.
Jonathan was a portrait of vibrant health. He said she had traveled
abroad merely “to rest” after the fatigue of hosting a meeting of
African First Ladies in Abuja. In a column at the time, I wrote, “Of
course, the irony of the claim didn’t strike the fibbing spokesman. If
the spouse of Nigeria’s president does not find Aso Rock—the most
palatial address in Nigeria—conducive to resting, then the country her
husband runs must be pure hell for other (by far less fortunate)
Nigerians.”
On realizing that Mrs. Jonathan was in poor health, many Nigerians
went into a frenzy of supplication for her recovery. I too said a prayer
or two for her. But I also called on her, once she recovered and
returned to Nigeria, to repay Nigerians’ affection by “nudging her
husband to become a responsive, public-spirited leader. I suggested, for
one, that she must impress on Mr. Jonathan that he has a duty to give
Nigerians a healthcare system that’s worthy of humans.”
That’s also my challenge to President Buhari. Nigerians are some of
the top doctors in any field of medicine. Take your sickness as an
opportunity to envision and create a coherent healthcare policy for
millions of other sick, suffering Nigerians.
******
Written by Okey Ndibe
You can reach Okey at okeyndibe@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @okeyndibe.
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