Growing Concerns Over Buhari’s Health

 
“I will certainly not encourage expending Nigeria’s hard earned resources on any government official seeking medical care abroad especially when there is evidence of expertise in Nigeria.” – President Muhammadu Buhari
While restating the commitment of his administration to discourage medical treatment abroad, President Muhammadu Buhari had said it was imperative that the Federal Government took a decisive step on the issue as Nigeria loses about $1 billion annually to medical tourism.
Bobboi Bala Kaigama, president, Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), has warned the government to discourage Nigerians from embarking on medical tourism abroad, especially with ailments that can effectively be handled by hospitals in the country.
While urging governments as well as stakeholders in the health sector to redouble their efforts to ensure that emerging and re-emerging infections and diseases like Lassa fever that has claimed many lives in the recent past are drastically curbed, Kaigama, in a statement jointly signed by Musa Lawal, Secretary-General, TUC, said, “If the recent report on medical tourism as said by the Minister of State for Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, is anything to go by, it just does not make any sense that over $1 billion is being spent by Nigerians on medical tourism abroad annually for illnesses that our tertiary hospitals can handle.
“This administration of President Muhammadu Buhari must discourage the practice. Government has to make health care delivery available to the majority of Nigerians”.
Ear Treatment Cost N20m
Less than six weeks after promising to discourage medical tourism, the nation was shocked when the presidency announced that the president was suffering from an ear infection which will require him to seek medical attention in the United Kingdom.
A statement signed by Femi Adesina, the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, said, “During the holiday, he (President Buhari) will see an E.N.T. specialist ?for a persistent ear infection. The president was examined by his personal physician and an E.N.T. specialist in Abuja and was treated. Both Nigerian doctors recommended further evaluation purely as a precaution.”
For a government that promised to change our attitude of profligacy and improve healthcare service delivery in the country, the president’s action was totally condemned by Nigerians who felt he was not leading by example in the quest to discourage medical tourism.
The anger of the citizenry, majority of whom cannot afford adequate healthcare in the country, was further aggravated when the presidency announced that it spent N20 million in treating the infection. While rejecting a claim by Prof. Farooq Kperogi that Buhari spent £6 million during his treatment, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said, “The disclosure on Prof. Farooq Kperogi’s wall that President Muhammadu Buhari’s ear treatment in the United Kingdom cost a whopping £6 million must have shocked many of the respected scholar’s followers.
“I’m prepared to share documents with Farooq, one of the brightest ever produced from the Bayero University Kano that the whole treatment, including a follow-up visit by a specialist to Nigeria didn’t cost £50,000. For the records, the administration advanced a higher sum, but the president’s doctor returned the balance to the treasury. Indeed, it’s a new day, and President Buhari’s change mantra is real. Let no one confuse my fellow countrymen and women”, he said.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja hours after the president’s medical trip, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, Vice President, Commonwealth Medical Association (CMA) and former President, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), said: “If the former governor of Kogi State, His Excellency, Capt. Ichalla Idris Wada, could patronise Nigerian trained medical experts and medical facilities here in Nigeria when he unfortunately suffered a fractured femur following a fatal road traffic accident in 2013, I see no reason why in 2016 Mr. President could not have stayed back in Nigeria to attend to his ear infection.”
Also reacting, a senior lecturer at the department of Political Science, University of Ilorin, Dr. Lukman Saka, criticised the medical trip. According to him, such money that would be used for that foreign medical trip could have been used to develop the nation’s health infrastructure.
“This is the government that had been canvassing for ?the blockage of wastage in the art of governance, now using public fund to fund foreign medical trip.
“If the nation’s health facilities have been developed, I don’t think there is need for President Buhari to abandon all health institutions in the country and therefore travel to UK to seek medical attention”, he said.
In its editorial on June 16, 2016, a national newspaper had written, “Just when Nigerians were beginning to look up to him to chart a different course from his predecessors, in line with the change slogan that propelled him to office, the president chose to tell them that not much has changed between the present and the past – except perhaps the fact that he has chosen to come clean about his trip, while, in the past, it would have been shrouded in secrecy.
“When it comes to restoring confidence in the health sector, the actions of political office holders, especially the president, matter a lot. When the former president of Ghana, Jerry Rawlings, wanted to inspire confidence in the local textile industry in his country, he started wearing the local fabric known as the Ghanaian smock or Batakari. Not long after, the smock became nationally recognised. Right now, it is the official Friday wear in the country, which has led to increased patronage and helped in job creation. Such is the impact that a leader can make in rekindling interest in local products.
“Similarly, if the president can insist on patronising Nigerian hospitals, it will not only boost confidence in our hospitals, it will encourage Nigerian professionals, most of whom, have relocated to Britain, the United States and South Africa, among other places, to return home.
“It will also lead to massive investment in health sector infrastructure by the governors, once they realise that their own health is dependent on the quality of services that can be provided at the local hospitals. Who knows, Nigeria could also, in no time, become a destination for medical tourism, at least from the West African sub-region. To this extent, Buhari’s trip was a terrible letdown”.
Yet Another Medical Trip
Despite the hues and cries generated by the first medical trip, the president again, last week, transmitted a letter to the Senate notifying it of his desire to embark on medical vacation.
Justifying the trip, Femi Adesina, while speaking with journalists in Abuja, described the medical trip as normal. According to him, there is nothing wrong with the president embarking on an 18-day vacation, as God himself rested on the seventh day after doing the work of creation for six days.
“The president is going to rest. You know that God did work of creation for six days and on the seventh day he rested,” he said.
“So if God needed to rest, how much more human being? So the president is just going to rest and the statement we have released is straightforward. He will go on this leave and during the leave he will do routine medical checkups.”
Asked if there was anything to worry about, Adesina said: “Nothing, absolutely nothing.
“We need to show goodwill towards our leaders, particularly President Muhammadu Buhari, who is working to give Nigeria a new footing, a new orientation. Nothing absolutely to worry about but a lot of goodwill, lots of prayers are necessary at all times.”
Forward To The Past: Recalling Yar’Adua
Apparently worried that the scenario that played itself out during the early days of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua may be rearing its ugly head again, Nigerians at the weekend urged the Federal Government to make public the health status of President Buhari and actual reasons he has been frequenting hospitals abroad.
The late Yar’Adua spent the better part of his presidency outside the country seeking medical attention. The crisis that erupted as a result of his long absence almost polarised the nation as series of protests were embarked upon by citizens who felt the nation had grounded to a halt owing to the president’s absence.
The Senate relying on Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution on February 9, 2010 invoked the Doctrine of Necessity which empowered then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to serve as acting president. President Yar’Adua later succumbed to the illness and Jonathan was sworn in as president on May 5 2010.
A cross-section of Nigerians who expressed worry over the frequent medical trips of the president to hospitals abroad, argued that the reasons usually adduced as going only for check-ups are rather too scanty to assure the nation.
Lagos lawyer and human rights activist, Ebun-olu Adegboruwa, said in an interview on Sunday that the Nigerian people deserve to know the health status of their leader.
Adegboruwa said as a human being, the president was not immune to falling sick and when that does happen the citizenry should unite with him in compassion and prayers, saying there is no reason for the government to make a purely human issue like the president falling sick a cult affair.
The lawyer warned that to continue to shroud the president reason for visiting hospitals abroad in secrecy will expose his person and the government to dangerous speculations among the concerned public.
As Adegboruwa said, the supposed cause of the president’s sudden trip abroad is already being bandied in the rumour mill across the worldwide social media platforms.
Also speaking, a public affairs analyst, Paul John, said “Nigeria occupying the 187th position out of 191 countries in the 2015 WHO ranking of the healthcare systems of different countries is itself a form of hell”.
“When Mandela was sick he was admitted in a South African hospital. The same happened to Pele of Brazil. Between late last year and early this year, the queen of England was treated for cold in England. I have never seen any of them admitted in a hospital outside their respective countries.
“When Yar’Adua was sick, he was flown abroad, the same was the case for other leaders before and after him. Do we continue like this, I thought they promised us a change and not continuity? These leaders through their obnoxious policies and administrations destroy our health sector”.
However, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, former Minister of Transport and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said Nigerians should allow the president seek medical help wherever he wants, noting that this will erase the agony of lamentation that may occur if the president is not allowed to get adequate medical help in case of any oddity.
“I think we should not quarrel with him on wherever he thinks he can get good medical treatment. Let’s allow him to go and do it so that nobody passes the bulk and hear people say things like ‘if we had allowed him to seek medical treatment abroad, maybe he would have survived’. I think we should allow him seek treatment where he deems best”, he said.