…PDP taunts President for botched journey
President Muhammadu Buhari has postponed a planned medical trip to the United Kingdom.
The trip was earlier scheduled for yesterday.
This was announced by Mr Femi Adesina, the President’s Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, in a statement on Friday.
According to the statement, a new date will be announced in due course.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to explain the last-minute cancellation of his scheduled medical trip to London after the media had reported he was due to depart the nation’s capital on Friday.
The PDP said its position is against the backdrop of “increasing international disapprovals to the escalated human right violations, constitutional breaches, clampdown on citizens, suppression of free speech and other excesses by the Buhari administration, for which there have been concerted demands for travel restrictions against officials of the Buhari Presidency.”
In a statement signed by its spokesman Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said “while Mr. President is left to sort out whatever impediments or constraints that led to the sudden cancellation of his scheduled medical trip, our party urges him to use this period to have some introspection on the sorry situation in which his incompetent, divisive, vindictive and suppressive administration has pushed our nation into in the last six years.”
The statement further read: “Our party urges President Buhari to use this period to reflect on the suffering of millions of Nigerians who do not have access to foreign medical treatment, but who are dying on daily basis because of his failure to pay attention to our healthcare system, which has become decrepit under his watch.
“In his consideration, Mr. President must also reflect on how he has wrecked our country’s once robust economy that was handed over to him in 2015 by the PDP, to the extent that Nigerians can no longer afford to feed because their purchasing power has become depressingly low while he (Mr. President) recedes further into the luxury and the safety of the Aso Rock Villa at the expense of the well-being of the ordinary citizens.
“It is indeed heartrending that President Buhari appears to think of himself only even as Nigerians pass through these worst forms of hardship occasioned by his own misrule.
“Nigerians are also dismayed that Mr. President has consistently failed to honour his pre-2015 campaign promise not to embark on medical tourism if elected President.
“President Buhari therefore ought to be aware that the only condition in which history will be kind to him, as he has always wished, is if he honours his own words as well as use this period to resolve the impasse between the Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, and his administration, fix our hospitals and confront other challenges facing the health sector in our country.”
