The high profile London visits – Tribune

The recent high profile visits of the political class, including state governors, to President Muhammadu Buhari in the United Kingdom ordinarily ought to resonate with them as unnecessary. The President will soon clock three months outside the country in a hospital in London on account of an undisclosed illness.
The All Progressives Congress (APC), which fielded him as its presidential candidate in 2015 had, in its manifesto, hinted that it would repudiate overseas treatments or at least not encourage medical tourism for public officers during its tenure of governance. But if for some kind of expediency, the APC could not live up to its solemn promise to the electorate, it had no business dramatising this disavowal to the world.
Some state governors were recently transported to London, ostensibly on a goodwill visit to the ailing president at an undisclosed monetary cost, not only from the states being run by the APC but also from states run by the opposition. The trick was to corroborate the narrative from his handlers. The reports of the visits in the media have however led to more questions than answers.
All of this would have been unnecessary if the proper thing — taking the citizens of this country into confidence — had been done in the first place. For a democratically elected president, it was quite absurd figuring what was really difficult in that and why the handlers preferred this road to travel. Unable to confide in the public who voted massively for him during the 2015 presidential election, the president’s handlers had initially denied that he was ill and that he was even hospitalised until he returned home briefly to admit that he had never been so ill all his life, thus casting a slur on the credibility of the narrative from the country’s establishment.
It is pretty hard to fathom how much of the current narrative will go down well with Nigerians. It is bad enough to renege on the solemn promise not to encourage medical tourism, but for the select governors to actually embark on the trip smacks of disdain for the people.
A relevant trending parallel is the experience of Senator John McCain, who was a notable contender for the presidency of the United States. In a similar circumstance to Buhari’s, McCain permitted his personal physician to reveal his health status to the public: he had been afflicted with a tumour of the brain and had to undergo surgery. Why is that line of action so difficult to emulate in Nigeria?
To be sure, anybody can fall ill, especially at 74, but it beggars belief that the entire country could be driven to the end of its tether on account of it. A country with civil servants owed salary arrears and pensioners dying of hunger should not endorse the waste which the recent high profile visits to the UK to the president represent and we know that this will take its toll eventually.