The demise of former President Muhammadu Buhari in a London clinic is a tragic testament of his failure in leadership as evidenced in his grand sleaze — ruinoius and decayed state of Nigeria’s healthcare system, enveloped by dust and rust.
During his tenure, the Presidency allocated nearly a N100 billion for the reconstruction and equipping of the Aso Rock Villa Clinic, a facility intended to provide top-notch medical care to the President and government officials, even after leaving office. Despite these alleged investments, the clinic remains a pigsty fitting only for the dregs, as if we’re in the ancient society of hunters-gatherers.
The Aso Rock Clinic was conceived as a state-of-the-art medical facility that would meet the healthcare needs of the President and other high-ranking government officials. However, the clinic has been plagued by controversy, with allegations of corruption and mismanagement of funds allocated for it. The clinic’s poor condition and lack of basic medical supplies have been well-documented, especially following the outburst of President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife on the state of decay of the Aso Villa Clinic at the time.
The allocation of hundreds of billions of naira for the clinic’s reconstruction and equipping has raised suspicions of corruption and mismanagement of funds. Many Nigerians believe that the funds were looted by government officials, leaving the clinic underutilized and poorly equipped. The lack of transparency and accountability in the management of the clinic’s funds has further fueled these allegations.
As expected, Femi Adesina, the former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the late former president Muhammadu Buhari, claimed on Tuesday that his principal’s death would have come sooner if he had entrusted his health to Nigerian hospitals.
That unpatriotic, shameless and revisionist statement has been the recipe upon which Nigerian healthcare system has been hanging in the balance. While Adesina claimed that Buhari needed time to fix the country’s healthcare at the time, the former president did say on April 28, 2016 that his government would no longer sponsor medical trips abroad for government officials, including himself.
Prof. Isaac Adewole, the Minister of Health at the time, was representing Buhari at the opening ceremony of the 56th Annual General Conference and Delegates’ Meeting of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) in Sokoto. There, Adewole said, “While this administration will not deny anyone of his or her fundamental human rights, we will certainly not encourage expending Nigerian hard-earned resources on any government official seeking medical care abroad, when such can be handled in Nigeria.”
Two months later, Buhari travelled to the UK on June 6, 2016, for what Adesina described as ‘precautionary’ treatment for a persistent ear infection. At the time, Adesina also said his principal had been consulting the London-based doctors since the 1970s. By December 4, 2022, Buhari had spent 225 days outside Nigeria for medical reasons alone. In March 2021, the then-president was in London for 15 days while members of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) were protesting unpaid allowances.
During these medical trips, it was unclear how much the Federal Government was spending on his health, but in 2017, at a time all the hospitals across the country were all, and still in decrepit states, including the National Hospital Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory.
The crisis rocking the healthcare system in Nigeria has once again been spolighted in the miserable demise of a former President who chose to die in a foreign land, instead of utilizing the humongous resources allocated for healthcare for himself, while he was President for 8 turbulent, crisis-ridden, and bloodletting years!
Unfortunately, no lessons has been learnt by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from the demise of Buhari since he himself has already found France as the convenient location for his health tourism. Perhaps, it might be the easiest way of fulfilling their life time ambition to die in foreign lands.
Erasmus Ikhide contributed this piece via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com.
