*PDP kicks, describes President as selfish leader
The Presidency, on Tuesday, defended President Muhammadu Buhari’s continuous patronage of foreign doctors in preference to their Nigerian counterparts.
President Buhari departed Nigeria for the UK on Monday, ostensibly to participate in the Global Education Summit on Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021-2025, which the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has revealed to be a virtual conference, which he could have participated in from Nigeria.
The Presidency had announced that after the event, Buhari would spend a few days in London for an earlier scheduled medical check-up.
In justifying Buhari’s preference for foreign doctors, his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said, during an interview on a monitored Channels Television programme, that his principal has used a medical team for over 40 years, hence the need to continue seeking medical help using them.
“President Buhari has been with the same doctors and medical team for upward of 40 years,” he said when asked why the President couldn’t have been treated in Nigeria.
“It is advisable that he continues with those who know his medical history and that is why he comes to London to see them. He has used the same medical team for over 40 years. Once you can afford it, then stay with the team that has your history.”
Asked if the President would pilot the country’s affairs from the UK, the presidential spokesman said there is no vacuum within the seat of power.
He explained that the Constitution empowers Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to act as President if President Buhari is not back to the country within 21 days.
“The nation is running; there is a vice president who will attend to critical issues. There is no vacuum and a constitutional amendment has sorted that out,” Adesina explained.
At the UK Summit, President Buhari is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Johnson and would return to the country by the second week of August.
Top officials that accompanied Buhari on the trip included the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, and the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba.
Others are the National Security Adviser, Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd), and the Director-General of National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ahmed Rufai.
But the PDP says it is appalling that President Muhammadu Buhari could deploy the country’s resources to travel to London for the Global Education Summit on Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021-2025 whereas the meeting is scheduled to be a virtual one.
The PDP also berated the Buhari Presidency for “trying to hide his private appointment with his doctors under the virtual meeting apparently in a bid to launder his consistent failure to honour his pre-2015 campaign promise not to embark on medical tourism, if elected President.”
Speaking the official position of the party, its spokesman Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, insisted that Buhari has no justification to travel to far-away London as the meeting is a virtual one, or for a medical checkup, which he could have done in Nigeria.
The PDP said the president’s action has confirmed the stand by the majority of Nigerians that “he is wasteful, thinks only about himself and cares less about millions of citizens who do not have access to foreign medical treatment, but who are dying on a daily basis because the government has crippled our health sector”.
According to the PDP, “it is disheartening that while Mr. President is spending taxpayers’ money relishing the expertise of London doctors and the luxury of medical facilities in that country, millions of Nigerians are dying in decrepit medical facilities at home.
“Moreover, is it not atrocious that Mr. President is more interested in going to London for a virtual education summit when hundreds of students, who ought to be beneficiaries of the meeting, are languishing in kidnappers’ dens, with the Buhari administration taking no concrete steps to rescue them and end incessant abduction of students in Nigeria?”‘ the statement read in part.
The PDP argued that there is no way history will be kind with President Buhari – as he has always wished – if he continues in his manner of thinking only about his needs at the expense of the generality of Nigerians.
The opposition party, however, urged Nigerians not to resign to despondency “in the face of such incompetent, selfish, and insensitive” Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, but to remain resilient in rallying on the platform of the PDP to rescue the nation from misrule.