Health First! Buhari takes off to London on medical grounds

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari will leave for London on Sunday for a medical check up, leaving Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to lead the country once again, his spokesman said.

“PMB travels tonight for medical follow-up,” presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said in a statement. “The length of the President’s stay in London will be determined by the doctors. The government will continue to function normally under the able leadership of the Vice President.”

Adesina, however, insisted that there was “no cause for worry.”

Buhari left Nigeria on January 19 for London to “undergo routine medical check-ups” during a short holiday. He only returned on March 10 after an extended period of medical treatment. He also hinted at the possibility of him going back for more treatment and acknowledged that he was terribly sick but did not disclose the true nature of his ailment.

“I couldn’t recall being so sick since I was a young man,” he said at a meeting with security chiefs and ministers. He also confessed to receiving “blood transfusions” and “going to the laboratories and so on and so forth”.

He has also been absent from the last couple of Federal Executive Council meetings usually held at the presidential villa, leaving Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to chair those meetings.

Moreover, The Guardian reported that he was also missing the Juma’at prayer at Aso Villa mosque last week.

But the presidency insisted that there was no reason for Nigerians to panic. It said Buhari scale down his activities at the Nigerian seat of power on doctors’ advice.

“As eager as he is to be up and about, the President’s doctors have advised on his taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago,” Buhari’s media aide Garba Shehu said.

His wife, Aisha, has also insisted that husband’s health was “not as bad as it’s being perceived”, without specifying the nature of his illness.

“He continues to carry out his responsibilities during this period,” she wrote on her Twitter account on Tuesday evening.

Source: The Guardian