By Political Animal.
Can we ever have a future President who can stop this practice of medical tourism?
Garba Shehu, presidential spokesperson, says President Muhammadu Buhari’s current trip to the United Kingdom is not for medical tourism.
Speaking on Tuesday when he featured on Politics Today, a Channels Television programme, Shehu said the president has maintained a relationship with his doctors in the UK for over 30 years.
On Monday, Femi Adesina, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, had said Buhari will leave the country on Tuesday for a “routine” medical trip to London.
Buhari is expected back in the country in the second week of April.
It has become normal, neither is it the first time a Nigerian President is traveling out of Nigeria for medical check-up.
President Obasanjo did it,President Yaradua did it , President Goodluck Jonathan did it.
Governor’s, Ministers, Senators, Local government Chairman all travel out for medical check-up.This is the Nigerian style which we hardly hear from other nations ,
except maybe some nations in Africa.
This is not the first time the president will embark on a medical trip, since he assumed office in 2015.
In 2017, the president spent over 150 days in the UK, treating an undisclosed ailment, while in May 2018, he returned to the UK for four days to see his doctor.
Everyone of those mentioned always promise to end foreign medical tourism while campaigning.
People are complaining because they promised to make the health sector better if elected.
Speaking on the development, Shehu said the decision of the president to embark on the medical trip is “wise and quite correct”, adding that it doesn’t speak well for Buhari to change his doctors every year because of distance.
“I think that, unfortunately, there is the misconception of the president’s trip, seen in the context of medical tourism,” he said.
“President Buhari is not a medical tourist — if somebody has kept retainership with medical experts; we are talking about 30 years and plus.
“Each year, they view you and examine you and give you a pass and advise you on what to do. Would you, given this position, be changing your doctors every other year, because there is a chance the distance will be shortened?
“I think the president is wise and quite correct in his decision that he retains consistently the set of doctors who have ensured good health for himself.”
He added that the president is “taking advantage of the Easter season to just go and check up.
The point is that Shehu and Adesina will always , and ignorantly too, defend their principal.But how do they think they can confuse us with the English they don’t fully understand again , knowing the stuff they are made of before joining this Government.
“He has been a medical tourist for 30 years”
,so what!!.They can go to any length and depth to cover what cannot be covered.
How can they be contradicting themselves?. Especially Shehu Garba who keeps goofing every now and then. “The President is not a medical tourist…he has retained UK doctors for 30 years”
The honest truth is that no one can comfortably defend this government without acting and sounding stupid. Otherwise,how can full grown men, seasoned journalists, attempt to redefine what medical tourism is, in order for people to accept their boss’s cluelessness and wastage of taxpayers money.?
It is so bad that some people were waiting for him to stumble while climbing the aircraft staircase like President Joe Biden (POTUS) did sometime ago.
It is as bad as that.
Thank God they were all disappointed.
We still want him alive to finish his tenure.
It wasn’t easy for the country when we lost one of the Presidents on medical tourism years ago.
One of them ,who remains part of our problems, was making imaginary phone calls to ghost Nations and hospitals, to convince Nigerians, that the late President was alive.
We don’t want a repeat.We may not survive the issue of who takes over,based on the present situation and bad blood among zones or political groups in Nigeria.
But there is no point budgeting millions of naira for the clinic in Aso Rock every year.
The President himself particularly campaigned and condemned medical tourism saying that it was going to be a a thing of the past with a vow.
He vehemently condemned past administrations.
He ended up abandoning that good intention.
Methinks that these Presidents should have,
in the worst case scenario,
have built a special clinic for themselves and notch it up to any standard they wanted.I know that suffering Nigerians won’t mind.
May be they don’t want Nigerians to know their health issues ,
which may possibly leak and become another issue altogether.
May be, may be,may be.
But why can’t the present President learn the present lesson on Covid19 and improve our health care system?
It seems that Covid19 didn’t teach him any lesson.? Even all normal and abnormal Presidents learnt one lesson or the other during this pandemic.
Why is our own always different?
Well,I am looking forward to the day the hospitals in Nigeria shall be good enough to have our Presidents do their routine check-up here and there.
The situation makes me remember
“Bob Marley’s song “Waiting in Vain”.
But until that happens,
or we have such a President,
we are all in the hands of God the Mighty Healer my brothers and sisters.
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