EDITORIAL
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FILE: President Muhammadu Buhari departs Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja for a two-week medical trip to London in March 2021 . PHOTO: PHILIP OJISUA |
Unfortunately, the cost to the public treasury of Buhari's health tourism is not known.
It seems like an epilogue to a badly choreographed drama
that President Muhammadu Buhari is undergoing toothache therapy in the UK,
after spending more than 225 days on similar vacations, just three weeks to the
end of his eight-year Presidency on 29 May. The president had jetted out to
London on 3 May, to join a galaxy of world leaders in the coronation of King
Charles III on 6 May, but decided to extend his stay by one week, to enable him
enjoy good healthcare, one more time, at public expense. We wished that he had
not committed this injudiciousness.
The disclosure of his ailment by his Special Adviser on
Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, last Tuesday, while communicating the
delayed return was one of the rare public intimations of the nature of his
sickness, in his serial medical tourisms that ignited wide fulminations. The
extended-stay, we dare say, is a sad reminder of how his medical tourism began
after only eight months in office. One national newspaper put the total number
of days he spent abroad for this purpose at 225 days as at 4 December, 2022. Mr
President, that toothache is treatable in Nigeria; and the pounds sterling it
will incur and cost of parking the presidential jet for an extra week, are
waste of public funds.
Buhari undertook his first medical trip to the UK on 5
February, 2016, and this lasted for six days. On January 23, 2017, he embarked
on another one that lasted 50 days, as he returned on 10 March. The longest
medical trip that year spanned 104 days, for an undisclosed illness. These
medical peregrinations occurred all through his presidency, in a record
surpassing that of Umaru Yar'Adua, who spent 172 days abroad on the same
grounds. The Yar'Adua/Buhari health challenges reasonably justify the view in
some quarters that the health status of the president should be of public
knowledge.
Unfortunately, the cost to the public treasury of Buhari's
health tourism is not known, and may never be, as opacity and lack of
accountability define governance in the country. But with the over 40 countries
he visited in about 84 trips, and the N50.75 billion cost of maintaining the
Presidential Air Fleet at the end of 2022 - as one national daily reported,
this offers a bird's eye view of the amount his ill health has cost the
country.
Painfully, Nigeria's healthcare delivery has been missing in
all of this. The president never for once got himself treated locally, whether
in a public or private hospital, no matter how minor the ailment has been. It
is a perverse incentive to other public officers like governors to continually
indulge in the same at public expense. Buhari's lack of trust in our public
health system stems from the government's poor attention to human development
concerns, which has earned him thumbs down through much of his presidency.
It is infuriating that Aso Rock Clinic, which ought to have
taken care of the health concerns of the president and his family is not fit
for purpose, despite the billions of naira allocated in the national budget
annually to it. In 2022, a total of N20.8 billion was provided for the
construction of the Presidential Wing of the clinic. Even the First Lady, Aisha
Buhari, and her daughter, Zahra, were vehement in their denunciation of the
inefficiency of the system in 2017.
Aisha had then screamed, "I called the Aso Clinic to
find out if they have an X-Ray machine, they said it is not working. In the
end, I had to go to a hospital owned and operated by foreigners 100 per
cent." There was no syringe, she said. The daughter, on her Instagram
handle, cynically inveighed that "ordinary Paracetamol" was not
available in the Clinic.
If a hospital for the nation's first family is so
dysfunctional, it is a given that no public hospital in Nigeria is likely to be
in good shape. This explains why medical doctors in tertiary public health
institutions are always on strike, resulting in threats to lives and, in some
cases, the death of patients. Buhari will return to meet the fury of the
National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and expiration of their
ultimatum over a slew of welfare demands that must be met, or its members will
go on total strike.
The body wants the rejection of a Bill seeking to prevent
medical doctors from being issued full practicing licences until after five
years in service, as deterrent to their travelling abroad to ply their trade
after being trained at highly subsidised costs by the government.
It is also asking for a 200% salary increment; payment of
2014, 2015, 2016 salary arrears; and those from minimum wage consequential
adjustments, among other issues. That Bill is discriminatory and infringes on
doctors' rights. Therefore, it should be thrown away. A labourer deserves his
wages. Since these arrears were accumulated under Buhari's tenure, his
government should clear them before he vacates office.
The NARD charter of demands, including the underfunding of
public health institutions and not fostering an enabling environment for a
private, world class healthcare delivery system to thrive in the country,
underscore why medical personnel are leading the japa caravan - the high
emigration of Nigeria professionals to the UK, other parts of Europe, the US
and Saudi Arabia, for greener pastures. About 10,296 Nigerian doctors are
practicing in the UK alone, says the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA).
Instructively, the hospitals that treated Buhari these past
eight years are privately owned. King Edward VII's Hospital, for example, which
treated the late Queen Elizabeth II, is a private hospital. And no UK Prime
Minister or US President travels outside their countries to seek medical
attention. As Buhari failed to grasp this fact and its import to our sovereign
image, his successor, Bola Tinubu should not.
The UK, together with India and others, milk Nigeria about
$2 billion annually in medical tourism. Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire,
mentioned this loss two years ago, at the inauguration of the Cardiac
Catheterisation and Hospital Complex in Abuja. This is a big haemorrhage of our
scarce foreign exchange. Tinubu should not fall for the bait of being often
flown to Western capitals to treat headache, cold or any minor ailment that can
be handled within.
A president who submits himself for treatment in his domain,
buoys up doctors' confidence, enhances the capacity of the health system to
deliver and gain more public trust. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo demonstrated
this leadership by example last August, when he went to Duchess International
Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos for a knee surgery, rather than travel abroad.
Nigerians applauded him for it. Health is wealth, as the old
saying goes. As such, healthcare delivery deserves priority attention through
better funding, training, equipment and reward to medical personnel, than it
presently attracts, to save lives and staunch needless capital flight.