I just love Muhammadu Buhari. That he no longer wears his general title makes him no less a soldier. Just weeks ago, a newspaper reported that Buhari has spent 404 days out of his four year presidency abroad. He has visited 33 countries so far and the UK has remained the president’s most favoured destination. He has spent 217 or more than half of his entire foreign travels in the UK as at the time the report was written. Last week, the president went on another ten-day vacation – to London. There is something in London’s fresh air that #change couldn’t replicate in Abuja.
The report of the presidential junket has not cowered Buhari. The president is not intimidated by anybody. His trips show why Naija is every tourist’s preferred destination. They’re trouping to Yankari, Obudu Cattle Ranch and Ikogosi warm springs.
On this last vacation of his first term, I looked at the probability of the president seeing his favourite otolaryngologist and came with a very slim prospect. If you ask Garba Shehu, it is not unlikely that the ENT doctor would visit his client? That was why in the past, British doctors carried medical bags. Apps have not replaced those instruments for exclusive patients. Being visited by one’s physician while on vacation is not an offense under British law.
Since Sai Mama has stopped crying over the state of Arsehole Rock Clinic, it is expected that things in that department must have improved. As a once privileged patient, the clinic has always attracted the best in medicine sworn to zero interest in politics.
Evidently, Buhari loves doctors. Apart from his private physician paid for by taxpayers, there are at least two visible ones in his cabinet. The minister in charge of death, – yes, that very one who asked doctors to drop their scalpel and stethoscopes and pick up scissors or hoes and cutlasses – is a trained gynaecologist. Forget that Sai Mama is not raising kids; Sai Baba has privileged grandkids in case Roch staff think Sai Mama’s worry about the state of the rock clinic has something to do with them. The minister of unemployment, Chris Ngige, who shares both height and nomenclature with Adewole is a medical doctor. Before finding love in APC, Adewole was once forced into exile by Buhari. Ngige has advised the few doctors remaining to migrate to Euroamerica. Who knows, they might become chief physician to the next president. Miracles happen.
As far as advisers go, Ngige is in a good position to give this one. Early in his professional career, he discovered that there is more money to be made; and more prestige to be earned from active politics than in saving the lives of an overpopulated nation. Forget my good brother, Dr Motunrayo Adetola who heads physicians of Naija descent, CANPAD in Canada. Forget those guys in the New York office of the WHO who sit in their offices postulating how many doctors should treat how many patients. Babalawo, Boka and Dibia are closer to the people than doctors. Miracle workers are for those in the cities.
Adetola knows that Naija is medically under-covered. While it has trained 82,000 doctors thus far, only a paltry 35,000 have remained in practice in Naija. Most of the remainers are only waiting for the right opportunity to leave. The President of CANPAD believes Naija needs extra 400,000 physicians to meet the demands of its population of 200 million. The Adetolas of this world are not recruited into ministerial duties, so nobody hears him.
Besides, who says the Buhari regime wants to raise a healthy nation. That is not the prayers of the quacks harvesting our citizen’s organs in India. It is not part of the ruining party’s agenda to raise the number of doctors. They know that the country is overpopulated. They are working with technically defeated groups and emergent ones to held curl this overpopulation.
While Sai Baba was jetting out to London for his undeserved leave, Konduga, a town in the north-east was under attack. It did not feature in the news. Zamfara remains under siege and kidnappers have most part of the nation under lockdown.
Adam Zango, a Kannywood actor in his mid 30s is getting married for the sixth time. Lucky chap. He dropped his other five to consummate this sixth. Don’t cry for the divorcees. In Kano, they are wards of government and they are hot cake. Arranged husbands are always on hand. Problem is, they want only the assets, not the liabilities – children or divorcees are liabilities. Back to Zango, imagine the number of marriages he would have contracted and the number of children he would have blessed our nation with if he lived to be 72.
Our president has 10 that to quote him – he is well able to take cater for. Zango’s case is famous because he recently declared himself the most famous actor in Kannywood. There are other unsung rabbits littering the geographical landscape with liabilities who become waiting recruits for insurgents, willing trainees of kidnappers, and yahooze or whoever is ready to hire them.
Tired from his campaigns, the president deserves his long vacation and the nation could fund it. He’ll need time to find replacements for the clowns he spent six months to foist on us. They need their break too or time to reposition themselves since their contract with the nation is a life contract. They don’t retire. Naija is a freehold. Nobody to stop people from being killed, extorted or kidnapped. Besides, Sai Baba deserves his steroids if he is to make it through his second term. We cannot deny him that privilege.
