Yes, indeed. That is the question. Where is the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC)? The man left
*Muhammadu Buhari
It didn’t
take a century for the pack of lies to crumble. It turned out the pictures
released of Buhari by his handlers were of the man on a UK visit during
2013. It turned out that the Buhari interview was years old, and had been
conducted not anywhere in Europe but inside an
Abuja Transcorp Hilton suite. Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose personally
visited the suite and demonstrated beyond every iota of doubt that it was the
venue of the so-called interview the APC claimed its presidential candidate had
granted in London .
Eagle-eyed journalists supported Fayose’s findings by detailing features of the
interview picture that pinned its origin to the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja .
Why did
the APC have to dish out these lies? Why is it that, upon the unraveling of the
APC’s web of falsehoods, the party decided against tendering an unreserved
apology for misleading the Nigerian electorate? The answer lies in the fact
that the APC has something to hide, despite its claims to transparency. But it
went about the hiding project in an amateur way. The party said Buhari was in London on a “brief
working visit”! But his itinerary was unpublished and unknown. Reacting to the
consternation caused by this development, the APC said Buhari was in London to
deliver a lecture at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, otherwise
better known as Chatham House, the name of the building in which it is
situated.
This
raised two questions. Buhari dreams of becoming the elected President of
Nigeria. In that respect he should be addressing Nigerians, and he could be
doing so at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Victoria
Island, Lagos .
Instead he flew 6275
kilometres to talk to white folk and a handful of
Nigerians none of whom has the vote. The lies continued to rear their ugly
heads. A check at the list of impending Chatham House engagements showed that
Buhari’s name was not there. The Chatham House talk was, after all, an
afterthought. The APC wangled an emergency slot for Buhari at Chatham House, an
institute seemingly overcome with the obsession of packaging Buhari for the
international community.
Tinubu and Buhari
After his
speech at Chatham House, Buhari granted an interview to Channels TV in which he
said that, following his campaign tour of 35 Nigerian state capitals, he needed
to leave all the hoopla and cavalcade behind and flee to London , to grab a rest! Isn’t there a place
in Buhari’s entire hometown of Daura for him to retire and recover from his
punishing campaign schedule? Another question: what kind of president will this
man make who requires a mandatory escape to England after every month, to
clutch at rest? Compare him to President Goodluck Jonathan who has, through the
past five years, been directing the affairs of Nigeria , without as much as taking
a full annual leave. Yet another question: Would it have been inappropriate for
Buhari to admit that the “peeling was from the Iroko’s trunk”? if he got
exhausted because he went political barnstorming, would it have been out of
place if the 72-year old politician acknowledged that he was in Britain
primarily to have a reading of his pulse taken, to have his organs examined and
his vital signs medically assessed and documented for likely emergencies?
That is
the crux of the matter. Muhammadu Buhari needs to come clean on his health
status. Not because he is a retired Major General of the Nigerian Army. Not
because he has left more questions than answers on too many aspects of his
controversial past. But because he desires to be President of Nigeria. A
politician with intent to lead Nigeria
should let Nigerians into the entire picture of his circumstances, in order
that they can make informed decisions on his suitability or otherwise for the
highest office in the country. Some opposing politicians have listed all sorts
of medical conditions they say are indicative of the man’s ineligibility for
the presidency of Nigeria .
The taste of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. But, rather than
disprove the allegations of poor health against Buhari, his handlers are
charging that his political opponents wish him dead. This charge holds no water
because wishes are no assassins. Were wishes murderers, Nigeria would
since have been severely depopulated. Nigerians hold overwhelmingly to the
attitude that life belongs only and strictly to God who gives it or takes it as
He pleases.
*President Jonathan
The
presidency of Nigeria
is a most tasking job. As Chief of Staff in a state government not very long
ago, I recall that we reported for work every morning at 7am, and hardly closed
for the day before 10pm. Still, the governor was liable to phone you at
midnight or at 3am, to ask for information, a speech or an explanation, if not
your physical presence. And there was the daily manifest, and all the travel
and other functions it entailed. If Buhari required to go abroad for medical
attention because he toured 35 states over one month while flying in the
comfort of a private jet, how does the man expect to shoulder the exigencies
and extreme pressures of presiding over Nigeria, an entity far in excess of any
of its component parts in terms of size, complexity, peculiarities, population
and international imperatives?
Muhammadu
Buhari’s “brief working visit” is stretching into one month, during which
period he has missed all but one (Chatham House) of the appointments keyed
against his name. Like a hermit he remains strangely incommunicado. Not even
Mutesa II, the Kabaka of Buganda, was in this severe form of isolation and
seclusion during his London
exile in the 1960s.
During the
presidential campaigns of 2007, Nigeria ,
at a stage, suffered the fait accompli of PDP Candidate Umaru Musa Yar’adua
being hospitalized in Germany ,
while his supporters, led by a certain Matthew Olusegun Obasanjo, insisted that
he was in robust health. For seemingly endless months in 2010, Nigeria endured
the dangerous precedent of presidential power vacuum as Yar’adua went through
death throes in a Saudi Arabian hospital, while his handlers claimed that he
was as medically and physically fit as an Olympic sprinter. Nigeria is
again at the epicentre of another explosive political scandal. For nearly a
month now, Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the APC has been
away from the shores of Nigeria ,
with his fellow countrymen and women at a loss as to the true circumstances of
his self-inflicted exile. The leadership of the APC owes the country a moral
and political obligation to answer this straightforward question: Where is
Muhammadu Buhari?
-------------------------
*Chuks
Iloegbunam (iloegbunam@hotmail.com) wrote this article from Lagos .
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