Nigeria And Its Tunnel Vision Elites

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Nigerians are hypocritically sanctimonious, a trait that has become evident since the death of President Muhammadu Buhari in a London hospital on Sunday, July 13. Many, particularly politicians, have lied against the man, literally, by clothing him in borrowed robes in a bid not to speak ill of the dead.

*Late Buhari and Tinubu

All manner of adjectives have been deployed in eulogising the departed leader. But in doing that they lie against him, almost to the point of defamation.

But there is no use flogging a dead horse. While Buhari was alive, I wrote tons of articles lamenting his leadership style not because I hated him but because I wanted him to change. But he was a man set in his ways. Now that he is dead, the inevitable judgement of history will take its natural course. But one fact remains undeniable as Professor Anthony Kila aptly put it: Buhari is a promise unkept.

The good thing that could have come out of the Buhari tragedy is if there is a leadership reset – current leaders learning a lesson or two from his failures and taking a cue for good. Sadly, no lesson has been learnt. Instead, his disciples are doubling down.

Take for instance, on Tuesday, Femi Adesina, Buhari’s spokesperson, said his principal could have died a long time ago if he had relied on Nigerian hospitals.

“If he had said ‘I will do my medicals in Nigeria’ just as a show off or something, he could have long been dead because there may not be the expertise needed in the country. But he needed to be alive to be able to lead the country to a point when we will have that expertise,” Adesina said on Channels Television.

He was probably correct. But the flip side of his argument is the fact that the dearth of medical expertise is a direct consequence of government’s inability to invest in the health sector, which led to the fleeing of the country’s medical experts abroad. So, it is a failure of successive leaderships to do the needful in the health sector. And in the 65 years since after independence, Buhari was on the saddle for nine years and eight months – 20 months as military head of state and eight years as civilian president.

The irony is the fact that when these Nigerian leaders travel abroad on medical tourism, they are, in most cases, attended to by Nigerian doctors and nurses who were forced to flee the country in search of not only wealth but professional fulfilment abroad because of the tunnel vision leadership provided by the likes of Buhari.

Few years ago, a Nigerian governor lost his mother at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas. Unbeknown to him, some of the best medical personnel in that medical facility, including nurses who looked after his mother were Nigerians. That came at a huge cost, of course, to his State. Enlightened self-interest should have made him to build a cancer treatment centre in his oil-rich State in the memory of his mother. He didn’t.

It is telling that at the time Buhari was on his death bed in London, former military head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, and Alhaji Mamman Daura, Buhari’s all-powerful nephew, were also on medical tourism in the UK. In fact, General Abubakar said he was admitted in the same hospital where Buhari died, as if that was something to be proud of.

In justifying Buhari’s unprecedented appetite for medical tourism, Adesina said he always had his medicals in London even when he was not in office. Buhari, he said, “needed to be alive to be able to lead the country to a point when we will have that expertise.”

What Adesina didn’t say but which was obviously at the back of his mind is that it would have been inexplicable, in fact a shame, for a “big man” like Buhari to have died at home in a country where dying abroad has become a status symbol. It is a shame, all pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding, that as a military head of state for 20 months and civilian president for eight years, Buhari failed to build a world class medical facility that could handle his medical challenges at home.

Ironically, all the money Buhari invested in his personal health abroad – tax payers’ money – running into billions of Naira, could have built world class medical facilities in Nigeria. In 2017 alone, he spent 152 days getting medical treatment in the United Kingdom, including the 103-day stretch from May 7 to August 19, 2017. And the cost of parking his presidential jet in London during the three-month spell was estimated at £360,000. That was about 0.07% of the country’s N304 billion budget allocation for health that year. That was only a fraction of the costs incurred within the period.

Yet, here was a president whose administration vowed not to encourage government officials to seek medical care abroad.

Those who argue that citizens have the inalienable right to seek medical attention from wherever miss the point. If Buhari was a private citizen using his personal resources to finance his medical tourism, no eyebrows would have been raised. But here was a man who leveraged his high office as president and used state resources which could have been used in promoting public good by building hospitals at home to take care of his personal health abroad.

If the humongous state resources spent on medical tourism by political office holders are deployed in building hospitals here, Nigeria will cease being a glorified burial ground and Nigerian medical personnel who fled abroad because of untenable working conditions at home will return with their expertise. A 2011 report estimated that nine sub-Saharan African countries – including Nigeria and Kenya – had lost $2.17 billion worth of investment in their domestically educated doctors migrating to Australia, Canada, UK, and the U.S. Of course, that figure is much higher today.

Is it any wonder then why, according to the UN World Population Prospects 2025 report, Nigeria has the lowest life expectancy in the world. With an average life expectancy of just 54.8 years – 54.5 for males and 55.1 for females – Nigeria ranks below countries like Chad, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Truth be told, there is absolutely no dignity in a president – serving or former – dying in a foreign hospital because he or she could not get quality healthcare at home. If anything, providing medical care to a president at home is not only a matter of national pride and prestige, but also demonstrates confidence in a country’s healthcare system and boosting morale. Thus, the former South African President, Nelson Mandela, died in South Africa. It would have been inconceivable that Madiba was flown abroad to die in a foreign hospital.

No country worth its sovereignty would subscribe to that indignity because besides the issue of prestige and national pride, it is also a matter of national security because treating an ailing president at home helps in securing sensitive information related to the leader’s health, which could be exploited by adversaries or used to destabilise the country.

But rather follow the examples of South Africa, European, North American and Asian nations, Nigeria, the self-acclaimed giant of Africa, is following in the footsteps of other banana republics that litter the continent where the death of a leader in Europe and America is celebrated as a badge of honour.

Sadly, nothing is about to change because President Bola Tinubu is in lockstep with his predecessor, the only difference being that the destination has changed. While Buhari preferred the UK, Tinubu has found his own medical haven in France. And how these leaders pretend not to know that the efficient health systems in Europe and Asia, which they patronise only exist because they were developed, and are consistently maintained through political commitment and visionary leadership almost beggars belief.

The big shame is that as long as Nigerian leaders’ appetite for foreign hospitals remain insatiate, the hope for better health infrastructure at home will remain forlorn. Preventable diseases will continue to kill vulnerable men, women and children and patients will continue to sleep on hospital floors after travelling long distances to access medical facilities that are no better than glorified mortuaries. And that is one of the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s enduring legacies of shame.

*Amaechi, publisher of TheNiche, is a commentator on public issues