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.
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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.
