The decision by President Muhammadu Buhari to extend his 10-day official vacation indefinitely has elicited mixed reactions from Nigerians.
Vanguard reports that Buhari wrote to the National Assembly on Sunday, February 5, to extend his vacation on medical grounds, stating that the extension was to enable him complete and receive the results of a series of tests recommended by his doctors.
A statement by the special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina stated: “The President had planned to return to Abuja this evening, but was advised to complete the test cycle before returning. The notice has since been dispatched to the Senate President, and Speaker, House of Representatives. Mr. President expresses his sincere gratitude to Nigerians for their concern, prayers and kind wishes.”
Adesina however refused to disclose the ailment Buhari has gone to the UK to treat when he spoke further on a Channels Television programme in Lagos on Sunday night February 5.
He said: “You know that there is doctor-patient confidentiality; no doctor would release that to you.
“I am sure that if we get to point when the President has to disclose the status of his health, if he needs to disclose, he will do that.
“I am not aware and when I say that to you, believe it, I am not aware. The President is the one who can release his own medical status. The day he left, we spoke and he told me this was his condition. He told me he is going to rest and he would do medicals and that was included in the statement we released. If there is anything serious, the onus is on Mr. President to disclose or not to disclose. Knowing this President as a straight forward person, if there is anything that he needs to tell Nigerians he will surely do so.
According to The Nation, speaking on the whereabouts of the president, the senior special assistant to the president on media, Mallam Garba Shehu, said the president is not “seriously ill and not in the hospital. He is in the residence at the Nigeria Nigerian High Commission in London”
“I just spoke to the president’s personal doctor, and he told me President Buhari is not in any serious condition as to worry about
“He and his delegation were ready to come home today (yesterday) but for the delayed test result which came in today which necessitated that he delays his return.
“There is nothing to worry about as far as his condition is concerned”.
He added that: "Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such functions shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President."
Meanwhile, the national caretaker committee of the Peoples Democratic Party called on Buhari to tell Nigerians the true state of his health.
According to The Punch, the spokesperson for the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led caretaker committee, Mr. Dayo Adeyeye, said it was wrong for the president to also send letter to the National Assembly, extending his leave, without telling Nigerians when he would resume.
But the APC urged the PDP to join other well-meaning Nigerians to pray for the president instead of seizing an opportunity to get even.
The national publicity secretary of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said: “This is the President of the country. The elections are over; he is our President, he is the President of Nigeria not that of the APC or the PDP. If the President has told us that he needs to stay back to do some other medical things, it behoves us, as responsible citizens, to pray for him and stop sensing an opportunity to retaliate.
"Does the PDP know more than what we have been told? What we know is what we have been told.
“We believe that the President has demonstrated an acute sense of responsibility. We are all living witnesses to our recent history where a President travelled and did not even communicate to the National Assembly the appropriate document to make the then Vice-President act in his stead.
“But this is a President that, on every occasion that he has to travel, he not only communicate to the National Assembly, but creates the enabling environment and the space for the Vice-President to act as President in his absence.
“I don’t know why people will start going green in the eyes as if we are actually hoping that tragedy befalls this country.
“The PDP should not behave in a way that will make Nigerians begin to think that it is actually spreading the rumour that the President is dead."
