By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Bongo had been hospitalized for cancer treatment in Spain. President Bongo was not the last long-serving African president to die in Spain. On 8 July 2022, former Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, died also there after prolonged cancer treatment.
Following his death, a family crisis broke out over his funeral, which delayed the repatriation of his remains to Luanda for more than one month. Six weeks after his death, in the third week of August 2022, a judge in Spain finally authorized the return of the body of President dos Santos to Angola for burial.
When he departed Nigeria on 2 April, the presidency in Abuja issued a statement claiming that Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, was off to France on a “short working visit”, during which he would “retreat to review the progress of ongoing reforms and engage in strategic planning ahead of his administration’s second anniversary.” They barely stopped short of telling Nigerians that their president was headed to Lourdes for the grace of its historic apparitions.
President Tinubu is a Muslim; it was in the middle of the Christian season of Lent and no one had apparently bothered to advise him or his image makers that it is usually Christians who undertake two week-long retreats in the middle of this season. The day after the end of the initially announced 14 days, the same presidential retinue disclosed that the president had relocated from France to the United Kingdom, from where he was doing an excellent job as Nigeria’s president in Europe.
The evidence seems inescapable that President Tinubu has significant health challenges and needs regular medical attention from doctors overseas. For this, his destination of choice is clearly France. In 22 months as president, Tinubu has made at least eight trips to the country under different guises for a cumulative period of over 60 days.
While that he’s been away this time, hundreds – if not more – had been killed in massacres in different parts of Nigeria. As president, Tinubu is also the Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s armed and security forces.
Yet, from Europe, he is reported to be passing the buck to state governors to do that which only he has the tools to accomplish under Nigeria’s constitution.
Excluding the five years and three months of the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan from February 2010 to May 2015, Nigeria has had a presidency in near-permanent occupancy of sanatoriums overseas for 15 years.
The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which Tinubu led, was aggressively voluble in asking for candour on the health status of a terminally ill President Umaru Yar’Adua.
After going into marriage with Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to create All Progressives Congress (APC), they made virtue of unlooking when Buhari took up residence in foreign hospitals for much of his presidency. It should be no news that a man of President Tinubu’s age is unwell. Those invested in concealing that reality from Nigerians are more interested in protecting their present perquisites than in the wellbeing of their principal or of the country.
The presidency is more than just an office. For those around the occupant of the office, it also means money, power, and privilege. To preserve it, most people in and around the presidency take liberties, sometimes, even with the wellbeing of their principal or with accountability to the people in whose name he holds office.
For the country and even for the president, the wages of this interminable subterfuge are prohibitive.
A lawyer and teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]
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