President Muhammadu Buhari is currently on a 10-day medical vacation. This is the second time Buhari will be proceeding on vacation this year, having earlier embarked on a six-day vacation between February 5 and 10.
In the two instances, Buhari wrote to the National Assembly as required by law and asked that Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo should perform the duties of the President. Simply put, Osinbajo was named the Acting President.
The truth of the matter is that Osinbajo is not new to the roles of the President. He may not sit on the President’s seat or occupy his office but he is used to carrying out presidential roles as delegated to him by the President. Lately, tongues have been wagging on the manner in which Buhari had been sending Osinbajo to places where he had hitherto been scheduled to be. One of such cases was when he shelved his scheduled two-day official visit to Lagos State at the last minute and sent Osinbajo to represent him. The Presidency had attributed the development to what it called “scheduling difficulties.”
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Penultimate Thursday, Buhari again shelved his trip to Rivers State during which he would have inaugurated the clean-up of Ogoniland and other oil-impacted communities. He again sent Osinbajo to represent him at the event with the Presidency saying there was no big deal in the Vice-President representing Buhari at functions since it is one Presidency.
Last weekend, Buhari put off his scheduled trip to Dakar, Senegal for the 49th Ordinary Session of the Economic Community of West African States, asking Osinbajo to again represent him. Despite fears about the President’s state of health, the Presidency had claimed that the President was “as fit as fiddle.”
But on Sunday, the Presidency came up with a statement that Buhari would be travelling to London to rest and would use the opportunity to see Ear, Nose and Throat specialists for a persistent ear infection. He was said to have been treated by his Personal Physician and an E.N.T Specialist in Abuja with both Nigerian doctors recommending further evaluation “purely as a precaution.”
This is of course an indication that all is not well with the President’s state of health. But the Presidency obviously is not comfortable with the use of “illness” or “sickness” when referring to this case.
But trust Buhari, he is never ready to deny the obvious. “Is there anybody that doesn’t fall sick?” was the question he posed to a journalist who asked him to react to the tension created by his state of health across the nation. That answer, to me, presupposed that the President is not under any illusion as far as his health is concerned.
Meanwhile, before he left the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport on Monday for London, the President left specific instructions for his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, as can be deduced from a photograph of the two of them that went viral on the Internet.
I wrote a piece last week in which I listed Kyari as one of the 10 powerful men in Buhari’s government. I noted that he always holds tenaciously to office files that may contain national secrets and he does not release his documents to anybody, including his security aides. When he was returning from a meeting on Wednesday, Kyari asked journalists, “where is THE PUNCH guy? He wrote that I always hold my files and I don’t give anybody.” As of that time, he was holding some files to his chest. Somebody replied him that the files he was holding confirmed the report and smiling, he replied, “Yes, because I don’t want any leakages from my side.”
Today is the sixth day of the President’s vacation. Going by the announcement by the Presidency, he should be back on his seat either on Wednesday or Thursday, all things being equal.
The last one week has however been an eventful one for the Acting President. A few minutes after Buhari left the country on Monday, Osinbajo hosted a delegation of the European Union led by the EU Ambassador in Nigeria, Mr. Michel Arrion. During that visit, he explained the rationale behind the Federal Government’s decision not to name those it recovered looted fund from.
On Tuesday, he had a meeting with the nation’s service chiefs and governors of oil-producing states on the renewed violence in the Niger Delta by militants which had crippled crude oil production and power supply.
On Wednesday, Osinbajo presided over a meeting of the Federal Executive Council that had about 22 of the 36 ministers in attendance. Three of them were said to be indisposed. Later in the day, he personally signed a condolence message he wrote in honour of a former coach of the national team, Stephen Keshi, who died earlier in the day.
On Thursday, he also inaugurated the Federal Government’s National Home Grown School Feeding programme which is a component of the Social Investment Plan promised by the All Progressives Congress government. The acting President clearly has a lot on his plate.
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