Sickening.....

Sickening….

Once in a while, as humans, we all get sick and need to get treated and get back to normal activities. The tragedy however is that a lot of us sometimes do not get back to work. They die. A good number of these deaths are sadly due to preventable and curable diseases as a result of inability to access affordable medical care. If this was everyone's lot, we can always agree with our spiritual leaders that it is our destiny or the works of the devil. Interestingly, this is neither true nor everyone’s lot. And this is where the comedy starts.

By the time you are reading this piece,President Muhamadu Buhari will have arrived in London on his third medical trip this year, some eight months after returning from the last one that lasted fifty days .The president left without telling us the cost of the medical treatment to the tax payers but by the time he is back in four days, three thousand and two-eighty four(3,284) Nigerian kids would have avoidably died of malaria. He will probably not hear the bad news because of his ear infection.

As for those us who are not hard of hearing,this is not the work of the devil; he is too busy handling natural disasters than getting involved with man- made disasters that our elected leaders are quite competent of starting and sustaining to their benefits and to our detriment.

We all knew that Buhari at his age will be prone to ailments giving his strict youthful lifestyle of just smoking and womanizing,but we chose to vote for his integrity anyway, a quality which was clearly lacking in other morally bankrupt presidential aspirants with good health. What we did not bargain for is his preference for seeking treatment abroad for his local ailments—like many African spiritual and political leaders— which is at odds with his administration’s rhetoric of war against corruption.

Though between opinion and fact, a debate always ensues, but it is my opinion that Buhari’s famed integrity coupled with unverified integrity of his entire cabinet has not been able to move the country forward. That is a fact when you consider our present situation: With an army without arms, bereft of strategy and lacking general ideas, General Buhari has been reduced to a boy scout in his battle against the Boko Haram. While we can excuse him on the ground that he inherited the north-east crisis like he inherited the 13 aircrafts in the presidential fleet, the marauding herdsmen are of his own ingeniuos making and just speaking hausa to them has obviously not yielded any solution and will not. It is time for the obvious.

Mr President must also not listen(not that he can medically do anyway) to those singing that “quitters don't win and winners don't quit”. While in UK, the President should visit the Emirates and ask for one Arsene Wengers, he is a living example of the tragedy of that cliche. He eventually quit not on his terms and not as a winner but a loser!

Sir, an ailing economy does not deserve an equally ill leader. Your family needs you and we need our country back, preferably in one piece!