Buhari's Health: Falana Urges Buhari to Step Aside says He is Too Ill To Govern Nigeria

Eminent lawyer Femi Falana and other activists have urged ailing President Mu­hammadu Buhari to step aside and treat himself.
The activists are of the opinion that Buhari is too sick to contin­ue to lead Nigeria and should step aside while he takes time to treat himself.
In a joint statement issued on Monday, the activists said their in­tervention comes in the context of mounting anxiety that Buhari had become unable to perform his du­ties as leader of Africa’s most pop­ulous nation.
The full statement says:

“When President Muham­madu Buhari was recently in the United Kingdom on a medical vacation, which lasted 50 days, many public officers said that he was “hale and hearty.” But upon his return to the country, the pres­ident disclosed that he had never been that sick in his entire life. Even though President Buhari did not disclose the nature of his ailment, he revealed that he went through blood transfusion. While thank­ing the Nigerian people for their prayers, the president announced that he might soon travel back for further medical treatment.
A few weeks ago, the governor of Kaduna State, Mr. Nasir El-Ru­fai urged Nigerians to give Presi­dent Buhari time to recover from his sickness. The plea was made after the governor had visited and presumably assessed the state of health of the president at the pres­idential villa in Abuja. However, due to the apparent deterioration in the president’s condition, he has neither been seen in public in the last one week nor attended the last two meetings of the Federal Exec­utive Council. His absence at the last Jumat service in the villa has fuelled further speculations and ru­mours on President Buhari’s medi­cal condition.
But instead of embarking on a regular briefing on the actual state of the health of President Buhari, officials of the federal government have continued to assure the Nige­rian people that there is no need for apprehension over the matter. In defending the absence of the president at the last FEC meeting and other state functions, the sen­ior special assistant to the president on Media and Publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu stated that “the president’s doctors have advised on his tak­ing things slowly, as he fully recov­ers from the long period of treat­ment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago.”
As we join the Nigerian people of goodwill to pray for a speedy re­covery of President Buhari, we are compelled to advise him to heed the advice of his personal physi­cians by taking a rest to attend to his health without any further de­lay.”
The statement was signed by Femi Falana (SAN); Professor Ji­brin Ibrahim; Debo Adeniran, Dr. Chris Kwaja; Y. Z. Ya’u; Chom Bagu; Olanrewaju Suraju; Ezenwa Nwagwu; Anwal Musa Rafsanja­ni; David Ugolor; ‘Sina Odugbemi; Muhammed Attah and Adetokun­bo Mumuni.
I wept for President Buhari on Saturday, says Bisi Akande
The founding National Chair­man of the All Progressives Con­gress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has urged Nigerians to pray fer­vently for President Muhammadu Buhari’s health.
The elder statesman said: “The health of the leader is intricately intertwined with the health of the Nation. It is more so in a delicately fragile Union of Nations called Ni­geria. I did not see President Buha­ri at the wedding of his grandson in Kaduna last Saturday. I was sad and I wept.”
“When last we met at the wed­ding of his daughter in Abuja last December, I complained to him that I was not happy about his stressful looks. His reply connoted some allusions to circumstances where an honest man fighting cor­ruption is surrounded mostly by an unpatriotic greedy ruling class. He felt painfully frustrated. He assured me he would soon be going on va­cation. I then knew that corruption has effectively been fighting back. And I prayed for Nigeria. That was why Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu and I rushed to meet him in London in February this year when he was sick and could not return as scheduled from his vacation. The rest is histo­ry but we must appreciate that his poor health is already taking a toll on the health of Nigeria as a polity.”
Chief Akande, an elder states­man, said there were two challeng­es facing the country today.
“The first and most critical is the health of the President which, unfortunately, is a development be­yond his control and for which we did not prepare. The second is the disorder and lack of cohesion be­tween the National Assembly and the Presidency. These are two great red flag dangers that have the po­tential of plunging the country into unprecedented chaos and of desta­bilising the gains of democracy since 1999.”
Akande said the greatest dan­ger, however, was for political in­terests at the corridors of power at­tempting to feast on the health of the President in a dangerous man­ner that may aggravate the prob­lems between the Executive and the National Assembly – a situation which could, in the end, drag the entire country into avoidable doom.
“As delicately fragile the Un­ion of Nations making up Nigeria, so delicately fragile the democracy and the rule of laws governing the polity of the Union called Nigerian Federation. Certain Nigerian lead­ers, having been blindfolded by cor­ruption, assume the possibility of using money in manipulating the national security agencies to intim­idate, suppress and hold down cer­tain ethnic nationalities or playing one ethnic nationality against the other with a view to undermining the constitution and perversely up­turning the rule of law. To avoid the ugly consequences of letting Presi­dent Buhari’s ailments throw Nige­ria into confusion, I am urging all Nigerians to begin to pray for his di­vine healing and perfect recovery.”
“Let me warn today that those who wish to harvest political gains out of the health of the President are mistaken. This is not Nigeria of 1993. We are in a new nation­al and global era of constitution­alism and order. We hope Nigeri­ans have enough patience to learn from history. My greatest fear, how­ever, is that the country should not be allowed to slide into anarchy and disorder of a monumental propor­tion”.