BUHARI'S ILL HEALTH: Jets to UK For Medical Attention, Date of Return Unknown as VP Osinbajo Takes Over

President Muhammadu Buhari left Abuja on Sunday night for London, the Unit­ed Kingdom, for follow-up medical consultation with his doc­tors.
It is not yet known when the President will return to Nigeria.
A presidency statement which announced the trip said the presi­dent will remain in London for the medicals for a duration of time to be determined only by his doctors.

Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who issued the statement, also disclosed that Buhari had writ­ten to the National Assembly for Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo to run the government in his absence.
Adesina said Buhari “had planned to leave Sunday afternoon, but decided to tarry a bit, due to the arrival of 82 Chibok girls who ar­rived Abuja earlier in the day.”
Analysts see Buhari’s departure last night on another medical va­cation as an indication of his wors­ening health condition – a situa­tion which precipitated last week’s meeting by some concerned former heads of state to seek a way forward.
However, Adesina says there is no cause for concern over the pres­ident’s health.
His words: “The President wishes to assure all Nigerians that there is no cause for worry. He is very grateful for the prayers and good wishes of the people, and hopes they would continue to pray for the peace and unity of the na­tion.
“The length of the President’s stay in London will be determined by the doctors.
“Government will continue to function normally under the able leadership of the Vice President.
“President Buhari has transmit­ted letters about the trip to the Sen­ate and the House of Representa­tives, in compliance with Section 145 (1) of the 1999 Constitution.”
With Buhari’s travel to seek further medical care, the move last week by three former Nigeri­an leaders, Chief Olusegun Obasan­jo, General Ibrahim Babangida and General Abdulsalami Abubakar, to intervene and possibly negotiate his resignation, following mounting concerns about his health, is obvi­ously off the cards for now.
For weeks now, until he re­ceived the freed Chibok Girls last night, President Buhari had not been seen performing the func­tions of his office. He had not at­tended the Federal Executive Coun­cil meeting.
Indeed, Buhari’s being off the public radar for several days had raised considerable anxiety among Nigerians who think his ill-health has rendered him incapable of per­forming his official functions.
Last week, Osinbajo had to chair the meeting at the last min­ute with presidential aides saying that he was resting on the advice of his doctors.
The week before that, the meet­ing did not hold at all, and the pres­idency blamed the Easter break for the inability of the FEC secretariat to circulate relevant memos to cab­inet members.
Even the Wednesday before the Easter break, the President did not chair the cabinet session as of­ficials told journalists that he was busy with other unnamed state functions.
For the past two Fridays, Buha­ri have failed to appear at the Vil­la mosque for the Juma’at prayers as he usually did, thus heightening the apprehension in the polity over his health status.
Buhari had considerably scaled down his official functions since his return from a 50-day medical vaca­tion in London.
Presidency aides insist that he has been working from an office in his residence, which is why he has not been seen publicly for some time.
Last Wednesday, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, an­nounced that the President had asked for official files to be brought to him at the residence as he con­tinued his rest.
Buhari however, made an eventual appearance at the Villa mosque for Jum’at prayers last Fri­day, where he worshipped along­side some senior aides and govern­ment officials.
A visit by the President of Ni­ger had been put off ostensibly at the request of the Niger President, but diplomatic sources insist the visit was called off at the behest of Nigeria.
The Obasanjo, Babangida and Ab­dulsalami option
The trio of Obasanjo, Baban­gida and Abdulsalami Abubakar had met and resolved to negotiate with “the Cabal” towards Buhari’s resignation to enable him “proper­ly take care of his health” and give the country room to get the much desired leadership.
The three leaders had met on May 1, 2017 at General Babangida’s home in Minna, Niger State, amid a seeming crisis and confusion with the politicking with the President’s health which they noted was un­healthy and a threat to national se­curity and development.
They were also reportedly wor­ried at the discordant tunes by the President’s media aides and his close associates which were creat­ing anxiety among Nigerians and the international community.
The former heads of state re­portedly reached out to the “cabal” - Mamman Daura, Abba Kyari, Al­haji Ismaila Isa Funtua (publisher of the defunct Democrat newspa­per, said to be very close to IBB), to sell the idea to them. The Presi­dency cabal was said to have sum­moned a Kaduna-based top politi­cian and some other politicians to help them navigate the way out for them as the three former leaders are not men whose request could be ig­nored without its own fallouts. This was as the former leaders had made up their mind to seek President Bu­hari’s resignation.
The Cabal are not popular and lack political structures. Only Am­bassador Babagana Kingibe, who is serving as Personal Assistant to Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff, has “practical political experience”.
The President’s Chief of Staff, though the public face of the Ca­bal, reports to his mentor and ben­efactor, Mamman Daura, a smooth operator.
Kyari has been blamed for the handling of issues surrounding the President and the mismanagement of his health. The Governor of Ka­duna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, had in his 22 September 2016 let­ter to President Buhari, accused the Chief of Staff of being “totally clue­less about the APC and its internal politics, at best, as he was neither part of its formation nor a partic­ipant in the primaries, campaign and elections. In summary, neither of them has the personality, experi­ence and the reach to manage your politics nationally or even region­ally.”
Beyond that, some notable Northern leaders have called for Kyari’s resignation or sack on the issue of alleged “incompetence” while others have expressed wor­ry over his own health and ability to steer the President’s office in the desired direction.
These have prompted conjec­tures that even if his name comes as Vice President in the case of Bu­hari’s resignation, it would not fly as he allegedly has no support base.
But as the former leaders were perfecting how to execute the res­ignation option, Chief Bisi Akande, a political gladiator from the South West, closely aligned with the All Progressive Congress (APC) na­tional leader and former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinu­bu, blew the entire effort with his open letter.
The flurry of seemingly coordinated statements was read by the North as gloating at their coming opportunities and a warning to the Northern political establishment to be careful as they were ready for the political “war” that may arise with the uncertainty over President Bu­hari’s health.
The statements arising from Tinubu and former APC chair­man, Chief Akande, the group led by Lagos activist, Femi Falana and former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Alani Akinrinade, were interpreted as threats from the political elite, the cream of activists and former mil­itary leaders from the South West.
Specifically, Akande said in his widely circulated statement: “The greatest danger, however, is for po­litical interests at the corridor of power attempting to feast on the health of Mr. President in a dan­gerous manner that may aggravate the problems between the execu­tive and the national assembly with­out realising if, in the end, it could drag the entire country into avoid­able doom.
“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.”
Akande’s position that 2017 is not 1993 reverberated across the North, such that even those who don’t like the cabal won’t mind the cabal to continue to direct affairs of State under a health-challenged President Buhari.
Observers say that, for most Northerners, the issue of President Buhari’s resignation does not arise any longer as there is no love lost between the South West political block and the North.
The old lack of trust between the two blocks that has character­ized their relationship until the po­litical alliance of 2015 that helped Buhari win the Presidential elec­tions appears to be playing out again. The honeymoon between the Northern and the South West political elite seems to be over.
The palpable fear of the North is that if Buhari resigns to go and take care of his health, the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osin­bajo, has two solid years to make some positive impact. And with a formidable political structure and generalissimo of Governor Tinubu on his side, the Goodluck Jonathan scenario would play out again. This is responsible for the sudden hard-line position of the North on Bu­hari’s resignation. This has kept the moves by Obasanjo, Babangida and Abdulsalami on hold for now.
Analysts opine that for most northerners, if President Buha­ri dies in office as a result of the ill health, they will take it as it comes. But they will keep him in office un­til the political season of 2018 when the North will use the machinery of governance to pick their own man as the Presidential candidate of the APC.
The suspicion and frosty rela­tionship between the North and the South West reared its head even before the swearing in of President Buhari in early May 2015 when Dr Shamsudeen Usman, former Min­ister of Finance under late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and former Minister of National Planning un­der President Goodluck Jonathan, asked the Yorubas to stop black­mailing the North.
According to Dr Usman: “Yor­ubas must not blackmail Buhari. Tinubu should not think that con­trolling Lagos is the same as con­trolling Nigeria. The entire South-West just contributed about 500,000 margin votes which are smaller compared to what the entire Zam­fara delivered to GMB, not to men­tion even core states in the North­east or Kano.”
“So, what is it that the region is bringing to blackmail Buhari into handing over the government to Tinubu who thinks controlling La­gos is the same as Buhari? Each time we talk about Buhari’s administra­tion, people are quick to remind us that without the South West region, GMB wouldn’t have emerged. That’s a lie. With or without that region he would have. It was time for Jon­athan to leave and nothing would have stopped him (GMB)”.
Although President Buhari has been expressing publicly his grat­itude to Governor Tinubu for his emergence, the President, in the events leading to the formation of his government, never considered Timubu’s candidates for Ministers. He actually picked younger ele­ments opposed to Tinubu’s “over­bearing” hold on South West pol­itics.
In the contest for the Senate Presidency, President Buhari never backed Tinubu’s candidates – which led to the emergence of Dr Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yaku­bu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Attacks by Governor Tinubu on Presidential appointees are seen as indirect attacks on President Bu­hari. For example, in the heat of the fuel scarcity in March 2016, then Group Managing Director of Nige­rian National Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC) and Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr Ibe Kachikwu, had said: “I have no magic wand.”
On Saturday, March 26, 2016, Tinubu issued a statement express­ing dissatisfaction with Kachikwu ti­tled: ‘Kachikwu Needs to Know That Respect and Good Performance Will Do What Magic Cannot’.
In the statement, interpreted by the Presidency as anti-Buhari, who is the substantive Minister of Petro­leum, Tinubu described Kachikwu’s comments as “untimely and off-put­ting”.
“The remark did not sit well with the Nigerian people; they were as right to feel insulted as the min­ister was wrong to have said such a thing. The fuel shortage is severely biting for the average person. They are forced to remain in lines far too long – for too much time – to pay too much money for too little fuel. This is no joking matter. Livelihoods and people’s welfare are at stake. It insulted the people by its tonality. He spoke with the imperious nature of a member of the elitist government the people voted out last year and not the progressive one they voted in… As his ultimate bosses, the peo­ple have a right to demand the req­uisite performance and respect from him. He should apologise for treat­ing them so lightly in this instance.”
As one source told The AU­THORITY, “After eight years of President Obasanjo’s government, the North does not want the South West to take power as they are the most organized, the most focused and have had their fair share of Presi­dential power. This is very critical for the North now as they will work qui­etly to keep Buhari alive and ensure he lives to preside over the nomi­nation and election of his succes­sor election.”