At a time when Nigerians are grappling with the worst fuel crisis in recent memory and nationwide unstable electricity supply, President Muhammadu Buhari and his wife, Aisha, have both abandoned Nigeria. The President is on a trip to London for medical checkups that will last for two weeks. After a brief visit to Nigeria in February, the first lady has returned to Dubai where she has been living since 2020. While the tone-deaf couple enjoys the well-run cities of London and Dubai, their compatriots continue to spend long hours at filling stations to buy petrol for their vehicles.
The President’s medical trip to London has left Nigeria without the head of government that will rally the relevant agencies and companies to end the debilitating energy crisis. As the president has refused to hand over power to his deputy, we are forced to rely on a remote-working president whose in-office performance has been uninspiring. It is unclear how many work hours the president can even put in while he is been checked and tested by different medical staff. There is a reason why the president in his early years in office would make his deputy the acting president to avoid any vacuum in the governance structure. This was a breath of fresh air as Nigerian leaders, at both federal and state levels, weren’t fond of voluntarily relinquishing power to take care of their health. Sadly, since the last transfer of power to the vice president in 2018, the president has spent the last four years “working” while on medical trips and vacations.
One can draw a straight line from the refusal of the president to transfer power since 2018 to certain decisions taken by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo in 2018. The most controversial of the decisions is the sacking of the Director-General of the Department of State Security, Mr. Lawal Daura, a relative of President Buhari, for acts of gross insubordination. Mr. Daura’s sack was well justified as he had reportedly imposed a siege on the National Assembly without any presidential authorisation and had been reluctant to call it off when instructed by the Acting President. Unfortunately, the decisiveness of the Acting President in this case and a few others has probably meant that the president no longer wants to risk transferring power to a deputy that has proven to have a mind of his own.
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The decision on whether to transfer power while on medical vacation is ordinarily not a subject of discretion as the 1999 constitution is quite clear on the subject with section 145 stating, “Whenever the President is proceeding on vacation or is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, he shall transmit a written declaration to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the house of representatives to that effect, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, the Vice-President shall perform the functions of the President as Acting President.” It is bad enough that the president will not be around to help to resolve this energy crisis that is bound to worsen with the ongoing war in Ukraine, it is most unfortunate that the president has refused to let his deputy stand in for him so Nigeria can have a leader that is actually on the ground and able to act swiftly.
As for the first lady, her long sabbatical in Dubai took an embarrassing turn when a video emerged showing her and some governors’ wives celebrating her 51st birthday. The governors’ wives have denied traveling to Dubai solely to felicitate with the First Lady, saying they had gone to Dubai as part of the First Lady’s entourage to tour Dubai Expo 2020, e-learning centre, Youth Hub and meet with agencies interested in investing in education. Regardless of this unconvincing alibi, it is a bad look that our first ladies are enjoying themselves in the glamour and glitz of Dubai presumably with taxpayers’ money while Nigerians face major crises at home. The women who love to represent themselves as promoters of women’s rights should probably have spent the last few weeks lobbying for the various pro-women bills at the National Assembly instead of making out time to celebrate an overseas birthday with their colleague. At least while the four bills failed, Nigerian women can have the memory of the first ladies having fun while Rome burned.
It’s the unfortunate fortune of Nigeria to be saddled with a first family that just seems incapable of caring. We can do better as a nation.
