Where is the President?

Chidi Amuta

President Bola Tinubu has just jetted out to France on a ‘private visit’. He is not back in the country till sometime in the first week of February. We are not told when precisely to expect him back in the country. That is the much information that his official handlers have made available to us. Here we are, a nation of over 200 million people whose democratic mandate gave Mr. Tinubu a job with a four year tenure left guessing as to what manner of private endeavor would take our president away suddenly and for that long. No details of the friends or family he wishes to visit in France, or the nature of the “private” engagements scheduled for him. To the best of our knowledge, the president is not on vacation. If he decided to take a few days rest from his crowded schedule, that would be understandable and well in the tradition of busy executives. To the best of my knowledge, Tinubu has no kinship affiliations to France even though he has visited that country more than three times in the last one year. As far as we know from the information made available, he is not on medical vacation. He is just on a “private visit”. Period.

As a Nigerian citizen, Mr. Tinubu is free to go wherever he chooses for whatever reasons that suits his fancy. That is his share of our democratic dividend. Democracy confers on him a basic individual freedom as indeed on all other citizens. But then Mr. Bola Tinubu is no ordinary citizen. He is today Nigeria’s president. To that extent, he is no longer an ordinary citizen. His office poses certain constraints on his basic freedom. He cannot just take off on a so-called “private visit” without reasonable disclosure to the Nigerian public.

He cannot freely go wherever he chooses and whenever and for whatever convenient reasons. He has become a public asset, a prisoner of the power he consciously sought and captured. His every move is now a matter of public interest and concern. We must know where he goes for work, leisure or even family duties. We must know what pains or ails him. We must know if he has a toothache, running stomach or bad cold. If the president is indisposed, we must know. Ill health is not a crime in any human. When a leader in a democracy takes ill, it is a matter of public concern. Democracy demands and makes it mandatory for the people to be told what ails their leader. Every democracy implies an open society, a milieu of open full disclosure on all matters around the leader. Public accountability in a democracy is not just accounting for Naira and dollars in the treasury. It is more of a compelling sense of responsibility to a larger public testament and covenant. The code of open disclosure and accountability implicitly says to the public that voted (or did not vote for you), “I belong to you in every way. No hidden corners!”

A more overarching consideration of this mythology of “private visit” comes down to Naira and kobo or dollars. When a president is on an undisclosed “private visit”, who picks the tally? Who pays the bills? When you are President, it is easy and convenient to casually scramble the presidential jet and instruct the pilot to fly you to anywhere you chose to go on ‘official’ business. But there is a question begging for answers on this Tinubu ‘private visit’. Should a president undertake a “private visit” at public expense? When a President is on a “private visit”, should the public be insulated from knowledge about his circumstances and activities wherever he is beyond those issues that may be considered strictly private?

Sometimes, Presidents and dignitaries could embark on frivolous things that were not intended to hurt their public role but which end up making the public uncomfortable or detracting from their lofty positions. In 1993, a newspaper report alleged that former President Bill Clinton held up the entire air traffic at Los Angeles Airport while he got a haircut from his celebrity hair stylist. No other planes could take off or land till the hairdo was done! American public opinion went wild. So much for private engagements and the public interest.

On a more serious note, where dignitaries and leaders have to be absent from duty on health grounds, it is a different matter. Ill health is an inevitability of nature. No culture that I know about criminalizes ill health either in a leader or among common folk. The dictates of democratic accountability and the imperatives of an open society require and indeed dictate that as much of the health conditions of an indisposed leader as possible should be made public. A leader in a democracy holds a public trust and embodies the common sovereign will. The people are entitled to as much information about the health of a leader as possible. It is not so much for reasons of public empathy as of the democratic norm of openness and general accountability.

There have been a few instances in recent times involving the health status of dignitaries and leaders. United State Defense Secretary General Lloyd Austen is still recovering from a prostate cancer procedure. While he was off duty after checking himself into a hospital for the procedure, all hell was let loose in American public discourse. It was held against him that he did not adequately disclosure his hospitalization both to his staff at the Pentagon and to the White House and therefore to the American public. It took a firefight public relations fire brigade operation to douse the flame even when it turned out that the information gap on General Austen’s hospital absence was more the result of his quiet and self -effacing nature. The Pentagon has since offered a full disclosure on his diagnosis, hospitalization and prognosis. Austen has since apologized.

Similarly, it was announced a few days ago that England’s King Charles III would soon be hospitalized for a prostate related procedure. A few other members of the British Royal Family have recently been diagnosed with different conditions requiring serious medical intervention and these were brought to the knowledge of the open global audience. These disclosures have not in any way diminished the status or estimation of these dignitaries. It has only merely underlined their mortality and humanity.

On 29th March 2023, Pope Francis was admitted to hospital in Rome with a respiratory condition associated with difficulties in breathing. For the limited period that he was receiving hospital attention, the Vatican and the hospital in Rome were issuing daily medical bulletins on the Pope’s progress. Of course congregants gathered daily in prayer both outside the hospital and at St. Peter’s Square to offer daily prayers for his quick recovery. He recovered and resumed his duties. But at least the world was kept abreast of his medical condition. It did not make him any less the Pope that he has remained.

In 2004, my friend Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was critically ill. He was rushed to a Paris hospital. For the over two weeks of his hospitalization, the hospital collaborated with the PLO to issue a daily medical bulletin on his health status. When he passed on after a battery of medical interventions, there was a detailed bulletin on the precise causes of his death.

Nearer home, in 1985 soon after coming to power, President Ibrahim Babangida took ill with a relapse of his war time leg injury and nerve condition. He was rushed to the military hospital in Paris. Even under a military regime, Dodan Barracks issued a detailed statement disclosing the president’s health situation. The diagnosis was a nerve condition called “radiculopathy”. That strange word entered Nigeria’s public vocabulary. Even people at the bus stop and at Jankara market now knew something called radiculopathy! The people felt for the President and wished him quick recovery. There was no secrecy. In fact, all manner of Nigerian neuro surgeons entered the fray by proffering all manner of analyses, pocket book diagnoses and prognoses on the president’s condition and chances. Babangida recovered, returned home to the warm embrace of a people who did not even vote him into power.

Fast forward to the tenure of Umaru Yar’Adua. The president was in and out of hospital for much of his short tenure. When he was in hospital in Saudi Arabia, Aso Rock made no secret of it. The nation was kept abreast of his condition. Every Nigerian knew that the ailing president had issues with his kidneys. Nigerians –both Moslems and Christians- prayed for him and wished him speedy recovery. That he died in office was an act of nature, not because his ailment and hospital destination were disclosed to the public.

President Buhari came into office with a cocktail of pre-existing health issues. He was more secretive about his health situation mostly for reasons of personal idiosyncrasy. But when he had to proceed to England on medical vacation, there was considerable disclosure from Aso Rock. We were at least told that his doctors are in London and he was going there to seek medical attention. They may not have told us what exactly the president was suffering from, but they did not hide the fact that he was in hospital for weeks at a each stretch. In Buhari’s case, the battle shifted to the political terrain. Because of the extended durations of these ‘medical’ vacations, the issue shifted to whether he should transmit power to the Vice President each time he had to travel out for medical attention. Politicians quickly converted London to a political Mecca as politicians trooped to London to visit the ailing President until the deluge of politicians became a health hazard.

Between occasional adherence to the constitutional requirement and convenient oversights, Buhari and his handlers and cabal waded through the anxious moments. The mystery and secrecy about his precise health status still produced public confusion and diverse myths about his precise health condition. That is how come the fertile imagination of Nigerians produced the myth about a body double called “Jibril” from Sudan which emerged and gained wild currency among Nigerians mostly those in diaspora. Till he left office, a lot of ordinary Nigerians still believed that the real Buhari never returned from the London hospital. We were being ruled by “Jibril” of Sudan!

As for Tinubu’s current absence, there is no indication from Aso Rock that our President is away on medical grounds. In the heat of the campaigns for the presidential elections, he had had cause to spend a few days in hospitals in both London and Paris. He was not president then but even then, his campaign directorate was sufficiently generous to occasionally admit that the APC presidential candidate needed rest and care away from the hustle of crowded campaign schedules.

We are in a different moment now. Mr. Tinubu is president of Nigeria. We all wish him well as a compatriot. But his handlers are not doing him any good when they fail to reasonably disclose his true whereabouts and the precise reasons why he has to be off duty even for a day. In case his handlers do not know, Mr. Tinubu is as much their immediate boss as he is indeed the father and guardian of the Nigerian nation. We are, to that extent, entitled to know his whereabouts, the reasons for his absence as well as his general well being on a moment by moment basis.

A presidential communication team that has become famous for serial gaffes and unpardonable errors of judgment and expression cannot be trusted to handle a sudden presidential disappearance such as the present one. The same people had recently said two credible public officers were ‘dismissed’ when they were simply relieved of their positions. The same squad allowed the fallacy to gain ground that the government was in the process of relocating the federal capital to Lagos and leaving Abuja before they lazily woke up.

On Tinubu’s current absence, all Nigerians feel entitled to is exact information as to the nature of the president’s’ “private visit”, its exact duration and the public cost implications of this “private visit”.