The President is a sick man – Festus Adedayo

The President is a sick man

Festus Adedayo

(Published by the Sunday Tribune, October 20, 2024)

On April 4, 2021, I wrote a piece with the title The President is a sick man: Buhari’s Secret Therapy Inside the ‘Oneida.’ It was a lamentation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s knee-jerk and off-the-cuff jetting out of Aso Rock Villa like a wandering evil spirit. At the drop of a hat, Buhari flew to the United Kingdom to attend to his health. But for the removal of Buhari’s name and its substitution with ‘Bola Tinubu,’ this piece is almost a complete cyclostyle of that Buhari piece. In 1849, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, a French writer, pioneered a phrase which has become famous for its evergreen relevance to contemporary malaises. He had written, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” which, translated, means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That phrase speaks volumes. It tells us that we are back to presidential night-time recourses to UK hospices and presidency’s spins to shroud the truth.

In virtually all cultures, synonyms or variations to Karr’s thesis exist. They explain the recurrence of either evil or good. Among the Yoruba, it is rendered as, Kò sí ohun t’ó jé tuntun tí kìí s’àlòkù – nothing new is novel.

The President Is A Sick Man is the title of a book written by Philadelphia-born, award-winning American journalist, Matthew Algeo. It is a chronology of the medical travails of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States of America, which he was from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897. The book chronicles how inexorably linked the health of a president and the health of the nation are.

Famously renowned for always speaking the truth, Cleveland was regarded as a very virtuous man, so much that his most memorable quotation, ramped up into a cliché was, “Tell the Truth.” America was to later find out that, wrapped up inside that Cleveland shawl of “telling the truth” was the most untruthful cover-up in American history. That untruth was far more scandalous than Watergate. What revealed Cleveland’s real persona was his battle with mouth cancer and an extraordinary, even if political, cover-up of this infirmity. It lasted for almost a century, garnished with a successful attempt to keep it from the American people.

Critics called Cleveland debauched due to his penchant for “bringing his harlots to the vicinity of the White House.” However, on July 1, in the summer of 1893, the president suddenly disappeared from the radar and couldn’t be found anywhere in the White House. Or anywhere in America. It was a challenging time when America, like Nigeria under Bola Tinubu, was embroiled in what American newspapermen labeled, in oblique vernacular, “The money question.” America was teetering on the brinks of financial and social chaos. The economy was threatening to kiss the canvass; unemployment figures were competing with the firmament in height; banks and factories were shutting their gates and stock prices were in a free fall.

On May 5, 1893, two weeks shy of his 56th birthday, the second day of his swearing in at the Capitol for a second term, Cleveland noticed a rough spot on the roof of his mouth. By the prodding of his wife Frances, this prompted the invitation of Cleveland’s friend, New York surgeon and family physician, Dr. Joseph Decatur Bryant, to look it up. Bryant diagnosed an oral tumour, which was malignant in nature, “an ulcerated surface with an oval outline about the size of a quarter of a dollar.” He called it a “bad looking tenant” that should be evicted post-haste. The fear was that, if the cancer afflicting Cleveland had gone into metastasis, the lower part of his left eye socket would be removed during surgery and thus permanently impairing his vision.

On July 1, 1893, Cleveland got lost inside the Oneida, his friend, Commodore Elias Benedict’s yacht. For five good days, he was declared missing. William Keen, America’s most famous and celebrated surgeon of the time and a team of other surgeons, performed the surgery to remove the cancerous tumor that had grown dangerously and embarrassingly on the president’s upper jaw and palate. The most shocking aspect of it was that, one very enterprising newspaper reporter, E. J. Edwards, later got wind of the information and reported the secret surgery. President Cleveland’s Bayo Onanugas descended on the journalist with the highest acerbity ever. They even labeled him “a disgrace to journalism.” It was not until decades later that one of Cleveland’s surgeons exposed the startling disappearance.

I decided to narrate this long story so as to give a background to the African and Nigerian experience of the Cleveland disease – not in terms of the disappearance per se but the stunt by elected presidents of keeping their ailments out of the people’s knowledge. While some may argue that the covert Cleveland surgery legitimizes many similar situations in Africa, the fact that this happened in America, in the “dark age” of the 18th century, delegitimizes such argument.

Eighteen days ago, President Tinubu announced that he was on a similar two-week elopement out of Nigeria. His absence was dressed in the queer oxymoron of a “working vacation.” How do you work and vacate simultaneously? Apparently again on the way to hop into the presidential jet to his U.K. infirmary, Tinubu’s minders simply cloned the Buhari model, with an ingenuous tweak. Emerging from sleepless nights of studying the constitution, Buhari had obstinately announced that he would not vacate power to anybody, as the constitution allowed him to spend his two weeks projected stay with medics in the U.K. Tinubu’s destination, like Buhari’s, was the United Kingdom. It was where he would be observing “part of his yearly leave.” The latest trip to the UK came two weeks after. Like a lost cat, the president suddenly veered off his trip to China, only to be found in photo-ops with King Charles in London. An unconfirmed stealthily shot video later surfaced on social media showing a winter-clad president wobbly strutting out of what was said to be St. Mary’s Hospital.

In March 2017, the then 74-year-old Buhari had suddenly appeared on the Nigerian radar after unceremoniously disappearing for seven weeks, from January 19. He had jetted to the U.K. to treat an ailment which, till he left office, remained undisclosed. He spent a cumulative 225 days in the UK on medical trips. Before him, Late President Umaru Yar’Adua also spent months in foreign hospitals. Reports claimed that, as his aides spruced up lies to defend his absence, he was in a vegetative state. The Nigerian presidency equally claimed he was constitutionally empowered to discharge his duties and function anywhere in the world. Yar’Adua eventually died in May 2010.

Shrouding the health status of African leaders from their constituents and their sudden disappearances have a long history. In October 2016, President Peter Mutharika of Malawi disappeared off the radar, by which time he was 76 years old. Like Tinubu has often done since he became president, Mutharika had attended the United Nations General Assembly mid-September and didn’t come back until October 16. This provoked speculations in Malawi that he had died, with his cagey aides failing to divulge his whereabouts. There were later disclosures through the grapevine that he had vamoosed to some parts of Europe to attend to his health. The same was the story of Gabonese President, Ali Bongo, son of Omar Bongo. At a time in November 2018, Ali was said to have been “seriously ill,” with speculations rife that he had died after suffering from a stroke. He was just 59 years old then. Findings, however, later revealed that he had not died but that was holed up in a Saudi Arabia hospice.

Oil-rich Angola’s Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979, also eloped to Spain. He had sought medical remedy for an undisclosed ailment in May, 2017. It was after about three weeks of his noticeable absence from the public that his foreign minister, after pressure from the opposition, confirmed his unceremonious absence. Again, until his death at age 95, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was always dashing in and out of Singaporean hospitals.

Benin Republic’s Patrice Talon is perhaps one of the rarest breeds of the African leadership caste. Talon unusually and uncharacteristically made public disclosure of what ailed him. After the 59-year old president, who took over from Thomas Yayi-Boni, disappeared from the radar for about three weeks, his minders, on June 19, 2017, released the information that he had undergone two successful surgical operations in Paris. He said doctors had found a lesion in his prostate. This further necessitated another surgery in his digestive system.

Tinubu merely took off from the disastrous opacity of previous Nigerian presidents about their health statuses. With him, presidential disappearance is done with an audacious arrogance coated in embarrassing lies. While Cleveland’s act of pulling the wool over his American people’s eyes must have resulted from his dread and respect for them, Tinubu and his predecessors’ opaque and peremptory struts out of Nigeria are done with arrogance and a “they can go jump inside the lagoon” mind. On a trip to China slated for August 29, though told he would make a brief stopover in Dubai, Nigerians were distressingly shocked to learn that Tinubu landed in London.

Serpentine disappearances seem to be the second name of the Tinubu presidency. On April 23, he suddenly landed in The Netherlands on a visit to then Prime Minister, Mark Rutte. He then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ostensibly to attend the Special Meeting of the World Economic Forum which held from April 28 to 29. For six days after the event ended, the Nigerian president was AWOL. It was only on May 8 that Nigerians were “honoured” with information that their president would return from Europe the day after. When he again junketed to France on January 24 for a “private visit,” secrecy was the name. Health rumours of the president then began to fly in the air. He returned two weeks after. Again, on August 19, pulling out what sounded like an oxymoron, the presidency claimed Tinubu was embarking on a journey to France in his new presidential jet. He called it “a brief work stay.” He was away for three days.

To waffle to Nigerians about their president’s disappearances is outright irresponsibility on the part of the Nigerian presidency. Nigerians are now left with a queer equation of Tinubu and his vice, Kashim Shettima, both AWOL. While Shettima, since last Wednesday, has been in Sweden, since October 3, Tinubu has been marooned in a God-knows-where. In the thick of this, the presidency claimed there was no leadership vacuum. Following his usual cants, Onanuga had announced that, “All state organs are functioning as usual. The Senate President, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ministers, and Service Chiefs are all in their respective positions, ensuring the smooth operation of the government.” The way Yar’Adua’s publicists waffled needlessly on his disappearance before he died, Onanuga did same last week. He maintained that the Nigerian constitution “does not explicitly require the physical presence of either the president or the vice president in the country at all times to fulfill his duties.”

While their president is embroiled in disappearing acts, Nigeria is literally in disarray. Hunger and hopelessness are bringing out the beast in the people daily. Some people were caught on video demanding for a military hijack of power. The petrol crisis has bred different shades of affliction. Last week, over 140 people died in Jigawa State in desperation to scoop fuel from a tanker. Shakespeare would have couched the Nigerian situation today as, “rudderlessness is thy name, oh Nigeria.” Do citizens of the countries our leaders run to at the drop of a hat seek the whereabouts of their own leaders as this?

There must be a genetic dysfunction in African presidents which necessitates them not to disclose their health statuses. Worse still, they try to hold on to power like an adhesive, in spite of and despite their failing health. If the health failings of presidents are such that they cannot function in office effectively, since the presidency is not a birthright, let them step aside and their deputies step in. Of course, those who profit from the power stagnation arising from the incapacity of ailing leaders would fight tooth and nail to continue to pad them up. Don’t they know that there is a metaphysical and indeed, physical link between the health of the president and the health of a nation?

The mentality behind pulling shrouds on African leaders’ health is continuation of the empires and monarchies of Africa. There, kings were perceived as infallible, super-human and incapable of falling prey to the afflictions of plebeians and common people. African leaders of today see themselves in the same mould of kings and emperors. They must not be heard to have failing health, nor their health statuses made public. In what other way can it be said to them that, no matter one’s status in life, no one is immune to health failings and death? This trend that I call the Kabiyesi mentality, has bred a pandemic of leaders of Africa who, almost like 19th century Cleveland, “abdicate their thrones” covertly to seek remedies abroad, without the knowledge of their people. Those who argue strongly in defence of Nigerian sovereignty should well know that that same sovereignty is seriously threatened by the Nigerian president being a captive patient in a foreign hospital.

It is bad enough that citizens don’t know the whereabouts of their president. It is worse that the president, like the biblical Saul who crept out of the palace at nocturne to consult the Witch of Endor, surreptitiously gropes in the dark to hospices of the world. Is the presidency ignorant of the fact that that office is a public trust which gives citizens the right to know where their president is?