One of President Muhammadu Buhari’s  regrets is that he did not come into office earlier. He acknowledged that he was not on the good side of age, which denies him the energy to  do the job with the zest his heart desires. That did not debar him from doing his level best until the matter of ill health came into the picture. In the wake of the elections, his opponents pointed at this debilitating factor but it was consigned to the doorsteps of political talk. No one believed the opposition when it said Buhari’s health may hinder his performance in office. The matter was allowed to slide by Nigerians who seemed  determined to effect a change at that level of leadership. Change was the slogan that saw Buhari emerge President; it was also the fruit of his sustained quest for the office, kept alive since 2003. This is not a review of what he has done with power, given the expected divergent views on the matter. No one would deny that the regime has put on its gloves to engage the monster called corruption, evident in the recovery of cash in all kinds of places.
The matter on the front burner is Buhari’s health, on which the President seems willing to make full disclosure but those around him think it is a step in the wrong direction. When he returned from a vacation that turned out to be a medical leave, the institution of the presidency still shielded the truth until the President told a group that visited him that he had never been that sick in his life, an indication that the man may see nothing wrong in expectations that the people ought to know the health status of their President. The truth is that, by virtue of his office, Buhari’s health status ceases to be a private matter. There ought to be regular updates on the matter, such that would ground the rumour mills and stem the tide of speculations. It was curious that, rather than accept that the President needed rest, the Minister of Information would prefer to say that the President wanted to work from home, a reason that hardly explained his absence from the Federal Executive Council meeting. I do not expect that a 74-year-old man would be as fit as fiddle. I was at this point in this article when reports that the President had returned to office from his residence flooded the social media. Ironically, he could not attend the next council meeting. Voices such as that of the former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, had called on the President to take a medical leave and give proper attention to his health. He said the matter should be removed from the realm of politics because the nation’s health was akin to the President’s health. The anxiety over Buhari’s health heightens with comments coming from such elderly people who are in the same ruling party as the President. A meeting of three former heads of state in Minna, the other day, was believed to have been centred on Buhari’s health. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar met and it was speculated to be on the next political move for the nation. These are men of power and no one should dismiss them as men of yesterday, they have emerged at critical points of Nigeria’s history and made decisions that often altered the equation and pointed the way forward. No one, however, knows what they discussed as everything is in the realm of speculation, much like the President’s health. The nation has been in a quandary as to the state of the President because, in spite of the clear signs that the man is not in a good state, his handlers have not come clean on the matter. A journalist who reported the matter fell on the wrong side of the President’s Chief Security Officer, who banished him from Aso Rock before the President’s Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Femi Adesina, intervened to restore normalcy.
The matter of Buhari’s health and presidency was a major item for prophets and some clerics, who predict what they claim to have heard from God. Some of them are point-blank in their predictions that the President’s health would worsen over time. I would list some of them shortly alongside their predictions. Evidently the President is ill, not with the evidence of absence from three consecutive Federal Executive Council meetings. The spin from his handlers has not helped matters. I hold that the President should take a long medical leave and receive comprehensive medical attention in order to put the lie to the prophecies that he would pass away in office. A Ghanaian prophet, Isaac Owusu Bempah, founder and leader of Glorious Ministry International, was emphatic on December 31, 2016, in his doomsday prophecy, during the cross-over service, that President Buhari would not come out alive from office. He also said a former President of Ghana would pass away as well as a former First Lady. I do not know why his vision was not limited to his environment, but President Buhari would do well to seek medical attention and thus shame this prophet of doom. Another prophet from Ibadan, Wale Olagunju, was not morbid in his own prediction but said Buhari would be ‘dethroned’ by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in 2019. Embattled General Overseer of Omega Fire Ministries, Apostle John Sulaiman, said 2017 would be a ‘tough’ year for President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo. In his own prediction, Senior Pastor of Liberation City, Dr. Chris Okafor, said Buhari is not the messiah that would lead Nigeria into prosperity, but would prepare the way for the real messiah. That prediction is subject to several interpretations, including the doomsday angle. Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry, Enugu, who championed Buhari’s emergence, now says there is so much hardship in the land, insisting that the President must “act fast so that God would not regret putting him there.” The natural question is. what is the consequence of God’s regret? I leave the reader to figure out the answer.
I hold that President Buhari should take a medical leave, get good attention and  put the doomsday prophets to shame.

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