By Onyedika Agbedo
when Nigerians, particularly those who had been praying for the quick recovery of President Muhammadu Buhari from the illness that has taken him out of the country and away from his job for almost three months saw the photograph he took with visiting All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders and governors in the media last Sunday, they certainly had a real sense of relief. The photograph was the president’s first image to be shared publicly since he left the country on May 7; and there had been no official information as to his state of health since then. Only assurances that he was recovering very fast came from his wife, Aisha, and Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, who had both visited him in a London hospital. Both of them had further on their return urged our very religious countrymen to continue to pray for the recovery of the President each time they had the opportunity to do so. But a lot of Nigerians didn’t believe their rhetoric. The skeptics bandied all kinds of stories around the President’s health; the social media particularly played host to their rumours. Some of them chose to use the President’s file photos to showcase their dexterity in photo-chopping (photoshop-ing) on the social media. And opinion swelled that the President was terminally ill.
In the traditional media, the story was not entirely different even though there was some decorum. About a month ago, a sitting South-west governor addressed a press conference where he said that “available and verifiable facts” he got from London and within the APC had shown that the President could only be revived through a miracle from God. A former minister and an unrelenting critic of the President also came slightly short of announcing his death in his comments ever since his absence. Even when the President sent his audio message to the Muslim faithful to mark the Eid-el-fitr (erroneously in Hausa language alone), the former minister dubbed it a voice from the grave. And thousands of Nigerians believed him!
And many of those that believed among our politicians, both within the ruling APC and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), reportedly had their eyes on Buhari’s job come 2019 and went to work in earnest.
The President’s media team, allies and admirers had nothing to say in response. They received very pathetic tongue-lashings each time they tried to defend their principal and make Nigerians believe that all was well. But they deserved whatever they got, anyway. The people didn’t have the right information and were acting based on the available information. So, who is to be blamed? Certainly not the over 180 million Nigerians who had been treated as though they didn’t have a stake in their own country.
The story, however, changed last Sunday when the President hosted a delegation of APC governors and leaders in London. They came back with the report that the President was recovering very fast. But some people still raised doubts, mainly because it was an APC affair. No member of the opposition was in that delegation. Nevertheless, a delegation of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), comprising of both APC and PDP governors, that went to see the president last Wednesday has come back with the same report and with enough photographs to back up the claim of the President’s recovery.
In fact, the Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi, of the PDP, who was in the team of seven governors, described Buhari’s recovery as a miracle. “We met a cheerful President whose level of recovery is a miracle. We know he will soon return home as soon as his doctors certify him to do so,” Umahi said.
Now, Nigerians know at least that their president is still alive. Umahi even went as far as volunteering the information that the President “is not treating mere malaria.” Even though he didn’t disclose what has kept our dear President away from us all these while, there is every indication that he is conquering. After all it is said that pictures don’t lie (not these days anyway). But there is hope that PMB will soon come back to his duties. There is hope that when he returns, he will reflect deeply on why shouts of Sai Buhari that rent the air in the prelude to the 2015 elections are waning these days and do the needful. There is hope that when he finally returns, he will begin the process of bequeathing the real “change” his party promised Nigerians. Now that he is back from the land of the dead, having been killed many times by his traducers, there is hope that he will spend the rest of his years in office building a Nigeria that will endure; a Nigeria where there will be peace, equity and justice; a Nigeria where the low and the mighty will not need to travel overseas before they can obtain quality healthcare; a Nigeria where poverty will be seen as a common enemy of the people and fought with all available arsenal. The hope is alive that when PMB finally returns in two weeks time, as Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State is telling us, he will make the most of the opportunity he has in his hands now for Nigeria’s good.
As for the doubting Thomases, it’s time to appreciate that “anything under God’s control is never out of control,” according to Charles R. Swindoll, an evangelical Christian pastor and author. Life and death are firmly in God’s hands and only Him decides who to take and who to spare. Human wishes mean nothing to Him when it comes to that because His ways are different from our ways. So, applying our hearts to the scriptural admonition of “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn,” will serve us well as a people.
Born on December 17, 1942, Buhari was sworn into office as the President of Nigeria on May 29, 2015. He had unsuccessfully run for the office in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 general elections. He is a retired Major General in the Nigerian Army and previously served as the nation’s head of state from December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985, after taking power in a military coup d’état. He took ill early this year and has scarcely been available to discharge his duties for the better part of the year.