‘BUHARI IS NOT OBLIGATED TO GET MEDICAL TREATMENT IN NIGERIA’ – LAI MOHAMMED

‘BUHARI IS NOT OBLIGATED TO GET MEDICAL TREATMENT IN NIGERIA’ – LAI MOHAMMED

Alanza Giwa, Abuja

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said President Muhammadu Buhari has no obligations to seek medical treatment in Nigeria simply because of his position.

Buhari has constantly received flak for his numerous medical trips to London that have pooled up to over 200 days since he was first elected in 2015.

Critics have noted that the trips are an indictment of the president’s failure to improve Nigeria’s dilapidating healthcare system.

However, Lai Mohammed, on a media engagement trip to the United States, attested it’s a mere personal decision that doesn’t reflect on the country’s own poor system.

Mohammed said, “As Minister of Information and Culture today, if I have had a history of using a particular doctor in my life and I have confidence in him, I don’t think the fact that I am now a minister will change that.

“Irrespective of the nationality of that doctor, it is my personal decision to choose the doctor to use.

“If Mr President has a personal physician for over 30 years, who understands his case and has been managing him, why will it be an issue of contention to seek medical attention from him.

“It will not be right to say that because of what people are going to say, he has to stay in Nigeria to seek treatment.”

Mohammed maintained that President Buhari is not the only Nigerian leader that has gone abroad for treatment; but his campaign had notably criticised medical tourism as an indictment of the local healthcare system before he became president.

Buhari  has already gone to London twice this year, a total of four weeks, for routine medical checks, with details of his health issues have been kept completely private.