TheCable

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has tackled President Muhammadu Buhari over his frequent medical trips abroad, accusing him of destroying its legacies in the health sector.

Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP spokesman, said Buhari’s routine medical checkup abroad is a direct indictment on his administration’s failure to fix Nigeria’s healthcare system.

The party was speaking in response to the president’s latest medical trip to the United Kingdom on Tuesday.

He left for what the presidency described as a “routine medical check-up”, and is not expected back to Nigeria until the second week of April.

In a statement issued hours after the president’s departure, Ologbondiyan described the regular overseas treatment as “a badge of failure” and asked the president to consider the plight of other Nigerians.

He said the situation is so bad that “the hitherto highly rated State House Clinic has become so moribund” that the president cannot go there for his medical checkup.

The statement read: “While the PDP has nothing against where any person, including President Buhari, seeks his or her medical services, our party is worried that the Buhari Presidency is taking no decisive steps to fix our health care system, ostensibly because Mr. President can afford overseas medical treatment at tax payers’ expense.

“The PDP is disturbed that while Mr. President jets out for medical treatment in well-equipped hospitals abroad, our hospitals and medical personnel are in very sorry situation, while millions of our compatriots suffer, with many dying on a daily basis from conditions that have simple medical solutions.

“It is indeed heartrending that Nigerians are suffering this huge misfortune of having this highly insensitive, incompetent and corrupt leadership of very selfish individuals who do not care about the welfare of other citizens.

“More saddening is that all the institutions, policies and programmes established by the PDP, which hitherto ensured access to affordable healthcare for Nigerians have been wrecked by the Buhari administration.”