Sunday Oguntola takes a look at the cloak of mystery surrounding the president’s ailment.
WHAT exactly is wrong with President Muhammadu Buhari’s health? That is the nagging question agitating the minds of Nigerians. The President, who returned yesterday from a 103-day medical vacation in London, has refused to disclose any hint on his medical condition.
The closest he went was in March after he returned from a 54-day medical treatment. Speaking at his first Federal Executive Council meeting on arrival in Abuja, Buhari said: “There were also blood transfusions, going to the laboratories, and so on and so forth…
“I couldn’t recall when last I had blood transfusions I couldn’t recall honestly I can say in my seventy years.
“I cannot remember this drug that Nigerians take so much, a very common drug; all the same I think one of our terrible thing is self-medication.
“We have to trust our doctors more and trust ourselves more, I realised they take drugs when it is absolutely necessary. They don’t just swallow anything.”
The President didn’t offer much more hints. He only admitted to have been a victim of self-medication and undergone blood transfusions while away in London. Based on these, a renowned professor of medicine, Femi Williams, who graduated from Trinity College University of Dublin in 1961, said President Buhari was suffering from anaemia.
Williams, a certified physician in Anatomic Pathology from London and Ireland, categorically declared: “We now have a pretty good idea of diagnosis, which is now comprehensive or good enough to say that the diagnosis of President Buhari’s illness is anaemia.”
He further explained: “The clinical history given by Mr. President that for the past 18 months he had been lethargic and feeling tired prior to his vacation is consistent with tiredness due to anaemia.
“Regaining his strength after transfusions that facilitated his return home suggests that the anaemia had been corrected successfully.
“There is therefore a preliminary diagnosis of anaemia meaning insufficient blood in the circulation.
“When this happen many organs including the brain, heart, liver, kidneys and lungs are starved of oxygen that is carried by blood to all parts of the body for efficient functioning of the person.
“Sudden loss of blood as in road traffic accidents could be fatal. In this case the anaemia has been insidious and gradual over time.”
The Presidency neither confirmed nor denied the clinical diagnosis of the reputable Professor of Medicine. If anything, it maintained only Buhari can disclose his medical status.
His Special Adviser on Media, Femi Adesina, told reporters: “It is within his prerogative to do that. Nobody can do it for him. Not even the doctors treating him can do it for him.
“Under the Hippocratic Oath, nobody can do it except the patient. Nobody; under the Hippocratic Oath, it says that even the doctor has no right to reveal the health status of his patient to anybody.
“So, it’s only Mr President that can say what exactly is wrong with him. So, the prerogative is his to disclose and if he wants to disclose, he will.
“But nobody should be asking him to do it. That would be an infringement on his right.
“If anybody has put himself in suspense, he’s just doing it for himself because it’s not necessary. The law does not compel a president to reveal what is wrong with him. It does not.”
Many disagree with Adesina that Buhari is under no obligation whatsoever to disclose his health status. The President, they said, is a public servant whose health should not be shrouded in secrecy. That is what obtains in developed democracies, they point out.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo also insisted only Buhari can disclose his status. “I think that the health status of Mr President is an issue that only Mr President would discuss at the appropriate time.
“Again he is running tests and all of that. Before you determine your health status, you must be able to run the necessary tests, and do what doctors have asked to be done, and await the outcome of that before one can talk about any kind of health status,” he declared.
Well, Buhari has promised to address Nigerians in a broadcast tomorrow. Maybe he will, for once, tell them what is wrong with him medically and resolve the biggest mystery of his Presidency.