By Bolaji Ogundele, Abuja

President Muhammadu Buhari has postponed his scheduled trip to London, the United Kingdom (UK), for a medical follow-up visit.

This was contained in a statement issued yesterday by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina.

While the statement gave no reason for the postponement, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, yesterday, asked the President to come clean on the real reason he rescheduled his medical trip to London at the last minute

According to Adesina’s statement, the Presidency would subsequently announce a new date for the scheduled trip.

“The medical follow-up visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to the United Kingdom earlier scheduled for today, Friday, June 25, 2021, has been postponed.

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“A new date will be announced in due course,” the statement said.

It will be recalled that the President informed Nigerians, via a statement issued by Adesina on Thursday afternoon, about his plan to leave the country yesterday.

“President Muhammadu Buhari will proceed to London, the United Kingdom on Friday, June 25, 2021, for a scheduled medical follow-up.

“He is due back in the country during the second week of July, 2021”, he had said on Thursday.

It will be recalled that the President left the country for a medical check-up in London earlier in the year, between March 30 and April 16, 2021.

Tell Nigerians why you cancelled London trip, PDP tells Buhari

The PDP yesterday charged President Muhammadu Buhari to come clean on the real reason he rescheduled his medical trip to London at the last-minute.

The party’s position was expressed amidst increasing international disapproval of alleged human right violations, constitutional breaches, clampdown on citizens, suppression of free speech and other excesses by the Buhari administration, for which there have been concerted demands for travel restrictions against officials of the Buhari administration.

The National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement, said while the President is left to sort out whatever impediments or constraints that led to the sudden cancellation of his scheduled medical trip, the opposition party urged him to use the period to have some introspection on the sorry situation in which his “incompetent, divisive, vindictive and suppressive administration” has pushed the nation into in the last six years.

PDP said: “Our party urges President Buhari to use this period to reflect on the suffering of millions of Nigerians who do not have access to foreign medical treatment, but who are dying on a daily basis because of his failure to pay attention to our healthcare system, which has become decrepit under his watch.

“In his consideration, Mr. President must also reflect on how he has wrecked our country’s once robust economy that was handed over to him in 2015 by the PDP, to the extent that Nigerians can no longer afford to feed because their purchasing power has become depressingly low while he (Mr. President) recedes further into the luxury and the safety of the Aso Rock Villa at the expense of the well-being of the ordinary citizens.

“It is indeed heartrending that President Buhari appears to think of himself only even as Nigerians pass through these worst forms of hardship occasioned by his own misrule.

“Nigerians are also dismayed that Mr. President has consistently failed to honour his pre-2015 campaign promise not to embark on medical tourism if elected President.

“President Buhari therefore ought to be aware that the only condition in which history will be kind to him, as he has always wished, is if he honours his own words as well as use this period to resolve the impasse between the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) and his administration, fix our hospitals and confront other challenges facing the health sector in our country.”