President Muhammadu Buhari for the third time in a row failed to show up at the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting, as government officials, however, say the President is still resting following his doctor’s advice.
This is even as in-house sources confided that the President may be due to return to London for proper medical attention anytime soon.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo who was obviously aware that the President would be absent from the meeting, arrived and immediately started the meeting with an almost full hall this time around.
On Tuesday, Buhari supposedly received the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami and the General Managing Director of the Nigeria’s State Oil, NNPC. The President’s wife, Aisha Buhari had later taken to her twitter handle to say her husband’s condition was not as bad as Nigerians were being led to believe. Earlier, an online media reported that the President’s health condition had deteriorated that he couldn’t eat or drink.
BusinessDay gathered that the two people who actually came to meet with the President on Tuesday met him at home and not in his office. They were said to have met with him in his office at the official residence.
However, briefing journalists after the FEC meeting which lasted for almost three hours, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed alongside the Ministers of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika and Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, said the President was at home on the orders of his doctors. He also insisted that the President worked from his office on Tuesday.
“You are also aware that the President was at his office yesterday, and he worked at his office yesterday. A few days before now we came out to say he’s been asked to take some rest by his doctors, and he chose today to rest and not to attend the Federal Executive Council meeting.
“Like we’ve always said, Mr president will stick to his doctor’s advice so that he can recover much more quickly.
He thanked Nigerians who have been praying for their concern and sympathy as well as their prayers. The information minister who looked lost for words when asked to clear the air on the President’s supposed deteriorating state, at some point retorted that “the answer to your first question is absolute bunkers. It is absolutely untrue that he is being fed. He was in the office yesterday as you all reported. And if the doctors say he should take a rest I think you’ll recover faster
when you rest when you ought to rest, rather than by forcing yourself to work when you are not fit to work.
“All he is doing is following the doctor’s advice. Mr president himself told the nation he has never been this sick and he is going to take it easy. He said it from day one when he came back from the UK.
“So, whatever is happening today is not any strange development is exactly what he said. That he’s been advised to take it easy by his doctors and that he will soon also go back for further treatment”.
Last week Wednesday, after the President failed to show up at the FEC meeting, the minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed said he will be working from home that day. However, from indications, the President has been working from home since that day.
“The President asked that he be allowed to rest and asked the VP to preside. He asked that all his files be taken to him at home that he will work from home” Mohammed said.
A statement by Presidential Media Aide Garba Shehu, last Thursday, obviously necessitated by reports following the President’s absence at the Federal Executive Council meeting, said his doctors have advised that the President takes things easy.
According to him, the president’s absence was a last minute decision.
“otherwise, the cabinet and the public might have been alerted in advance. As eager as he is to be up and about, the President’s doctors have advised on his taking things slowly, as he fully recovers from the long period of treatment in the United Kingdom some weeks ago” he said.
Since returning from a medical vacation in the United Kingdom on March 10th, where he spent almost 50 days, Buhari has attended and presided over three FEC meetings. At the last FEC meeting he attended, the President launched the country’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan. He has hardly been seen at public functions even as concerns mount in the polity over his health condition.
