President Buhari had on Friday, January 3, 2020, during the inauguration and handover of a completed project to the management of the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital in Abakaliki, urged Nigerians to stop travelling abroad for medical treatment, saying it’s not good for them.
He said, “Nigerians have suffered so much going abroad for medical treatment. This is not good for us and it must stop because we can’t afford it again.”
Reacting to Buhari’s advice, the opposition party Buhari’s administration has failed to provide adequate healthcare in his country.
In a statement by the party’s spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan on Sunday, January 5, 2020, PDP said, Buhari “leads on the medals table, as self-indicting and raises public apprehensions on high-level deceits in governance”.
The statement reads, “Our party describes as ridiculous, a situation where a President, who patronises foreign hospitals for treatment & even check-ups; whose administration has failed to provide adequate healthcare in his country could turn around to pontificate to other citizens against foreign treatment.
“While the PDP do not approve of proliferated foreign medical tourism, especially by leaders & public office holders, our party holds that a leader who has failed to lead by example and whose government has neglected and wrecked our healthcare systems, lacks all rectitude to issue directives against foreign treatment.”
“Mr President can then discover that our health system has suffered untold neglect under his watch, leading to dilapidated infrastructure, empty drug shelves, decrepit and worn-out equipment, brain-drain and a demoralised workforce worse than his 1983 recollections.
“It is even more disheartening that all the investments and robust programmes of successive PDP administration, including the comprehensive National Strategic Health Development Plan, Saving One Million Lives Initiatives, National Health Insurance Scheme, among others, have been degraded and impaired by the dysfunctional APC administration.”
