The wages of presidential subterfuge, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

The presidency is extra than simply an workplace. For these across the occupant of the workplace, it additionally means cash, energy, and privilege. To protect it, most individuals in and across the presidency take liberties, generally, even with the wellbeing of their principal or with accountability to the folks in whose identify he holds workplace. For the nation and even for the president, the wages of this interminable subterfuge are prohibitive.

On the night of 5 April 2012, the prime-time bulletin on the tv information of the Malawi Broacasting Company (MBC), introduced to the nation that the president, Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, “had…taken sick and had been flown to South Africa for specialist remedy.” At one other finish of the capital metropolis, Lilongwe, a presidential convoy was on its technique to the Kamuzu Worldwide Airport (KIA), the place an air ambulance awaited with directions to fly a president who was supposedly alive however unwell to South Africa.

Earlier within the day, round 11:00 within the morning, Ngwazi Bingu had collapsed whereas receiving in viewers the Member of Parliament representing the south-east constituency of the capital metropolis, Lilongwe, Agnes Penemulungu. The judicial fee of inquiry which later investigated what transpired thereafter, obtained proof which confirmed fairly clearly that the presidential court docket had not ready nor practiced for the potential for a life-and-death emergency involving the president. Elton Singini, a senior decide, chaired the inquiry

The fee of inquiry established as a proven fact that the president died earlier within the day contained in the ambulance en path to Kamuzu Central Hospital within the capital metropolis. Based on the inquiry report, “the President was introduced in useless (BID) at Kamuzu Central Hospital [KCH] at round 11.25 within the morning” of 5 April.

On the time of the information bulletin saying that he was to be flown to South Africa afterward the identical day, Mr Bingu had been useless for over eight hours. Regardless of being conscious of this, the presidential retinue instructed employees on the hospital to use cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the presidential stays for over two hours. Within the course of, they crushed his rib-cage.

Extra was to observe. On the airport, the air ambulance pilots from South Africa declined to board the physique, citing the truth that their permission was to fly with a affected person not a useless physique. Excessive degree conversations ensued between Lilongwe and Pretoria. It could have helped and was actually related that Malawi’s International Minister on the time was Peter Mutharika, Mr Bingu’s youthful brother who was additionally intent on moving into the footwear of his simply deceased brother. Peter wanted time to set the wheels in movement to leap-frog Vice-President Joyce Banda within the succession stakes.

South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma, who had retired for the day needed to be woken as much as personally authorise the flight. Shortly after midnight on 6 April 2012, the air ambulance took off for South Africa. In Malawi, the folks had been instructed their president was headed to South Africa for medical consideration. In South Africa, the authorities knew that the air ambulance on its means from Lilongwe would arrive with the useless physique of Malawi’s president. Shortly after 02:30 a.m. on 6 April, the plane landed at South Africa’s Nationwide Defence Power (SANDF) Waterkloof Airbase on the outskirts of Pretoria. From there, the useless physique was transferred to a mortuary.

The proof appears inescapable that Mr Tinubu has vital well being challenges and desires common medical consideration from medical doctors abroad. For this, his vacation spot of alternative is clearly France. In 22 months as president, Tinubu has made no less than eight journeys to the nation underneath totally different guises, for a cumulative interval of over 60 days.

The authors of all this malign chicanery designed to deceive the folks of Malawi, nonetheless forgot to additionally notify the processes of bio-chemistry. By the point the physique arrived the morgue in South Africa, it had been “within the open with out refrigeration for about 18 hours after demise.” Because of this, the crucial and excessive profile invitees to the state funeral of Mr Bingu, which happened on 23 April, 2012, needed to endure the uncomfortable firm of flies, in addition to the majestic perfume of human putrefaction. Because the report of the Justice Elton Singini Fee of Inquiry recorded, “the physique had began decomposing as evidenced by the scent and some flies hovering round.”

4 years earlier, in August 2008, Levy Mwanawasa, the president of neighbouring Zambia, died in a navy hospital close to Paris in France. Whereas attending the summit of the African Union in Cairo, Egypt, on 29 June 2008, Mr Mwanawasa had collapsed following what was later understood to be an aneurysm (stroke). He was stabilised there earlier than being transferred to France, the place he died two months later. At his demise, it got here out that two years earlier, throughout his first time period as president in 2006, Mr Mwanawasa had suffered an earlier stroke. For that, he obtained prolonged remedy in the UK. Nobody instructed Zambians.

The 12 months after the demise of Mr Mwanawasa, in June 2009, Omar Bongo, who had dominated Gabon for 41 years, died in a hospital in Spain. When he left Libreville initially of the earlier month, his compatriots believed that their president, the doyen and favorite of France Afrique, was away on a working go to – a phrase all too acquainted to Nigerians – to his favorite haunts in Europe. At his demise, it emerged that a couple of month earlier than his demise, President Bongo had been hospitalised for most cancers remedy in Spain.

President Bongo was not the final long-serving African president to die in Spain. On 8 July 2022, former Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, died additionally there after extended most cancers remedy. Following his demise, a household disaster broke out over his funeral, which delayed the repatriation of his stays to Luanda for a couple of month. Six weeks after his demise, within the third week of August 2022, a decide in Spain lastly authorised the return of the physique of Mr dos Santos to Angola for burial.

When he departed Nigeria on 2 April, the presidency in Abuja issued an announcement claiming that Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, was off to France on a “quick working go to”, throughout which he would “retreat to overview the progress of ongoing reforms and interact in strategic planning forward of his administration’s second anniversary.” They barely stopped in need of telling Nigerians that their president was headed to Lourdes for the grace of its historic apparitions. Mr Tinubu is a Muslim; it was in the course of the Christian season of Lent and nobody had apparently bothered to advise him or his picture makers that it’s normally Christians who undertake two week-long retreats in the course of this season.

The day after the tip of the initially introduced 14 days, the identical presidential retinue disclosed that the president had relocated from France to the UK, from the place he was doing a superb job as Nigeria’s president in Europe.

It ought to be no information {that a} man of Mr Tinubu’s age is unwell. These invested in concealing that actuality from Nigerians are extra involved in defending their current perquisites than within the wellbeing of their principal or of the nation.

The proof appears inescapable that Mr Tinubu has vital well being challenges and desires common medical consideration from medical doctors abroad. For this, his vacation spot of alternative is clearly France. In 22 months as president, Tinubu has made at least eight journeys to the nation underneath totally different guises, for a cumulative interval of over 60 days.

Whereas he’s been away this time, lots of – if no more – have been killed in massacres in numerous components of Nigeria. As president, Tinubu can be the commander-in-chief of Nigeria’s armed and safety forces. But, from Europe, he’s reported to be passing the buck to state governors to do this which solely he has the instruments to perform underneath Nigeria’s structure.

Excluding the 5 years and three months of the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, from February 2010 to Could 2015, Nigeria has had a presidency in near-permanent occupancy of sanatoriums abroad for 15 years. The Motion Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which Tinubu led, was aggressively voluble in asking for candour on the well being standing of a terminally sick President Umaru Yar’Adua. After going into marriage with Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to create All Progressives Congress (APC), it made a advantage of unlooking when Buhari took up residence in international hospitals for a lot of his presidency.

It ought to be no information {that a} man of Mr Tinubu’s age is unwell. These invested in concealing that actuality from Nigerians are extra involved in defending their current perquisites than within the wellbeing of their principal or of the nation.

The presidency is extra than simply an workplace. For these across the occupant of the workplace, it additionally means cash, energy, and privilege. To protect it, most individuals in and across the presidency take liberties, generally, even with the wellbeing of their principal or with accountability to the folks in whose identify he holds workplace. For the nation and even for the president, the wages of this interminable subterfuge are prohibitive.

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer, teaches on the Fletcher Faculty of Regulation and Diplomacy and might be reached by chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu.