FORMER Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu has said that he is healthy but undergoing ‘gruesome’ physiotherapy in London.
He stated this on Friday when he received members of the House of Representatives Northern Caucus who visited him in the United Kingdom.
According to The Punch, Tinubu told his latest visitors that he was healthy but undergoing physiotherapy, which he said had been ‘gruesome.’
He was quoted to have said: “Because of God and people like you, I am well. It is just the physio (physiotherapy) that is gruesome.”
Tinubu has been in London since late July, after reportedly having surgery.
There were rumours that he died in early August, but his media aide debunked the claims.
A chieftain of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Tinubu has been tipped as a possible successor to President Muhammadu Buhari.
In August, Buhari visited Tinubu in London after attending the Global Education Summit on Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE 2021-2025).
The president had spent few days in the city for a medical check-up before visiting Tinubu.
Since arriving in London, Tinubu’s home (in the UK) has metamorphosed into a political pilgrimage.
Governors, including Lagos’ Babajide Sanwo-Olu; Ondo’s Rotimi Akeredolu; Ogun’s Dapo Abiodun; and Ekiti’s Kayode Fayemi, have visited him.
The Punch reported in September that Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila and no fewer than other 30 prominent politicians in the country had visited Tinubu in London within two months.
Akeredolu, who doubles as the chairman of the Southern Governors’ Forum, had, last month, said Tinubu was the ‘capone’ of the South, indicating that he (Tinubu) remained a foremost candidate for the APC (or the South) in the 2023 presidential poll.
Tinubu, fondly referred to as the ‘Lion of Bourdillon,’ was instrumental in the defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan by Buhari in 2015.
However, Jonathan, who sought re-election on the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) platform in the last poll, and is eligible for a four-year term, is touted to have been approached by the APC to vie in the next election on its platform.
Amid Nigeria’s worsening health system, there are concerns over the possibility of Tinubu’s engaging in medical tourism if he becomes president.
A self-proclaimed ‘Buhari Tormentor’ and aide to former President Jonathan, Reno Omokri, has serially mocked Buhari and Tinubu for seeking medical care abroad.
In its analysis of the nation’s health sector during Buhari’s six years in power, The ICIR had reported how the president overtook former President Umar Yar’Adua in medical trips abroad.
Barely three years in office, Buhari had broken Yar’Adua’s record, spending 172 days outside Nigeria within his two years in office.
He also jetted out of Nigeria to London on March 30, 2021, for a medical check-up, leaving behind a health sector grounded by a doctors’ strike across the country.
In early August, the president was also out of the country when the doctors resumed the strike they suspended on April 11.
As of the time of filing this report, the doctors were yet to call off the strike amidst the third wave of COVID-19, cholera and killer diseases.
The ICIR had also reported how health workers threatened to cripple the health sector with strike, following unmet demands by the government.
Marcus bears the light, and he beams it everywhere. He's a good governance and decent society advocate. He's The ICIR Reporter of the Year 2022 and has been the organisation's News Editor since September 2022. Contact him via email @ [email protected].