What Buhari's Million Dollar Ear Checkup Trip To UK Could Provide IDPs
If it was Goodluck Jonathan I would be writing this so please do not test me for doing so now. Our NGO has been embedded with the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs in the northeast. They are dying of starvation. Things are beyond hard for them. We launched the #NationalFoodDriveForIDPs this month to try to get some food to them. The Vanguard Saturday reported that in some camps by lake Chad, IDPs are dying of starvation at the rate of 10-11 per day! May God protect us from dying of starvation.
So President Muhammadu Buhari sojourned to the United Kingdom for his third or fourth time since assuming office...this time to check his ear. He reportedly has Menieres disease. A well known chronic ear disorder characterized by tinnitus (ringing), vertigo (dizziness), headaches and hearing loss. There is really nothing that can be done to it regardless of where it is remedied.
Nigeria has functional MRI and CT machines that can view images of the inner ear hearing apparatus and brain to confirm the diagnosis and look at the brain. Images can be emailed to London for other experts review if unconvinced with local practitioners. The question is: why did Buhari need to travel to the UK to check out his little problem at a cost of at least one million dollars to the tax payer?
Is he as the President suddenly indispensable and beyond illness and death? Is an ear infection and its impact/aggravation of his alleged Menieres disease, reason enough to jet to London once again after so many questionable trips?
Is this not the same President who just said he could not go to Lagos to serve the people who voted him into power, due to pre-Ramadan scheduling issues that's now flying to the UK for his personal reassurance, right in the middle of the very Ramadan?
Now if Buhari has a condition worse than ear infection or Menieres, you cannot blame us for criticizing him because it will mean he is holding back information from us that he is obligated to inform us of. So either way, he gets it for violating our trust or our purse, unless we are hypocrites.
A Million Dollars Trip!
A million dollars will provide training and vocational employment for 2-5000 IDPs.
A million dollars wasted on this trip will feed a million IDPs two meals or will feed 10,000 IDPs for three months..
A million dollars will construct 500 temporary health care centers across the needy northeast.
A million dollars will put 1000 displaced youth through professional higher institution training in various disciplines including Medicine.
We can go on and on on the various benefits a million dollars will bring to the dying IDPs in Nigeria's bleeding northeast.
We are disappointed to say the least that President Buhari continues living the "those who can afford it" privilege, response given to Aljazeera in answer to differential access to CBN official-rate dollars for the cabal and politicians.
We had really hoped for something different, more Tanzania, John Magufuli bulldozer-like from the President, especially in these trying times of deadly hardship and national sacrifice.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah; @EveryNigerian