During his appearance as a guest on on Channels Television programme, 'Politics Today', the presidential special adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina has disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari is of sound mind and health, thereby dispelling rumours of him being sick. The presidential spokesman who dismissed reports that Buhari embarked on a sudden vacation, said having worked 'non-stop for eight months', the president, being human, needed respite and asked for it.
"Any man can fall sick, old or young, but the president is not sick, the president is well. The president has worked for more than eight months non-stop, and he felt it was time to take a respite and he asked for six days leave and he did it the proper way.
"He communicated it to the national assembly, handed over power to his deputy and nothing is wrong with that," Adesina said.
"When told that the vacation appeared sudden and if there was any reason behind that, Adesina asked: "Do you go on vacation because you are sick? You need respite from time to time and when you think it is time for respite, you take it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his state of health.
"Nigerians have been lied to for so long that they are now finding it difficult to believe the truth and that is the problem. You have told the truth yet they did not believe it because they have a carry-over of those who have lied to them for many decades but this government will not lie; it will tell the truth."
Adesina also defended the president’s foreign trips, saying the arguments that Buhari travels often lack basis, adding that the trips abroad had yielded several results, among which is the tremendous gain in the fight against insurgency.
"He went to Chad; he went to Niger; he was to go to Cameroon but then the G7 invited him to Germany and what were those trips about? Security. They invited him to brief them on the security situation in Nigeria.
"Those trips were about Nigeria’s interest. When he assumed office in May last year, there were a minimum of 20 local governments in custody of Boko Haram, local governments where they had hoisted their flags, where they had declared their caliphate.
"Now, today, not a single local government is under their territory. The governor of Borno state still reiterated it today. He didn’t do that by sitting pretty on his seat. He needed to build a coalition to form a regional force, which has been done, to battle insurgency.
"Don’t also forget that our president is so much in demand. In September last year when he went for the UN General Assembly, the envoy of the UN said there were about 23 requests from foreign leaders to speak with our president; he could only oblige eight of them."
The spokesman waved aside the allegation of governor of Ekiti state, Ayo Fayose, that the president spends about $1 million on each of his foreign trips.
"What is the source of that? You know it’s a laughable source. You know this is not true. If anyone has contrary evidence, let him bring it forward. The person alleging that the president spends $1 million should be able to prove it. It should be empirical.
"Anybody can get up and quote any figure, do we begin to lose sleep over that? The president himself has responded to that."
Speaking on the number of aircraft in the president’s fleet, he said:
"It’s the president’s decision; it’s his prerogative to cut down or not to cut down, and if he has not done it, if we elect him, if we trusted him enough to elect him, we must also trust him to take the right decisions."
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