When Femi Adesina, former presidential spokesman, bared his heart on live television, perhaps he thought he was simply telling an inconvenient truth. But what he did—albeit inadvertently—was to rip open the festering sore of Nigeria’s failed healthcare system and pour acid into it. He said, with no hint of irony, that Muhammadu Buhari would have died long ago if he had relied on Nigerian hospitals. Let that sink in. The man who held the reins of power for eight whole years, who wielded the full weight of Nigeria’s resources, opted to stay alive by staying away from the very healthcare system he was elected to fix.
This is not just a revelation—it is a slap in the face of every Nigerian who has ever lost a loved one because they couldn’t afford to go abroad for treatment. It is an insult to the hardworking but underfunded Nigerian doctors who strive to save lives with broken equipment and outdated drugs. It is a tragic irony: the Commander-in-Chief, who was supposed to lead by example, instead led by escape.
Let us call it what it is—cowardice masked as pragmatism. Adesina’s justification that Buhari needed to “stay alive first” to fix the system is not only hollow but grotesquely offensive. What did Buhari do in eight years to improve the system? Did he build any world-class hospitals? Did he revamp medical infrastructure? Did he motivate our doctors with competitive pay, or ensure uninterrupted power supply in operating theatres? The records speak louder than Adesina’s revisionist storytelling: under Buhari’s watch, brain drain worsened, doctors went on endless strikes, and patients died in droves in ill-equipped hospitals.
There’s no glory in dying, but there’s even less honour in abandoning your people to die while you fly abroad to live. Leaders are not meant to seek comfort while their people suffer—they are meant to solve the problems that make suffering inevitable. Buhari, by Adesina’s own admission, chose personal survival over national salvation. And that, dear fellow citizens, is the very definition of leadership failure.
What does it say about a country when its president places no confidence in the hospitals under his jurisdiction? It says we’re a nation that has been run to the ground by its own gatekeepers. It says the so-called “Giant of Africa” is no more than a limping elephant with hollow bones. If Buhari, with all the privileges of the presidency, had chosen to invest in Nigerian hospitals and patronise them, perhaps the system might have been forced to improve. But instead, he became the poster child for elite medical tourism while everyday Nigerians were left to gamble with death in dilapidated wards.
Let us not forget the optics: a Nigerian president, dying in a London hospital while his people mourn in the heat of a system he refused to trust. The symbolism is unbearable. It paints a picture of abandonment, of betrayal. It tells the average Nigerian, “You are on your own.” And sadly, we’ve known this for far too long—but to hear it confirmed so brazenly by a former presidential mouthpiece is to add salt to an already gangrenous wound.
Adesina spoke with the calm detachment of a man who has long left the trenches of public service, but Nigerians are still in those trenches—dying needlessly, praying desperately, and waiting endlessly in overcrowded emergency rooms. And now, from his privileged perch, he tells us that our president had no choice but to flee the system. Is this the legacy we must live with?
Make no mistake, Buhari’s death is a solemn moment. Every death is. But what dies with him is not just the man—it is the hope that perhaps, once, just once, a Nigerian leader would dare to be different. It is the death of an illusion, the shattering of a lie we’ve told ourselves for too long: that those in power care enough to fix what they themselves avoid.
The truth is, Buhari did not lead by example—he led by exemption. Exempt from the daily horrors of poor governance. Exempt from the cries of women losing babies in under-lit delivery rooms. Exempt from the agony of cancer patients on waiting lists that never move. And now, even in death, his journey from London to Daura is emblematic of a life spent abroad, away from the people, away from the system, away from responsibility.
If Adesina’s words don’t stir us to righteous anger, then we have truly lost our moral compass. This is a moment to take stock. Not just of Buhari’s tenure, but of every leader who hops on a plane at the first sign of a headache, while the rest of us resort to herbs, prayers, and empty hospital shelves. It is time we demanded that those who make the rules also live by them. If a president can’t use the hospitals he governs, then he has no business being president. Period.
Nigeria must wake up from its slumber of mediocrity. We must stop eulogising leaders who fail us and start demanding accountability while they are still breathing. We must refuse to normalize leadership that hides from the very problems it should confront.
Femi Adesina may have spoken the truth, but it was the wrong truth at the wrong time—and it hit like a ton of bricks. Let it bruise our conscience. Let it spark outrage. Let it force a reckoning.
For in a land where the president cannot afford to fall sick on home soil, we are all just one heartbeat away from national disaster.
Stanley Ugagbe is a seasoned journalist with a passion for exposing social issues and advocating for justice. With years of experience in the media industry, he has written extensively on governance, human rights, and societal challenges, crafting powerful narratives that inspire change. He can be reached via stanleyakomeno@gmail.com
