NIGERIA: SADDLED WITH A SICK AND A DISHONEST PRESIDENCY - Lauretta Onochie

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Illness is not a crime. Every human being, including presidents, can face health challenges. What separates leadership from deception is honesty, transparency, and respect for constitutional order. 

Nigeria has a clear precedent. During the early period of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, when health challenges arose, Nigerians were formally informed through the National Assembly. Power was duly transmitted to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, in line with the Constitution. The country was not left guessing. The system, though strained, worked.

Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigerians are confronted with something far more troubling than illness: opacity dressed up as governance.

President Tinubu appears to suffer recurring health challenges, yet there is no forthright communication with the Nigerian people. Instead of honesty, there is camouflage. Instead of constitutional transparency, there is silence. Each time medical attention is required, it is routinely presented as an “official state visit,” a “working trip,” or a “private engagement,” leaving citizens to piece together rumours, sightings, and contradictions.

Just before the New Year, the President vanished from public view for weeks. No formal handover. No clear communication. Nigerians were left in the dark—until he resurfaced, not in Abuja, but reportedly in the United Arab Emirates. The question remains unanswered: where was the President, and under what constitutional authority was the country governed during his absence?

More recently, after the widely circulated incident of a fall in Turkey, Nigerians again found themselves guessing. No official medical briefing. No presidential address. No clarity on his condition or location. A nation of over 200 million people reduced to speculation because its President refuses to speak plainly.

Medical Trips Camouflaged as “Official Visits" Nigerians have repeatedly questioned several foreign trips that were announced as official engagements but bore the hallmarks of medical visits:

Sudden overseas “working visits” with no clear diplomatic outcomes, no signed agreements, and no detailed public itinerary.

Extended stays abroad following brief public appearances, often coinciding with periods when the President disappears from the public eye.

Trips to known medical destinations, announced as state or private visits, without subsequent reports of high-level bilateral achievements.

Absences during critical national moments, where governance appears to drift while the Presidency issues vague reassurances.

The issue is not whether President Tinubu is ill. The issue is why Nigerians are being treated as children, unworthy of the truth, and why constitutional provisions are being sidestepped through semantic gymnastics.

A sick president can still govern—if he is honest. A dishonest president, however, poisons governance itself.

By refusing to formally notify the National Assembly when he is absent for health reasons, by failing to transmit power as required, and by masking medical care as diplomacy, President Tinubu undermines the Constitution he swore to uphold. This is not strength. It is insecurity. It is not strategy. It is deceit.

Nigeria does not need a superhuman president. It needs a truthful one.

Leadership demands courage—not only to rule, but to tell the truth. Until President Tinubu finds the courage to honestly speak plainly to Nigerians about his health and his whereabouts, the charge will persist: this is not just a sick presidency, but a dishonest one.

Lauretta Onochie

@Laurestar 

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