Trip to London

 A two-day global education summit that held in the United Kingdom last week made that country’s capital a locus of activity attracting some world leaders. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari left Abuja on Monday to be a part of the summit which held on Wednesday and Thursday, 28th and 29th July.

Official literature by organisers indicated that the ‘Global Education Summit: Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021-2025’ would be a key moment for the world community to pull together in support of quality education for all children, as leaders were expected to make five-year pledges to help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta co-hosted the summit in a hybrid format, with participants attending live sessions of the summit on GPE’s virtual platform besides “a small in-person event” arranged in London. 

Before he left on the London trip, a Presidency statement outlined President Buhari’s itinerary to also include holding bilateral talks with Prime Minister Johnson; and after the summit, staying back in London for an earlier scheduled medical check-up. He is due back home in the second week of August. According to the statement by Special Adviser to the President (Media & Publicity) Femi Adesina, the Nigerian leader was accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, Education Minister of State Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, National Security Adviser Major-Gen. Babagana Monguno (rtd.) and Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Amb. Ahmed Rufai Abubakar.

Nigeria isn’t the primary point of interest in this piece concerning the London event, Malawi is. President Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi sparked outrage in his country as citizens criticised him for opting to travel to the UK to attend a summit held on virtual platforms. To be sure, the event was not entirely virtual, but he didn’t help the argument when his spokesperson justified the trip with the excuse that the internet in Malawi was unreliable. “Although the said summit is virtual, the president must be in the UK physically, as you know that internet connection in Malawi is not reliable,” the spokesperson was reported telling Malawi Times.

Another sore point for Malawians in Chakwera’s trip was the composition of his entourage. The president travelled to the United Kingdom with a 10-member delegation that included his wife, First Lady Monica Chakwera; daughter, Violet Lillie; and his son-in-law who is the state house communications director, Sean Kampondeni. Malawians took exception to the president taking his family with him, especially Violet, an outbound airline ticket agent appointed recently as diplomat to Belgium. Nyasa Times cited a source saying the president’s daughter took the slot meant for Foreign Affairs Minister Eisenhower Mkaka. “What she wants to do there, only she and her father know. It is really sad that instead of taking on the trip people who could make use of the summit and do government business, the president is taking his daughter,” the source was quoted saying. Media reports as well cited the president saying he needed his daughter on the trip because she would provide physical and emotional support, as the first lady reportedly wasn’t feeling well. 

 Chakwera had been harshly criticised over his appointment of Violet to serve at the Malawi embassy in Brussels as third secretary; he faced accusations of nepotism, contrary to his campaign last year by which he defeated former President Peter Arthur Mutharika whom he accused of nepotism and promised to do things differently. Even the London trip would have been a jamboree but for conditions imposed by the summit host. Lilongwe (Malawi’s capital) was said to have initially put forward a list of 61 people intended for the trip, but the British government that is footing the summit bills insisted on the list being pruned to 10 people including Chakwera. And that was the score on which Foreign Minister Mkaka dutifully defended his boss over the London trip while explaining his own exclusion from the delegates list. “This is a training summit hosted by the British Prime Minister and the Kenyan President. Different heads of government and state will attend. They have limited the entourage to 10. Malawi is already benefiting from this global education initiative. The policies to be made there will directly impact Malawi, so it is imperative that the President take part,” he was reported saying.

“London summit: Some African leadership foibles make the continent a laughing stock.”

The trip to London by the Malawi president illustrated everything that is wrong, atimes grotesque, about leadership in Africa. With a GDP per capita of $1,172, Malawi is rated the seventh poorest country on the continent at 2021 estimates, yet its government found it expedient to fund a 10-member delegation (it would have been 61 but for London’s penny-pinching) to the UK capital for a conference held largely on virtual platforms. Internet connection at home was unreliable, they said, but it seems commonsensical that resources used to fund the transportation and estacodes of the president and his entourage – components not likely covered by hosting expenses – could have been used in improving the network’s functionality to the benefit of all Malawians. After Chakwera returns from London, internet connection in Malawi would remain unreliable, meanwhile non-recoupable expenditure has been made on travels owing to poor internet. Besides, the composition of the Malawi leader’s delegation is beyond scandal: four members of one nuclear family on a 10-member team funded with taxpayers’ money! Interestingly, many Malawians weren’t beefing over the first lady, apparently considered the president’s rightful consort, and the son-in-law who had a role as state house communications director. The grouse was with Daughter Violet who had no official role being on the trip, and whose presence Chakwera could only justify as providing physical and emotional support. Some African leadership foibles make the continent a laughing stock.

Lest we look like foraging offshore for local wares, we must address issues with our own country Nigeria pertaining to the London trip. The main summit event was virtual as the organisers made clear, but President Buhari had other engagements on his itinerary including holding a bilateral parley with UK Prime Minister Johnson and attending to earlier scheduled medical routines. Questions about the value of executive time inevitably thrust to the fore, however, when you consider that the Nigerian leader is staying back two extra weeks in ‘Britishland’ obviously to procure medical services the country he has presided over for more than six years can’t deliver. Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo was among leaders also physically in London for the summit, and he returned to Ghana yesterday, 1st August, after other engagements in the UK. 

The argument has been plied that President Buhari travels abroad for medicals because that is where his case history is domiciled, having been using UK doctors for over 40 years. But that argument falters on the score of begging the question of transferability of knowledge. Doctors die while their patients are yet alive, and the case histories get taken over by other doctors who continue to provide medical services needed by those patients. Actually, it is highly unlikely that doctors who started treating President Buhari 40 years ago are the same treating him now. Even if the knowledge / case history were non-transferable, Mr. President could have his doctors come attend to him in Nigeria if facilities were in place for them to work with. And so, lack of requisite facilities rather than domiciliation of case history is the real reason he can’t have medicals in Nigeria. And neither does the line about the length of years he has been using UK doctors wash, because if he began medical tourism when he wasn’t Nigeria’s leader, moral and legacy onus invariably fell on him when he became leader to make the local system right, and set example of confidence in that system by personal patronage. Bottom line is: the local system just isn’t up to scratch under Buhari’s watch.   

Besides that medical tourism by a country’s leader is the greatest indictment there can be on the state of health services in his country, it is awkward for a leader to hibernate in personal cognizance in another country, more so at a time his country roils in crisis of acute insecurity among other challenges. More than half-way through into his second term in power, medical trips abroad by President Buhari signpost admittance of irremediable failure in putting the Nigerian medical system right. And that isn’t exactly flattering.