High hopes for Muhammadu Buhari’s four-year term have diminished at the midpoint after months spent on medical leave
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| President Muhammadu Buhari seen addressing members of his cabinet on his return to Abuja in March. He has since headed back to London. Photograph: Sunday Aghaeze/AFP/Getty Images |
Nigeria’s ailing president has not been seen in two months and has spent over a third of the year so far abroad, with no known plans to return.
More than a month since the two-year midpoint of his presidency, Muhammadu Buhari is still in London receiving treatment for a mystery illness that many believe to be cancer.
The president’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, refused a request from the Guardian this week to comment on Buhari’s whereabouts.
The first lady, Aisha Buhari, reassured Nigerians that her husband was “recuperating fast” in June, on her return from a week-long visit to London, but did not share any pictures of her husband like the ones published after an earlier visit. She left again for London last week.
The 74-year-old president came to power in 2015 promising to fight endemic corruption and Boko Haram, the Islamist group that has rampaged through Nigeria’s north-east.
Buhari has ruled the country once before, having taken power in a military coup in the 1980s. He was deposed in another coup, but when he came to power for the second time in 2015 he was hailed as a scrupulously honest man and a strong hand who would deal efficiently with Nigeria’s problems.
However, his long absences have left Nigerian politics beset with rumour and political power play, on edge and uncertain.
His first trip to the UK was presented by his spokesman as nothing to provoke concern: Buhari was “holidaying” and taking “routine medical tests”, the spokesman said.
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