A leading pro-transparency and pro-democracy non-governmental body, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria,(HURIWA) said the presidential address made by President Muhammadu Buhari on his return from three months’ medical sojourn in the United Kingdom was not far-reaching and not re-assuring.

 

In a media release by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Director of media Miss. Zaniab Yusuf, HURIWA said the presidential speech was silent on the amount of public fund that had gone into treating just one person in the person of President Muhammadu Buhari, including the humongous public fund committed towards the payments of parking fees for the presidential jet and for the expenses on the retinue of aides that spent months in London at public expense.

 

“We expected Mr. President to apologies for breaching his solemn electoral pledge to end medical tourism and to send an executive bill to the National Assembly to ban all sorts of publicly funded medical tourism.

 

“We reject the insinuation from State officials that the treatments were paid for by family of the president because that is being economically with the truth since Mr. President during his medical vacation enjoyed all the presidential privileges and spent all his times in the public house at our own expenses.

 

“We expect that as a man who has professed zero-tolerance to lack of transparency and accountability, that he would have okayed the invitation of world’s acclaimed team of forensic financial auditors to look at the finances of the presidency and to make full disclosures on how much of public fund went into his treatment”.

 

Beside, HURIWA reminded President Buhari that during his absence, the minster of budget and National Planning unveiled the 2017 budget in which he told Nigerians that “this government had earmarked N9 Billion to be strategically deployed to stop medical tourism by Nigerians which is draining our National resources of the scarcely available foreign currencies.

 

“Why then is Mr. President an exception to the rule his administration created?”

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