Concerns were raised, last
night, over the health status of the presidential candidate of the All
Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, following his planned trip
to the United States of American towards the end of January.
Buhari is reported to have
filled an online application for the United States of America Visa to enable
him travel to the country around January 26 for medical scrutiny.
The application for the visa,
it was learnt, instantly fueled speculations that Buhari had been weighed down
by the strain of the campaigns which he had been undertaking in recent days,
thereby requiring urgent medical attention in the foreign land.
His opponents argued that
Buhari would not have sought to abandon his campaigns midway and travel abroad
for medical attention if his health condition was not dire.
They contended that the
general’s failing health had become a serious concern to his handlers, who
have, however, quietly managed the situation to avoid any damage to his
candidature.
But in a shift response,
Buhari dismissed the claims over his health as mere fabrication of lies by
those afraid of his rising popularity among Nigerian voters.
While insisting that he was hale
and hearty, Buhari, through his Campaign Director of Media and Publicity,
Mallam Garba Shehu, asked Nigerians not to be distracted by the antics of
desperate and unpopular candidates who were afraid of losing in a free and fair
contest. The media campaign director dismissed as a figment of the imagination
of “wicked and evil persons,” the rumour that Buhari may be travelling to the
United States towards the end of this month for medical check up.
While dismissing the report as
fabrications, however, he said that “as a prominent leader of the opposition,
many interests across the globe want him (GMB) over for political and
diplomatic consultations,” adding that the “invitation to the US may not be
unconnected to this.”
Shehu also dismissed as fake
and untenable a purported medical report from the Ahmadu Bello University
Teaching Hospital showing that Buhari had been diagnosed of prostate cancer by
the institution.
In a statement, he described
the claim, said to have been credited to a ‘renowned source in the hospital’,
as disdainful, distractive, mischievous, fake and fallacious.
The Buhari aide said, “It
(report of cancer) is untrue and condescending of its exponents. I have it on
good authority that GMB has not visited the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching
Hospital in the last five years. So, how can anyone say that he was diagnosed
with prostate cancer last October, barely three months ago?.
“This is the highest point of
political distraction, malice and mischief. The report was not only fake but
unfounded. I have spoken to impeccable sources at ABUTH all of whom deny the
report and also claimed that the letterhead used was not their regular one, and
that Dr. Bala Mohammed that purportedly approved the false medical report is
not on the personnel list of that department.” Beside, Shehu said sources at
ABUTH disclosed that “medical report analysis only come from laboratory
technologists and not medical doctors as handwritten in this particular case”,
stressing that Buhari did not attend the hospital for cancer or any other
ailment.
He restated its statement of
Friday that Buhari is as fit as a fiddle.
“The Ahmadu Bello University
Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) has discredited the purported report said to have
emanated from the hospital to the effect that General Muhammadu Buhari is
stricken with cancer,” the APC Presidential Campaign Organisation has said.
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Politics