As you read this, it is about 48 hours since President Muhammadu Buhari returned to the country after spending 50 days on medical vacation. A former military dictator, Mr. Buhari shamed his critics when he transmitted a notice of his vacation to the National Assembly and by inference transferring the state power apparatchik to his deputy as demanded by the Constitution.  On this score, he bettered his predecessors including Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who never allowed his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, a space in the power equation or the late Umaru Yar’adua who went on medical vacation without transferring power to his then deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

It was the second time the President would be going on medical vacation and the third short vacation since May 29, 2015. A president going for medical vacation is not news. It is even more so when such President is a septuagenarian.  It is only by God’s grace that much younger persons are healthy and alive. As mortal flesh, we are all susceptible to the tides of health: good health, ill-health and in some cases no health at all – death! At just over 50, this writer has drifted in and out of hospitals including surviving gangrenous appendicitis (ruptured appendix).  We all go under the weather. The nation’s information technology community has been mourning these past days. The industry lost one of its most illustrious amazons, Florence Seriki, founder of Omatek Computers, to the cold hands of death. She was aged 53.

This is why nobody should have raised hell over the president’s medical vacation. We should have wished him well and quick recovery. That is the least expected of the citizenry not the irrational frenzy and fatal fantasies about whether he is alive or dead. It is evil to even conceive the thought of the demise of someone when the giver of life, the Almighty God, has not decreed it so.

But there is obviously more to the whole story. Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. In other words, there is always ‘cause and effect’. This is where the real issues are in the President’s medical vacation saga. Handlers of Mr. President made a mess of an otherwise simple matter. They complicated an issue that required no spin, no lies, no fibs or slant. It was just a straight forward matter that the President was ill and in his stead, the vice president would act on his behalf until he is certified fit again.

Lai Mohammed, the Information Minister, a fantastic propagandist but a gravely flawed image manager, compounded the whole story when he repeatedly said that the president was ‘hale and hearty’. Being hale and hearty was cheery news and many Nigerians were delighted to hear that but it crashed like a pack of cards when a ‘hale and hearty’ president had to extend his vacation, as they later said, to await the result of some laboratory tests whereupon he would hop into the presidential jet and return to work. This never happened. It appeared that the president’s spin doctors were working harder to establish a case of sound health for Mr. Buhari than his medical doctors were working to cure him of his ill-health. Except they  misinterpreted the meaning of being ‘hale and hearty’; anybody declared hale and hearty  is someone in good health, somebody fit and strong; full of vigour and vitality. This was not likely to be the health status of Mr. President otherwise he would have been back to work long ago. But this was what Lai Mohammed and the legion of London visitors wanted Nigerians to believe. Alas nobody believed this tale. Rather, the people got more anxious by the day.

Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) put it most succinctly. In a statement signed by its Director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, the group said it was high time the truth was revealed. The statement read inter alia:

“MURIC rejects the Federal Government’s grandstanding on the issue. We equally denounce the diabolical speculations and death wishes flying around the length and breadth of the country. It is all much ado about nothing. It is an act of bad faith.

“We refuse to accept the Federal Government’s claim that the president is hale and hearty. That sounds more like tales by moonlight. Neither shall we give credit to advocatus diaboli  (Devil’s advocates)who wish him dead or enemies of peace who claim that Buhari had died”.

MURIC expressed the general feeling among Nigerians. Even among the die-hard supporters of Mr. Buhari, there was waning confidence in the spins and yarns dished out by the Presidency and the horde of political tourists who made sorties to London and returned with the same ‘hale and hearty’ tale.

It was an unhealthy and thoughtless indulgence by the Presidency to sing the ‘hale and hearty’ hymnal. If the President was unwell, it should be so stated. This would have elicited genuine sympathy from the people rather than the art and sophistry of dissimulation which did more damage to the cause. There are many Nigerians out there who have unaffected love for Mr. Buhari and who would be willing, without prodding and prompting, to privately and fervently intercede for him in prayer. But first, they must have a clear understanding of what they were praying for just so they didn’t have to pray amiss.

As if that was not enough, the President’s handlers inserted a rather bewildering dimension into the story line. It was the matter of Mr. President making telephone calls to every Jack and Jill and receiving calls from his colleagues in US, Morocco and God knows where next. This was not only a needless exacerbation of the anxiety among Nigerians but also a clear distraction from the real issue. Worse still, gloating over phone calls made by Buhari or received by him did little to assuage the mystification about the health of the man that rode to power on sweeping public goodwill. Instead, it added to the anxiety created around his health. If the Presidency really wanted to use the articles of neo-technology to prove that the President is ‘hale and hearty’, they should have considered multimedia, the type that people can see and hear (audio-visual), in this instance Skype. But this was needless and I would not have recommend it just as I would not have recommended the buzzing reportage on the President making phone calls and receiving same.

It was good enough that Mr. President transferred power to his deputy; it was also good that the appropriate authorities were communicated when there was need to extend the medical vacation.  These are the demands of the constitution and they were fully met. They should have saved Nigerians the other details of phone calls to whoever. The other matter of receiving a platoon of visitors including political jobbers, those seizing the moment to evade being probed for corruption and contract mandarins should have been kept private. Circulating and causing to be published still pictures of the President receiving different groups of Nigerian politicians put an icing of distrust on the cakey story.

Yet, the very fact that handlers of the matter bungled what was supposed to be a simple, straightforward issue did not give anybody the licence to wish the President death. To have done so was a banal display of bestiality by man towards man. One admirable thing in the whole saga is the sincerity of Mr. President to admit that he was really ill. He said he had never been this sick in the past 70 years. That is a sincere leader. Now juxtapose this with all the lies fed to the nation that he was ‘hale and hearty’. I hope somebody has learnt a lesson or two here.

But now that Mr. Buhari is back, the Presidency needs to review its information management architecture. The President has two outstanding journalists as spokesmen, they should be allowed to do their job. Lai Mohammed should mind other matters of the nation where his propaganda skills would have high utility, like telling the world how Boko Haram insurgents had been routed by our gallant troops. By the way, Mr. President welcome back!

• Courtesy of Sunday Sun newspaper, March 12, 2016