A social critic and writer, Jimoh Phillips has berated the wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari for her medical trip abroad after the lockdown.
The first lady had embarked on medical trip abroad and returned on Saturday with ugly incident of air turbulence in the Nigerian Air Force fleet that conveyed her.
In a statement made available to our correspondents, the activist said it is high time government officials and their families stopped the madness of foreign medical trips with tax-payers’ money.
He argued that Nigeria has at present recorded six decades’ post-independence, and yet the healthcare sector is in comatose despite yearly budgets always allocated to the sector.
Phillips said that unless a state of emergency is declared on the nation’s healthcare with outright ban placed on all public officeholders from councilors to President on embarking on medical trip abroad except on specialized cases, the rot in the system will continue to move from one administration to another.
The activist wondered why no public officeholder travelled abroad during lockdown of countries across the world adding that in most cases, the foreign trips are opportunity to launder money abroad by government functionaries and their relatives.
However, Mrs. Buhari while expressing gratitude to well-wishers for their prayers while she was away hinted of efforts in place toward reviving the sector through private sector initiative.