Nigerian lawyers and several Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) have called on Nigerian politicians not to visit the President in the UK as it will cause more harm than good.
President Muhammadu Buhari is currently in the UK, receiving treatment for some undisclosed ailments.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, said Buhari should tell anyone who wants to pay him a visit that he (the President) is not a tourist centre.
“The President should be able to tell the peddlers, the bootlickers and pretenders who want to be seen to be close to him that he is not Jerusalem or Rome, where people go to for pilgrimage.
On his part, Lagos-based lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, said it would be a mockery for Nigeria for any politician to visit the President while he is receiving treatment abroad.
“They should not make us a laughing stock again; they should conserve the resources they would use to travel abroad to make Nigeria the kind of place they all rush to. It is not reasonable to be wasting our hard-earned foreign exchange on such trips,” he said.
Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Yusuf Ali, said politicians who visit the President at this moment are sycophants.
“We saw what happened the other time the President was abroad for treatment — everyone started trying to overdo one another in showing that they cared for the President. Most of them also probably used state resources to do so.
“If someone is ill, they deserve rest.
Even on medical ground, people should be discouraged from going there. Let’s keep praying for him here and our prayers will work for him over there. Politicians should let the President be. Their going there will not heal him.”
Another lawyer and President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Mr. Malachy Ugwumadu, said it would amount to wastage if politicians started visiting Buhari in London.
