President Muhammadu Buhari has arrived in London for a 10-day working holiday. He left Abuja for London in the early hours of Friday.
While the President is away, the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, will be in acting capacity as the President.
The presidency did not elaborate on the specific assignments the president would engage in while away, an omisdion that seemed more deliberate than oversight.
The president has embarked on several trips in the past in which he exercised functions that were not necessary parts of his disclosed itineraries.
The latest trip comes barely three months after the president traveled to London for Commonwealth leaders’ meeting in April. Although the event proper was slated for April 18-20, the president left Nigeria on April 9, raising questions about his health.
Barely two weeks after returning from London, Mr Buhari went to the United States for bilateral talks with President Donald Trump. The president raised yet suspicion about his health when he failed to return to Nigeria two days after leaving the U.S., a journey that typically does not exceed 15 hours, even with a stopover.
The president later said the trip was due to a presidential plane that was not operating optimally, compelling him to make a stopover in London. Nigerians and opposition politicians, however, viewed the claim with suspicion, ridiculing the “technical stopover” as preposterous.
Beginning with his extended medical vacation over an ear infection in mid-2016, the president has spent more than 172 days, surpassing former President Umar Yar’Adua, who died in office in 2010, the ICIR found in May.
Critics of Mr Buhari have called on him to resign in consideration of his failing health, an advice the president and his loyalists have strongly rejected.
