Group warns North on PMB’s health, calls for medical evaluation for President…Says Atiku more viable option

The Coalition of Ethnic Nationalities for the Atiku Agenda (CENTAA) has expressed misgivings about the health of President Muhammadu Buhari, and warned the North not to allow history repeat itself.

CENTAA said the Senate and the Council of State should invoke the constitutional provision of setting up a panel of medical doctors to evaluate the President’s health condition as a matter of national emergency.

In a statement on Wednesday, CENTAA President, Hon. Adeoye Jolaosho, recalled that the Late President Umar Yar’Adua suffered ill-health and his death in office led to a constitutional crisis, only resolved through the Senate’s invocation of the Doctrine of Necessity that permitted Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to succeed him.

Going by the President’s falling spells and memory lapses, CENTAA said it was obvious that he was in no condition to stand election nor rule the country for the next four years.

“Choosing a man for a second term after he spent the good part of his first term under medical treatment outside these shores is not only foolhardy but smacks of a hidden agenda by the cabal currently egging him on. And the North must rise up and puncture whatever evil designs his promoters have in mind by backing a candidate whose health condition is not suspect,” CENTAA said.

The Atiku support group, with membership in 28 states, called for the invocation of Section 144 of the Constitution that stipulates steps to be taken for a medical evaluation of the President.

According to CENTAA, the real danger was the fact that a sick Buhari had become a puppet in the hands of some anonymous puppeteers.

“From all indications, the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo is not in control of affairs although statutorily he remains Number Two. But he too has been pocketed by the cabal,” CENTAA lamented.

CENTAA referred to a January 2018 medical evaluation of US President Donald Trump, after fears were expressed over the state of his health condition.

“The President’s health condition is obviously becoming an international embarrassment,” CENTAA pointed out. “The President and Commander-in-Chief, in whose hands lie the affairs of 180 million people, has depreciated. And the international community can only but wonders why we would not do the needful and let an old war veteran have his well-deserved retirement.”

According to CENTAA, with Buhari suspected to be older than his official age of 76, coupled with the trauma of a Civil War experience, it would not be out of place for him to suffer dementia and memory lapses.

However, CENTAA advised that the North should invest its vote in a more viable presidential candidate, one with the most likelihood of running a four-year tenure.

Describing as a miracle Buhari’s recovery from the sickness that saw him hospitalized and recuperating for several months in London, CENTAA urged the President, his family and his team not to stretch their luck too far by letting him pass through another election.

“We know the reality of the principle of rotation. We know that the North deserves its full eight years in this dispensation. But Buhari is too weak and sick to be the North’s flag-bearer at this time. He should give way for a true Nationalist like former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is physically, intellectually and politically capable of handling the mandate on behalf of the North,” CENTAA said.

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