Femi Adesina, former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the late President Muhammadu Buhari, has revealed that Buhari’s decision to seek medical treatment abroad may have saved his life.
In an interview with Channels Television ahead of Buhari’s burial in Daura, Katsina State, Adesina suggested that Nigeria’s inadequate healthcare system could have led to Buhari’s premature death had he relied solely on it.
President Buhari passed away on Sunday, July 13, 2025, in a London clinic after a prolonged illness.
He previously served as Nigeria’s military head of state from 1983 to 1985 and returned as a democratically elected president from 2015 to 2023.
During his presidency, Buhari made several medical trips to London — a practice that drew widespread criticism and reignited debates about the state of Nigeria’s healthcare system and the trend of foreign medical tourism by public officials. One notable example occurred in 2017 when he spent 103 consecutive days in London for treatment, prompting rumors of his death at the time. Altogether, Buhari reportedly spent over 200 days in London for medical reasons during his time in office.
Adesina, however, defended the former president’s medical decisions, saying that Buhari had long relied on treatment in the UK, even before becoming president.
“Like I said, he always had his medicals in London, even when he was not in office. So it was not about the time he was president alone,” Adesina stated.
He further stressed that the decision to seek treatment abroad was based on necessity, not vanity.
“If he had said, ‘I will do my medicals in Nigeria just to prove a point,’ he might have died long ago, because the expertise required may not have been available in the country,” he said.
Adesina emphasized that staying alive was a prerequisite for effecting meaningful change.
“You need to be alive first to make any kind of impact in your country,” he added.
Addressing critics of Buhari’s frequent foreign medical trips, Adesina argued that many fail to understand the connection between survival and reform.
“Those who keep talking about traveling abroad forget that without life, there can be no change,” he concluded.
