Nigeria’s president returns once again
• Throngs of cheering people lined a freeway in Abuja, Nigeria, over the weekend to welcome a countryman who has spent much of 2017 overseas: the president.
President Muhammadu Buhari arrived in the capital on Saturday, and the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief that its leader had returned from London, where he had spent more than 100 days receiving treatment for a mystery illness. It was his second medical leave this year.
With the president abroad and little information available about his condition, some old wounds in the country have begun to reopen.
“I am so glad to be home,” Buhari said in an address on Monday.
But he returned to a countr y whose oil- dependent economy is in turmoil and where the Islamist militant group Boko Haram has been escalating attacks on the military and civilians in the northeast. Millions are suffering from a humanitarian crisis set off by the war, which is in its eighth year.
Fights between nomadic herdsmen and farmers in the middle of the country have left hundreds dead. A spate of kidnappings for ransom has plagued some parts of the country. Some of the president’s political opponents have called for secession.
Much of Buhari’s short speech on Monday seemed directed at those rivals, some of whom engaged in a bloody civil war decades ago to create an independent republic of Biafra in the southeast. The president singled out foes who “have crossed our national red lines by daring to question our collective existence as a nation. This is a step too far.”
Buhari’s long absences for an illness that officials have refused to identify have created tensions in Nigeria, setting off protests not only from separatists in the south but also from poor residents of oil communities who want a better life and from ordinary citizens who wanted Buhari to either come home or resign.
While the president was away, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was officially in charge.
While managing the political jockeying, Buhari must also face a war against Boko Haram that worsened in his absence. After months of losing territory, the militant group has staged regular suicide bombings in markets and camps for displaced people, and attacks against soldiers and military convoys.