A brilliant Nigerian has just laid out a very interesting theory on Twitter drawing a nexus between the Abuja airport that was closed on the 6th and the Presidency’s announcement of Muhammadu Buhari’s return to Nigeria from his vacation in the United Kingdom.

See this people

They shut Abuja airport under the pretext of runway repairs only to facilitate smuggling in Buhari

Dambazzau… https://t.co/V7HvsRXeU9

— afrispheric (@afrispheric) March 9, 2017

Considering the huge amount of similarities that the handling of this President’s travel and illness shares with that of the late former President Yar’Adua, Afrispheric must be given credit for picking up on this possibility. For no apparent reason, the President and his handlers decided that Nigerians should not only be provided with no information as to the nature of their President’s illness but also that they’d asked for too much by demanding that the President address them.

Now, out of the blues (same way his vacation was announced and then postponed), the Presidency assures that Muhammadu Buhari will be back tomorrow, the 10th of March, just two days after the main Airport was closed.

Afrispheric’s theory? That the closure of the Abuja airport is just a ploy to sneak a frail President into Nigeria through the shut airport (as opposed to the Kaduna airport) without the knowledge of Nigerians.

That conclusion is as shaky as it is interesting. There’s hardly any comment that disagrees with the thread and many of the supporters have backed up their choice by recounting the 2010 drama that surrounded the return of President Umoru Yar’Adua from Germany into Nigeria.

It may well be true.

However, for this to be true, the following must also be true:

• Minister Hadi Sirika, the National Assembly, Vice President Osinbajo, Julius Berger and everyone else at the top knew about this and lied to us.
• The President’s trip was already in the works as at December 2016 or earlier because this is the first time the FG announced it’s intention to close the airport – long before the President got sick or even travelled.
• The Federal government’s strides to rejuvenate the Aviation sector which started lasted year are all parts of this grand plot to sneak President Buhari – whose health condition no one is quite sure of – into Nigeria.
• And/or that the FG knew about the disastrous state of the Abuja airport runway but chose to delay fixing it until a time when it’s closure will be convenient for them to use for a grand scheme of this nature.
• That the President will be snuck into the country despite Femi Adesina’s claim otherwise.
• Finally, that this whole administration is silly enough to consider plotting it’s own end by telling a lie of this magnitude.

Still:

surely if he's flying to Kaduna it should be easy to verify, let's wait till tomorrow

— Ayobami (@dondekojo) March 9, 2017

We wait.

In the meantime, all we can offer as advice to the FG is to ensure that the President’s return is as celebrated and documented as the Ethiopian Airlines landing at the Kaduna airport on the 8th or the Guinea-Bissau Prime Minister’s arrival in Nigeria earlier today.

That’s the only way out now. And we hope they take it. For all of our sakes.