President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to Abuja after a 16-day medical trip to the United Kingdom. He said the journey went well.

“He is back in the country,” a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, confirmed yesterday.

The Nigerian leader left the country on March 30 for routine checkups in the European nation.

MEANWHILE, the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) described the journey as a security risk.

At a press conference yesterday in Lagos, the association’s National President, Bishop Wale Oke, submitted: “We are concerned that whenever our President needs health checkups, he goes out of the country.

That is a very major security risk. Does it mean that our President is safer in the hands of foreigners? Supposing those people, in an attempt to undermine the nation, try to play game with our President, what can we do? Why should our elected officials be going abroad for medical treatment when they can inject money into our healthcare system and standardise it like the nations they are running to?”

The cleric further said: “Nigeria is blessed with extremely intelligent medical personnel in every field. But the government is not creating the enabling environment for them to flourish.”

The Christian group challenged the new security chiefs to decisively end the criminality in the country.

It also condemned the attempt to negotiate with bandits, rapists, killers, murders, and kidnappers, saying, “it is wrong for any credible government to negotiate with such people.”

According to PFN, such a decision “is an admission of government’s failure to do the right thing.”

It maintained that the overture was unacceptable, insisting that the offenders must be made to face the full wrath of the law.

Oke continued: “We do not believe that the government of Nigeria has failed yet. The government can rise up to the occasion and bring the full weight of justice to bear on the bandits, rapists, killers, and kidnappers. These are not people to be negotiated with, and if anything at all, the government should negotiate with the youths who are restive and restless. They should not clamp down on them.”