President Muhammadu Buhari is set to proceed on a 10 day vacation beginning from Monday January 23 to Monday February 6, 2017.
In a letter read by the President of the Senate Dr. Bukola Saraki during plenary on Thursday, Buhari said the vacation would be a working leave.
The letter read that the 10 day period formed part of his annual vacation for 2017.
According to the letter, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is to act as President during the period which he would be away.
Buhari was last in London in June 2016 for treatment to what the presidency described as a persistent inner ear infection, which caused him to pull out of several scheduled engagements.
Wealthier Nigerians frequently travel overseas for medical treatment because of the poor state of healthcare in the West African nation.
But the president’s decision sparked anger, including from the country’s medical association, which said it contradicted Buhari’s pledge of ending medical tourism.
The health of Nigeria’s president has long been a sensitive issue.
President Umaru Yar’Adua died in 2010 from a long-standing, but undisclosed, kidney condition.
Before Yar’Adua, the military ruler Sani Abacha died in 1998, officially from a heart attack, but rumours of a more lurid cause of death persist.
Buhari himself has had to respond to claims about his health: during the 2015 election campaign that brought him to power, his opponents claimed he was “mortally ill” from prostate cancer.
He dismissed the allegations and said a purported medical document used to back up the claim was a forgery.
