Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari's holiday arrangements have provoked a mix of stinging rebuke and even a reference to God's famed six-day weeks. The leader, who will resume duties on 6 February, announced his planned trip to the United Kingdom where he will be staying for 10 days on vacation in a post on Twitter. He added that vice-president Yemi Osinbajo would act as president in his absence.

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Some local media speculated on whether Buhari was going abroad to seek medical attention, as he did in 2016 when he travelled to London to treat an ear infection.

The claims were, however, dismissed by both the president and his spokesperson Femi Adesina.

"What's wrong with going on vacation? Didn't I go last year at the same time?" Buhari told journalists before departing from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in the federal capital of Abuja.

Buhari's media aide Adesina later released a statement saying the president was going to rest and "undergo routine medical check-ups".

"You know that God did work of creation for six days and on the seventh day he rested. So if God needed to rest how much more human being," Adesina told reporters.

"So the president is just going to rest and the statement we have released is straightforward. He will go on this leave and during the leave he will do routine medical check-ups."

Before leaving Nigeria, Buhari met security chiefs to discuss, among other things, the progress of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) troops in The Gambia.

Nigerian soldiers are part of a joint force aiming to solve a political impasse in Gambia, where entrenched leader Yahya Jammeh is refusing to step down and allow the new president Adama Barrow, currently in Senegal, to take office.

Some have criticised Buhari for going on vacation just days after the army mistakenly killed dozens of refugees and aid workers in an airstrike supposed to target Boko Haram militants.

Others also took to social media to comment on Buhari's holiday, with some suggesting he should have travelled to the country's northeast to visit survivors of the army's bombing, which occurred in the town of Rann, Borno state.

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