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Tanzania’s main opposition leader Tundu Lissu has on Thursday disclosed that President John Magufuli succumbed to coronavirus after the leader downplayed the severity of the virus.
The statement comes barely a few hours after the country’s vice-president announced that Magufuli had died in a hospital in Dar es Salaam from a heart condition he had suffered for long.
Lissu who is currently in exile in Belgium made the remarks in an interview with the Kenyan network KTN news calling it “poetic justice” that the president has succumbed to a disease he ignored.
“President Magufuli ignored all the measures put up against Covid 19, he placed his faith in faith leaders and herbal concoctions of dubious medical values. He went down with it,” said Lissu, a Chadema presidential candidate who lost October 2020 elections.
However, the Tanzanian government stopped publishing covid 19 statistics in April 2020 when the country registered 509 cases and 16 death.
Magufuli died on Wednesday at the age of 61. He came to power in 2015 as a blunt-talking man of the people, attacking corruption with an iron fist.
To pay their respect to the fallen president, the vice-president Samia Suluhu Hassan has announced a 14 day mourning period.
