Labour Party leader and former presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s planned trip to Saint Lucia, describing it as poorly timed and lacking in sensitivity, especially amid Nigeria’s deepening economic and security challenges.
Tinubu is expected to leave Nigeria on Saturday for Saint
Lucia and is also scheduled to attend the upcoming BRICS summit in Brazil.
In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, Obi
expressed dismay over the president’s travel, questioning the state of
governance in the country.
Obi argued that Tinubu’s trip highlights a pattern of
misplaced priorities by the administration, particularly at a time when
citizens are grappling with widespread hunger and insecurity.
“What I have seen and witnessed in the last two years has
left me in shock about poor governance delivery and apparent channelling of
energy into politics and satisfaction of the elites, while the masses in our
midst are languishing in want,” Obi stated.
He lamented the toll of rising insecurity across Nigeria,
pointing out the country’s deteriorating safety situation.
“In the past two years, Nigeria has lost more people to all
sorts of criminality than a country that is officially at war.
“Without any twilight, Nigeria ranks among the most insecure
places in the world. Nigerians are hungrier, and most people do not know where
their next meal will come from,” he wrote.
Obi said he was stunned when he learned of the President’s
travel plans, especially following what he described as a recent holiday in
Lagos.
“With such a gory picture of one’s country, you can imagine
my bewilderment when I saw a news release from the Presidency announcing that
President Bola Tinubu is departing Nigeria today for a visit to Saint Lucia in
the Caribbean,” he said.
Quoting Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister, Philip J. Pierre, Obi
noted that the visit comprises both official and personal segments.
“According to the Prime Minister’s announcement, ‘two of
these days, June 30 and July 1, will be dedicated to an official visit, with
the remainder of the trip set aside as a personal vacation,” he said.
Obi noted that he initially found the report hard to
believe.
“I told the person who drew my attention to the Caribbean
story that it cannot be true and that the President is just coming back from a
holiday in Lagos.
“I didn’t want to believe that anybody in the position of
authority, more so the President… would contemplate a leisure trip at this
time,” Obi said.
He condemned Tinubu’s failure to visit disaster-stricken
areas like Minna in Niger State, where over 200 people reportedly died and
hundreds remain missing due to flooding.
“This is a President going for leisure when he couldn’t
visit Minna, Niger State where over two hundred lives were lost and over 700
persons still missing in a flood natural disaster,” he said.
Obi also took issue with Tinubu’s recent trip to Benue
State, claiming it was politically motivated rather than compassionate.
“The other state in crisis where over two hundred lives were
murdered, the President yielded to public pressure and visited Makurdi… for
what turned out to be a political jamboree than condolence as public holiday
was declared and children made to line up to receive the President who couldn’t
even reach the village, the scene of the brutal attack,” he said.
Drawing comparisons between Nigeria and Saint Lucia, Obi
questioned the logic of prioritising a visit to the Caribbean nation over
addressing pressing domestic issues.
“Makurdi is 937.4 Km², which is over 59% bigger than St
Lucia, which is 617 km², and Minna is 6789 square kilometres, which is ten
times bigger than St Lucia. St Lucia, with a population of 180,000, is less
than half of Makurdi’s 489,839 and Minna, with 532,000 is almost three times
the population of St Lucia,” the former Anambra governor said.
He concluded his post by stressing the urgent need for
leadership that is grounded in empathy and focused on addressing the suffering
of ordinary Nigerians.
He said, “I don’t think the situation in this country today
calls for leisure for anybody in a position of authority, more so the
President, on whose desk the buck stops.
“This regime has repeatedly shown its insensitivity and lack
of passion for the populace…”
Obi added, “This very obvious indifference of the federal
government to the suffering of the Nigerian poor should urgently be reversed.
“One had expected the President to be asking God for extra
hours in a day for the challenges, but what we see is a concentration of
efforts in the 2027 election and on satisfying the wealthy while the mass poor
continues to multiply in number.”
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