Human rights activist and lawyer, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, has said that President Bola Tinubu is not different from Nigerians who japa to foreign countries to do cleaning jobs.
He stated this on Channels Television on Thursday while
speaking on Tinubu’s absence from the country due to his extended vacation in
Europe.
Speaking on what the constitution says about transmission of
power after 21 days of the President’s absence, Odinkalu said, “It’s not that
straightforward. We’ve got to be intellectually honest, whether or not we agree
with that. The Constitution says 21 days. When you look at the Interpretation
Act, the 21 days would mean 21 working days, and 21 working days is effectively
four weeks. Sadly, four calendar weeks, because you don’t count public
holidays, you do not count weekends.
“But look, every other thing about this is very squalid, and
that’s putting it rather mildly. Of course, my favorite country is across the
border, Cameroon. Paul Biya visits Cameroon. He lives in Switzerland and visits
Cameroon from Switzerland. Right? He’s just left back to Switzerland, for
instance, having been in Cameroon for like four or five days after after nearly
80 days of being away.
“Now, President Tinubu has been away for 24 days. It’s
beginning to look like Nigeria is his vacation spot, and France is really where
the Nigerian capital is and where he goes to do business. I don’t think people
should be telling us that that our President is running the country. Nigeria
effectively has become an ungoverned territory. This is exactly what it is.
Nigeria is ungoverned. We’ve been talking about our insecurity situation as a
reflection of ungoverned territories, and here we are.
“The people running the country have abdicated, gone to look
after countries to become basically house sitters in countries whose Presidents
are in New York. So the President of France is in New York at the moment. The
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is in New York at the moment. Our
President is looking after Europe. That’s what people japa from Nigeria to do
and become housekeepers to go and clean houses for other people. That’s exactly
what that President is doing. That’s terrible
“There’s no way to make this sound good or look good, no
matter how legalistic you want to be about it. It says something terribly
squalid about the attitude that leaders at the highest levels bring to
governance, and to then casualise everything, they say the country is going to
be run by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
“That is, frankly, something I don’t want to. I could be
quite brutal in describing that, but I don’t want to use the expression ‘sad’.
I just think that we cannot take ourselves seriously if we are going down that
route.”
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