Former Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has blasted President Bola Tinubu over his planned 12-day vacation to Japan and Brazil, branding it as insensitive to Nigeria’s growing security and economic issues.
Obi urged the President to concentrate more on visiting problematic states and directly addressing citizens’ concerns, claiming that the President’s frequent international trips demonstrated “indifference” to the nation’s urgent issues in a message published on Thursday via his official X handle.
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Tinubu is expected to leave Abuja on Thursday, August 14, for a two-nation tour that would include a stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before continuing on to Japan, per the itinerary made public by the Presidency on Wednesday.
It is anticipated that he will travel to Brazil after attending the Ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD9) in Yokohama from August 20 to 22. However, the statement did not specify when he would return.
Observing that the President had just returned from a meeting with the leader of Brazil, Peter Obi questioned why he would be visiting the same country again in a few of weeks.
He also brought up Tinubu’s previous week-long trip to St. Lucia prior to his attendance at the BRICS Summit, in which Nigeria was merely an observer.
“Our insecurity situation, economic hardship, and human suffering have reached their peak. We are now counted among the most insecure nations, the most fragile economies, and the hungriest countries in the world. This dire reality demands the full attention of Mr. President,” Peter Obi said.
The former Anambra State governor stated that the Japan event could have been attended in fewer days, stressing that Tinubu’s extended foreign excursions brought “little or no tangible value” to Nigeria’s difficulties.
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Peter Obi also called on the President to “commence tours of troubled states with the same enthusiasm he shows for travelling abroad.”
Obi added, “Mr. President must know that he’s not a tourist, but the Chief Executive of a troubled nation, so he must have consciousness, strict work schedules and a strict travelling schedule to show that he has a troubled country to quickly return to.”
