The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, has sharply criticised President Bola Tinubu for what he described as the President’s constant foreign travels despite Nigeria’s mounting economic and security crises.
According to a statement from the Presidency, President Tinubu is set to embark on yet another journey — a two-nation tour with a stopover in a third city. Political analysts estimate that with this trip, beginning today, the President would have spent over 200 of the 806 days he has so far served in office outside the country.
In a strongly worded post on his verified X handle titled “Again, Our President Moves as the Nation Bleeds”, Obi accused Tinubu of showing indifference to the nation’s deteriorating conditions.
“Amid the deplorable state of our nation in every respect, we have a virtually indifferent President who has continued to display insensitivity to our situation,” Obi wrote. “How can anyone explain that a President who recently returned from Brazil, where he met with the country’s leader, is now heading back there again, leaving unresolved challenges at home?”
Obi revealed that Tinubu’s latest travel plan indicates he will depart Abuja on Thursday, August 14, for visits to Japan and Brazil, with a stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In Japan, the President is scheduled to attend the Ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD9) in Yokohama from August 20 to 22. The itinerary, however, does not indicate when he will return to Nigeria.
The former Anambra State governor expressed concern that while several Nigerian states are battling severe crises, Tinubu has not made official visits to any of them. Instead, he said, the President appears eager to travel abroad “at the slightest invitation or excuse,” often departing several days before the actual event.
Citing a previous example, Obi noted that before attending the BRICS Summit — where Nigeria was only invited as an observer but later presented as a “partner” — Tinubu spent an entire week on a state visit to St. Lucia. By contrast, he added, leaders of actual BRICS member countries arrived just one or two days before the summit began.
