Opposition leader and former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi has tackled President Bola Tinubu over his recent trip to Brazil and Saint Lucia.
The President’s official trip was announced by presidential spokesman, Mr Bayo Onanuga.
However, in a post on his X handle on Saturday, Obi wondered how a leader could be holidaying at such a time the citizens were facing dire challenges.
Obi, who said he was struggling to understand what was happening to governance in this country, noted that Tibubu’s trip was unjustifiable.
He said in the past two years, Nigeria had lost more people to all sorts of criminality than a country that is officially at war, without the leaders showing empathy.
“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.
“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.
“I didn’t want to believe that anybody in the position of authority, more so the President, on whose table the buck stops in this country, with all the myriad problems in virtually all areas of governance, would contemplate a leisure trip at this time.”
He knocked the President over his failure to visit Minna, the Niger State capital where hundreds of lives were lost to flood disaster, adding that even his trip to Makurdi, which came amid public pressure turned out to be a jamboree.
He said “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, therefore, declared that the current situation in Nigeria does not warrant anyone in position of authority to be engaging in leisure, let alone the President, on whose desk the buck stops.
He said instead of asking God for extra hours in a day for the challenges in the country, the government was more concerned about the 2027 election “and on satisfying the wealthy while the mass poor continues to multiply in number.”