Former presidential candidate of the Labour Party 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 scheduled to leave Nigeria on Saturday for Saint Lucia and is also expected to attend the upcoming BRICS summit in Brazil.
In a post shared on X on Saturday, Obi expressed dismay over the president’s travel, questioning the state of governance in the country.
Obi stated 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 bemoaned 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 stated that he was surprised when he learnt 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.
Obi quoted Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister, Philip J. Pierre, as saying that the visit would include both official and personal portions.
“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 mentioned 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 berated 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 are still missing in a natural disaster,” he said.
Obi also condemned 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 rather than a condolence, as a 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 parallels between Nigeria and Saint Lucia, Obi questioned the rationale of choosing a trip to the Caribbean country over solving critical domestic challenges.
“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.
The former governor of Anambra State 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.”
