Obi to Tinubu: ‘This is not time for holidaying,’ there are problems to tackle at home

Tinubu and Obi

By TANKO ALI

Labour Party standard bearer, Peter Obi, has taken a critical look at President Bola Tinubu’s leisure trip to St. Lucia in the Caribbean as unwise given the myriad problems at home he needs to tackle.In a long write-up on his X handle on Saturday titled, ‘No, Mr President this is not the time for Holidaying’ Obi wrote,“Dear Nigerians I am struggling with my senses to understand what is happening to governance in this country.“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.“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.“Just this week, the International Monetary Fund, IMF released per capita data showing Nigeria as the 12th poorest country in the World and we remain the country with the highest number of people living in poverty“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.The Presidency release merely confirmed an earlier news report since last week where the Prime Minister of the Caribbean Philip J. Pierre announced at a pre-cabinet press briefing on Monday, last week thatPresident Bola Tinubu is expected to depart Nigeria on Saturday, June 28, 2025, for Saint Lucia for official engagements and private leisure time.“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.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, 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.“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 still missing in a flood natural disaster. I wonder which type of incident will happen before a President is attracted to show physical sympathy to the distressed citizens.“The other state in crisis where over two hundred lives were murdered, the President yielded to public pressure and visited Makurdi the state capital for what turned out to be a political jamboree than condolence as 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.“In terms of land size, 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.“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, going by the way it prioritises the rich and shows indifference to the poor.“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.Finally, I like to let our leaders know one thing that the God given resources of this country belong to all, not to a few. The time has come to put a stop to this drift before it consumes all and focus on pulling people out of poverty.”“A new Nigeria is POssible”.