Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s visit to Saint Lucia, describing it as ill-timed and insensitive, given the current socio-economic and security challenges facing Nigeria.
Obi, in a strongly worded statement shared on his X handle on Saturday, titled “No, Mr President, this is not the time for holidaying,” questioned the rationale behind the president’s decision to embark on a leisure trip while many Nigerians are reeling from poverty, hunger, and insecurity.
The statement, signed by his media aide, Ibrahim Umar, came in the wake of the Presidency’s announcement that Tinubu had departed Nigeria for Saint Lucia in the Caribbean for official engagements and personal vacation.
Quoting a prior briefing by Saint Lucian Prime Minister, Philip J. Pierre, Obi noted that only two days of the trip—June 30 and July 1—were scheduled for official duties, with the rest designated as private leisure.
Obi said he initially dismissed the news of the trip as false, believing that no leader faced with the scale of problems currently confronting Nigeria would consider taking a vacation. “I told the person who drew my attention to the Caribbean story that it cannot be true… 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… would contemplate a leisure trip at this time,” he said.
He criticised Tinubu for failing to visit Minna, Niger State, where over 200 lives were lost and more than 700 people reported missing due to a recent natural disaster. “This is a President going for leisure when he couldn’t visit Minna… I wonder what kind of incident will happen before a President is attracted to show physical sympathy to distressed citizens,” Obi lamented.
Obi also referenced the president’s delayed visit to Makurdi, Benue State, where scores of citizens were massacred in a violent attack. He described the eventual visit as “a political jamboree,” noting that children were made to line the streets while the president failed to reach the affected village.
Drawing comparisons between the affected Nigerian cities and Saint Lucia, Obi said it was ironic that the president chose to visit a small island nation of just 180,000 people while ignoring larger and more populous Nigerian cities in crisis. “Makurdi has a population of 489,839, and Minna 532,000—almost three times Saint Lucia’s population of 180,000,” he pointed out.
He further criticised the government’s focus on elite interests over the suffering of the masses, lamenting that the Tinubu administration appears more invested in the 2027 election than in resolving Nigeria’s deepening poverty and security crises.
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“Nigeria has lost more people to all sorts of criminality than a country that is officially at war… Nigerians are hungrier, and most people do not know where their next meal will come from,” he said, citing recent IMF data that ranked Nigeria as the 12th poorest country globally.
Obi called on the president and other leaders to refocus governance on the plight of the people. “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,” he said.
He concluded by urging national leaders to recognise that Nigeria’s resources belong to all citizens, not a privileged few, warning that continued indifference to the suffering of the masses could have dangerous consequences.
“A new Nigeria is possible,” Obi affirmed
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