By Nnamdi Elekwachi
President Bola Tinubu on Saturday, January 11, 2025, departed Abuja for the United Arab Emirates, UAE, to join other dignitaries at the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) 2025, at the behest of the UAE president, Sheik Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said a release from presidential spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, last weekend.
The ADSW Summit is an annual week-long multilateral event. This year’s Summit, beginning from January 12 through January 18, will feature 13 heads of state, 140 ministers of governments and other state officials, including civil society groups, technology leaders and owners of businesses, who would use the platform to deliberate on the sustainable development initiative.
The release from the presidency, on the Abu Dhabi trip, became a thing of concern among some Nigerians given the number of times the president has had to leave Nigeria for international trips. I do understand that such a forum allows the president to meet other world leaders both on the table and on the sidelines, to also share ideas with them on contemporary issues, and expand the frontiers of strategic partnerships, but the truth remains that these travels have yet to significantly attract the much-talked-about foreign investors the president’s handlers keep telling Nigerians that the president is travelling to woo. While indeed the country could be expecting foreign investment inflows in her oil and gas sector, available records show that more multinational corporations, MNCs have exited Nigeria in the last one year.
Sometimes the reason advanced by the presidency for the travels is utterly hideous. You get to hear the oxymoronic expression ‘working vacation,’ by which the president’s team means that while on vacation abroad the president is working for the country and so deserves the billions spent on his travels; especially whenever the president didn’t hand over to the vice before travelling.
Personally, and quite on the contrary, I believe that since billions of naira from our budget are annually voted for travel and refreshments to the president and the vice, the two leaders are merely being empowered to travel. That is partly where the problem is; budget. Though yet to be passed into law, the proposed 2025 budget, for example, is already allocating over ₦9 billion to ‘travel and refreshments’ for the president and vice president.
I also believe that since billions are usually mapped out for servicing the jets in the presidential air fleet, such spending is made more excusable because after each flight operation, both the hardware and software components of the presidential jets are usually serviced. But the funny thing here is that the so-called ‘travel and refreshments’ falls under recurrent expenditure – luxury consumptions amounting to sheer waste. Yes, sheer waste because the amount spent on duty tour allowance (DTA) and estacode on the president, his vice and their team each year is no joke; though Tinubu had long cut the number of officials to embark on such trips after the criticism that trailed the Dubai 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) where Nigeria entered over a thousand delegates. Imagine what a president like Buhari who travelled over 50 times and spent over 400 days outside Nigeria in his eight years in office did to taxpayers’ money!
To understand what is being said here, I will quote one source. According to a memo obtained from Foundation for Investigative Journalism, FIJ, in September of 2023, while attending the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, UNGA 78, in New York, President Tinubu and his travelling party blew $422,820 taxpayers’ money on reservations at St. Regis Hotel, New York with an accidental fee of $84,564, totalling $507,384, an amount which when converted to the naira at the official rate then was worth ₦390,690,753 (three hundred and ninety million, six hundred and ninety thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three naira only).
The hotel reservations were only from September 16, through September 23 of 2023, and did not cover per diem and estacode costs which equally come in thousands of dollars for the president and his travelling team. Ironically, Nigeria has a twenty-two-storey government house known as ‘Nigeria House’ in New York. Both Tinubu and his close aides did not consider that property presidential enough to sleep in.
When you consider the fact that Tinubu maintains the largest cabinet ever and yet travels like he does, even for less-formal diplomatic engagements other presidents would prefer to be represented in, you might want to conclude that Tinubu’s ministers are surplus to requirements. What, you might want to ask, is the role of the minister of foreign affairs?
Again, does not the president have senior ministers who can handle some of these outings and report back to him while he focuses on the job at home, for which he was elected? It is quite ironic for a man said to have an eye for the best hands, to end up nominating more people than ever seen before into his cabinet as a president and yet travel outside the country like his is a one-man cabinet.
In America today, the most travelled official is Secretary Blinken, the Secretary of State, the equivalent of Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister, not President Biden himself. Having done more than a million miles on the job in the last four years, Blinken recently concluded his official tours. But Tinubu and Shettima, the vice president, have collectively spent 180 days, approximately six months, of their first seventeen months in office abroad, a Sunday Punch Newspaper quoted. Sometime in February of last year, Tinubu and William Ruto of Kenya were both named the ‘most travelled presidents’ in the world, yet, coincidentally, Kenya and Nigeria were witnessing unprecedented inflation, economic stagnation and dwindling purchasing power in the reporting period. This is why these travels look escapist to me.
I am intentional in using the word ‘escapist,’ because nothing justifies a presidential working vacation or retreat abroad in the face of hardships and insecurity plaguing Nigerians back home. In America, presidential retreats are held in Camp David, Maryland, to allow the president to enjoy some tranquility, work minimally, and host guests without the normal pressure and routine of the White House. Even Former President Trump used his personal estate, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida to host guests and have retreats. In France, where Tinubu frequently runs to, there are La Lanterne in Versailles and Forte de Brégancon for presidential retreat, but Onanuga, Tinubu’s spokesperson, brazenly told Nigerians that the president is at liberty to tour the world during his annual leave when Tinubu’s whereabouts became a growing concern following a two-week stay in London.
President Tinubu, going by the provisions of the 1999 constitution, is supposed to transmit a letter to the National Assembly and hand over briefs to the vice president before travelling, but we have witnessed a situation where both the president and his vice were away on different foreign trips without transmitting a letter to the National Assembly or handing over briefs to any official. This is what makes the situation more worrisome.
Questions are being asked about what African leaders achieve in participating in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Russia-Africa Summit, India-Africa Summit and, more recently, Saudi-Africa Summit. I have long posited that the motivations behind such for a are not based on charity, but are resource-driven, to enable these host nations leverage and exploit Africa’s vast and abundant resources while expanding the continent’s commitment in the international credit market through unsustainable loans. Africa must begin to look inwards in order to drive her own economic growth, foster cooperation, and unlock her potentials. She must learn that in international politics, there are no free riders and act strategically and constructively.
While a president must indeed travel, those travels must be ones that help the country realise its growth plans and development targets. Even as a foreign policy enthusiast, I have yet to see the dividends of such travels either on the foreign scene or home scene. And it is what brings me to the ending of this piece. The National Assembly must rise to the occasion. Oversight should include checking how much is being spent on travels and refreshments, even making financial adjustments on funds set aside for such a subhead in the budget.
Sometimes, seeing the Nigerian president on a table with a lower state official other than a president or prime minister of another country, I suffer personal disenchantment. Nigeria has commercial attachés at various embassies and high commissions who should coordinate some less-formal business outings, yet we see the Nigerian president discuss business with a mayor abroad or engage heads of multinational outfits in a bilateral outing a minister should handle. Our budgets, going forward, must cut trip funding.
The success of a president is not measured by mileage covered, but by the lives impacted and people reached positively through policies. Tinubu and Shettima must be taught this!
Nnamdi Elekwachi, a historian, writes from Umuahia, Abia State.
