Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has strongly carpeted the President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government for “wasting a whopping $9 million on an American lobby firm to dissuade a US attack on terrorists in Nigeria.”
Obi described the hiring of a lobbyist to launder Nigeria’s image in the US as a waste of funds and a misplacement of priority.
The former Anambra State Governor condemned what he called Nigeria’s persistent habit of prioritising waste over human wellbeing.
Obi, who is a presidential hopeful of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, in 2027, warned that Nigeria’s worsening development crisis is a function of poor leadership choices and not a lack of resources.
He said that “spending $9 million on foreign lobbyists in Washington is a painful reminder of how public funds are routinely deployed to manage perception abroad while conditions at home continue to deteriorate.”
“This is merely a small example of wasteful spending that has contributed to our nation’s current failing status,” he said.
“Nigeria has remained stagnant in the low Human Development Index, HDI, category for 35 years, from 1990 to 2025. In contrast, countries like China, where Nigeria once had a three-fold higher per capita income in 1990, and Indonesia have advanced from low to medium, and now to high HDI categories.
“The achievements of these nations were not the result of fate, miracles, or natural endowments, but rather a consequence of choices and the cumulative effects of good and bad leadership,” Obi stressed.
Focusing on health, Obi painted a bleak picture of Nigeria’s global rankings.
“Nigeria now has the lowest life expectancy in the world and ranks among the top two countries globally for maternal mortality, making childbirth one of the most precarious experiences for Nigerian women. Instead of investing in life-saving systems, we spend millions trying to obscure our failures,” he lamented.
Obi argued that the $9 million spent on foreign lobbyists could have been used to purchase essential hospital equipment, directly improving healthcare delivery and positively influencing Nigeria’s image.
“This $9 million is sufficient to fund the entire 2024 capital budget for at least one major teaching hospital in each zone, enhancing survival rates, care, and life expectancy,” Obi said.
He emphasised that Nigeria’s problem is not the absence of funds but the lack of prioritisation, discipline, and effective leadership.
“Every naira of taxpayers’ money should serve the Nigerian people. Instead, citizens are dying in failing hospitals while the government pays foreigners to pretend that everything is fine. We cannot continue to live in an illusion while our reality deteriorates. This constant prioritisation of trivial matters must come to an end.”
