Six days after leaving New York in the United States, where he attended the 78th UN General Assembly (UNGA), President Bola Tinubu has still not made it back to Nigeria, leaving Nigerians wondering about his whereabouts and stoking rumours that the president does not consider himself as being accountable to the people he was elected to serve.
Mr Tinubu arrived in New York on September 18 and departed the U.S. last Thursday around 8:25 p.m. local time using the JFK airport. But he has, so far, failed to communicate his itinerary to Nigerians, a pattern all too similar to that of his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, notorious for extended stay outside the country.
The State House declined comments about Mr Tinubu’s itinerary. But senior administration officials said he was dealing with strategic issues in Paris and would return to the country by the end of this week.
“We understand that the president is tending to important matters and holding strategic meetings in Paris, and he will be returning to the country before the end of this week,” a senior official, familiar with Mr Tinubu’s itinerary, told Peoples Gazette on Wednesday.
The State House deliberately failed to reveal when the president would return after his trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. There was no mention of his plan to linger in Paris for over a week after concluding his assignment in New York.
Mr Tinubu’s lack of communication might be perceived as a lack-lustre attitude that mirrors that of Mr Buhari, the ex-president, who did not see the need to explain his whereabouts and brazenly gallivanted around the globe, leaving his media aides befuddled and scrambling for the best way to defend their principal to the public.
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Mr Buhari’s frequent and prolonged overseas trips made critics deride him as a “remote president.”
Mr Buhari’s presidency, with reckless spending and unproductive policies, plunged the nation’s economy into dire straits.
Since Tuesday, the naira has been trading at N1000 to one dollar, signposting Mr Tinubu’s flopped experiment to float the national currency.
Despite Mr Tinubu’s repeated assertions that he is different from his predecessor, his actions demonstrate that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
