Tinubu’s Many Travels And The Critics

REUBEN ABATI

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu returned to Nigeria on Saturday after a state visit to Turkey during which Nigeria and Turkey signed a total of nine agreements covering defence, energy, military training, intelligence sharing, health, education and a shared target of trade investment valued at about $5 billion. It is not enough to sign bilateral agreements, it is what follows after, the accruing benefits and advantages that matter. Since the return to civilian rule in 1999, successive governments must have signed so many agreements of understanding, or cooperation, or collaboration, bilateral, multilateral and whatever such that any storage room we may have for these would be filled to the brim, due in part to the absence of institutional memory or lack of capacity to clothe agreements with action in the overall best interest of the nation. Too often, the Nigerian government enjoys the ceremonies and rituals of diplomacy, and the tourism on the sidelines, without the seriousness that the commitments require. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has focused heavily on economic diplomacy, and he has sustained the tradition, even with greater determination, of selling Nigeria to the world as a most preferred destination for foreign investment. It is good to see this. Tinubu is an apostle of optimism, and a strong believer in the Nigerian potential. What is not clear is how much advantage the country has gained from his many trips abroad, beyond presence and voice.

Curiously, the country has consistently held the shortest end of the stick in international partnerships. Turkey is a strategic country, even if it is not yet a member of the European Union, but it is a strategically located, transnational country: the gateway between Europe and Asia, its capital, Istanbul being the only city in the world that is in two continents, a melting point of history, cultures and civilizations.  Turkey may have high inflation, but it is a global powerhouse, a major manufacturing hub defined by productivity on a high, transformative scale, and a leading tourist destination. Without President Recep Erdogan’s human rights record, Nigeria indeed has a lot to learn from Turkey, a country with which it established diplomatic relations in 1960, and shares the membership of the Organization of Islamic Countries and the D-8. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Nigeria on October 19, 2017 when President Buhari was Nigeria’s President. President Tinubu has also now visited Turkey in further pursuance of strong relations between both countries.

Under President Goodluck Jonathan, there were at least three visits between both countries. Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, in an article entitled “Nigeria: Why Turkiye?” (ThisDay, January 27) has already made a strong argument for Nigeria-Turkey relations. But the big question as always is: what is in it for Nigeria? The Turkish have businesses in Nigeria including the Turkish Eye and Specialist Hospital, Turkish Airlines, and about 48 other companies in manufacturing, energy, and road construction. How many Nigerian companies are doing business in Turkey? How can Nigerian businesses benefit more from the Nigeria-Turkey Business Council, and the additional agreements that have been signed? Nigeria has an obligation to draw the best possible benefits from the partnership agreements it signs with other countries. Useful and worthy as Nigeria-Turkey bilateral relations may be, rhetoric is not enough. It would be sad if what comes out of this is just Turkish companies getting more contracts from the Nigerian government, and a minority group of ten per centers smiling at our expense!

Unfortunately, the conversation about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s visit to Turkey has been coloured more, not by the substance of the trip, but sheer mockery and partisanship. In the view of the cynics, the Turkey trip would be remembered more for the story about President Tinubu’s stumble during the welcome ceremony. The snide and silly comments that this has generated should be deprecated. We are all human. We are not a nation of sadists and we should not keep projecting ourselves to the outside world as a people who are losing a sense of how to be human. The President places a foot wrong, stumbles, and that becomes an occasion for derisive commentary? How sad. But I blame the President’s protocol team. They did not do their home-work well enough, and that was glaring enough. For a Nigerian President or any President at all going abroad for a visit, there are basic steps: accepting the invitation, preparing for the trip which would entail an agreement with the host country on every detail of the programme, and then a careful review of the trip – a session during which the President will go over every speech that he has to make, talking points if necessary, and specific briefings by departments and state officials relevant to the trip, with proper liaison with the Nigerian Mission in the other country. Everything is done to prepare the President. Every detail is worked out. Then an advance team comprising security, liaison officers, state house media, protocol officers, chefs and medical personnel is sent ahead to await the President’s arrival.

A major part of the trip is the arrival ceremony. The format differs from one country to another. In some countries, there is no saluting dais, as in the recent case in Turkey.  When the visiting President arrives, diplomatic courtesy requires him to bow to the host country’s flag and pay respect. In the recent visit to Turkey, President Tinubu’s protocol dropped the ball. How come he did not know about showing respect to the flag, until his host directed him to where the flag was? We saw President Erdogan almost physically turning our President towards the Turkish flag.   Where was Nigeria’s State Chief of Protocol? His advance team would ordinarily be on ground and they would have briefed him. The other part of the receiving ceremony is the greeting line. The State Chief of Protocol goes in front and guides the President. It is unacceptable for the President to miss any name. And then when the greetings are done, and the President moves to the next venue, the State Chief of Protocol still goes in front leading the President and he himself is guided by the Protocol Liaison Officer (PLO) who would have been part of the RECCE team. If the Protocol team were alive to their duty, either the PLO or the SCOP would have noticed if there was a bump ahead, or any rumpled carpet, and they would have guided the Principal accordingly all the way to his seat. President Tinubu was left alone, and he tripped. This is a serious matter. Now that the President is back home, there must be an in-house review of what happened in Turkey. Persons who travel with the President must realise they are on duty as Nigerian representatives not as spectators. It all depends though on how confident the SCOP is.

The other fallout from the Turkey trip is the widespread complaint spear-headed by opposition party chieftains of the Action Democratic Congress (ADC), and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who last Sunday alerted Nigerians to the fact that President Tinubu spent 23 days out of 31 days in January away from the country. Daily Trust newspaper puts the tally at 22 days in January 2026. The days of absence could even have been longer if President Tinubu had added the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland to his itinerary. He went from Europe (which later turned out to be France) for 10 days, from there to the United Arab Emirates (to attend the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Summit), for seven days. He returned to Nigeria briefly and then off he went to Turkey on a state visit for six days.   In 2025, the President travelled to 10 countries. The publishers of Sahara Reporters newspaper report that President Tinubu has spent N1. 5 billion on foreign trips in the last six months, and that he and his Vice President intend to spend N7.4 billion on foreign trips in 2026. The Punch Newspaper says the Presidency has actually spent N34 billion on foreign trips in two years, with the bulk of that spent on foreign exchange purchases. In a country where the middle class is having a serious mid-life crisis and the poor are already overburdened by government-enabled afflictions, to hear that a group of privileged persons spend billions to travel around the world, at the people’s expense can be disturbing. In 2025, the Federal Capital Development Agency (FCDA) spent N39 billion to renovate the International Conference Centre in Abuja. Nigerians wonder what could have been achieved with N34 billion in terms of infrastructure in the last two years and they shudder.

Hence, Mr. Peter Obi of the ADC complains that President Tinubu prioritises foreign trips and when he returns, it is to welcome defectors to his ruling APC party at a time the country is passing through a distressing phase: killings, kidnappings, national grid collapse, closure of schools. Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, National Publicity Secretary of the ADC says the challenges in Nigeria “do not allow for a visiting President.” Others share the view that the President is now a visiting President. The spokesperson of the PDP, Ini Ememobong asks that the President should pay more attention to his work at home because his frequent trips are “not helpful.” The ruling party has since fought back in like measure. Professor Nentawe Yiltwada, Chairman of the APC insists that the President is making a sacrifice for us all, in “the national interest” and so does not deserve to be treated in an unfair manner by the opposition and the media. Ambassador-designate Femi Fani-Kayode, an APC chieftain, has also pushed back against those he calls “The Enemy Within” in a robust piece in ThisDay newspaper (Sunday, February 1 at pages 14 -15). 

There is no doubt that the President is the chief image maker of the country, and so his various trips abroad align with the foreign policy functions of his office. But to the extent that domestic policy drives foreign policy, he must also be seen to be attentive to the needs of his people. He has promised Nigerians a renewal of hope in a season of consolidation. The best way he can work hard on that task of consolidation is to be seen actively improving the people’s condition at home. Frequent travels abroad convey a different impression. Nigerians are becoming uncomfortable with his trips to France in particular. Ini Ememobong of the PDP says “Nigerians deserve to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. While that is important in the spirit of transparency and accountability, politicians must also moderate their tone. Nigeria must survive for all to realise their ambitions, not by taking political advantage of every situation. When the country faces critical challenges, all Nigerians must come together, irrespective of our differences. Ten years ago, when the extremist group, Al Shabab attacked the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya killing 71 persons, with 200 injured, the whole of Kenya came together, including opposition party leaders to support their country. One of the major problems in Nigeria is that politics is now so much in the way, everything has become political and conditional. The ruling elite must learn to work towards a basic consensus when national interest is involved.

 Now that he is back, President Tinubu must prove that he means well, and he listens. There are urgent issues that he needs to deal with. The security situation is getting worse. We don’t need to depend solely on external intervention. Money spent on travels can be spent on security. There is a lingering crisis in Osun state: the seizure of local government funds, and the disregard for court decisions by the APC in Osun State backed by police rascality. As Governor in Lagos, President Tinubu fought for the separation of powers and the rights of local councils. His sincerity is on trial in Osun. Fela, the Afro-beat legend has just been honoured at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, United States with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Fela is the prophet who was rejected at home but received honour abroad. The Nigerian state owes him an apology and an act of atonement. He deserves a post-humous award in the category of a Grand Commander of the Niger (GCON). It is also time for Tinubu to rejig his cabinet and send politicians out of the cabinet so they can go back home to do politics. Tinubu needs a cabinet of technocrats at this time so that the political Ministers will stop dividing their time between work and endless trips to the village while the urgent task of rebuilding Nigeria suffers.