Deborah Akinyosoye
Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, on Wednesday, urged President Bola Tinubu to suspend his retreat in France and return home to address the ongoing communal clashes and killings across the country.
Obi made the appeal in a statement posted via his official X account.
The plea comes four days after the Presidency dismissed speculation that Tinubu left the shores of the country to see doctors in France, insisting that it was a working visit.
The Special Adviser to the President on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, made the clarification when he was featured as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
Bwala was reacting to the claim by popular activist and politician Omoyele Sowore that the President’s trip to France was for medical attention.
Although his spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, disclosed that Tinubu, who travelled out on April 2, is expected to return to Nigeria in ‘about a fortnight,’ Sowore alleged in a post on his official Facebook page that the trip was for medical care.
But Obi warned that the President’s continued stay in a foreign land will further exacerbate the rising wave of insecurity in the country.
He said, “I am compelled at this time in our lives as a nation to call on our retreating President’s attention to the security challenges at home, which entails that he immediately suspend his ongoing retreat in a foreign land and come home to address the overwhelming security situation across the country.
“In the 2 weeks you have been away, over 150 Nigerians have lost their lives to insecurity across Nigeria, especially in Plateau and Zamfara states. The repeated pipeline explosions in the Niger Delta, further reflect a nation in distress.
“In the North East, Borno State leaders are bemoaning the return of insurgency, with troops and civilians being killed randomly. In the Southeast, the story is the same: killings and abductions. Amid all these, the CEO of the troubled company called Nigeria, is retreating to a faraway land in France from the company’s headquarters. “I, therefore, like to urge Mr President to quickly suspend whatever he is doing in France and rush home to take responsibility by addressing these disturbing issues. That is the new Nigeria that the nation seeks.”