Human rights lawyer Omoyele Sowore believes President Bola Tinubu’s trip to the UK offers nothing to Nigeria, describing it as a “diplomatic excursion”.
Tinubu is in the UK, the first official trip by a Nigerian leader to the UK in decades. But Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the 2023 election, claims there is no value in the president’s visit.
“These visits are nothing more than diplomatic excursions. Perhaps the president will also see his doctors; he has not travelled in about a month,” Sowore said during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Wednesday.
“I’m just saying, beyond the fanfare you are seeing on TV, it’s not bringing anything to Nigeria that Nigeria cannot get or should not have. That’s the point I’m making, and we are just deceiving ourselves all the time by saying this time we travel. ”
President Tinubu has gone on several foreign trips since he assumed office in 2023, visits his administration says are meant to attract investments.
However, Sowore, one of the president’s fiercest critics, argues that no “single dime” has come to the country due to these foreign trips.
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Not Getting It Right?
He believes the trips are a waste and that Nigeria is “just burning fuel in the air with our aircraft”.
“The cost of these travels is far more at the end, outweighing whatever we come from the so-called investment they claim is going to happen,” Sowore said during the breakfast show.
“If you have it right, investors will come to your country. You don’t need to travel,” he said.
According to him, musicians and other artistes bring back more value to the country during their foreign tours.
“Sometimes, some of these our musicians who go and perform in the UK bring more money into the country than when the president travels to the UK or anywhere,” he said.
Tinubu is set to meet with King Charles III in the country’s first state visit in nearly four decades.
The Nigerian president has visited Britain several times in his tenure, and the two countries remain major partners in trade, aid, and defence. London is also home to a massive Nigerian diaspora.
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