The Presidency has said President Bola Tinubu is hale and hearty and will return to Nigeria this week after a working vacation in Europe. The assurance from Special Adviser on Information and Strategy Bayo Onanuga comes after the government twice postponed the President’s return without publishing a detailed reason for either change of plan.
On 30 August the Presidency announced that Tinubu was leaving Nigeria for a three week annual vacation, with London as his first stop. Nigerians were told he would come home after that working vacation. The three week period ended. On 21 September Onanuga said the President had extended his stay by a few days and would return at the weekend. The weekend of 26 and 27 September passed without his arrival. The promise then became this week, timed to Nigeria’s 66th Independence Anniversary on 1 October.
Onanuga said Tinubu is entitled to annual leave and does not need to be physically present in Abuja to do the work for which he was elected in 2023. He said the President had been meeting investors in France and had helped facilitate a $7 billion deep sea port project at Ogun Waterside, an Ogun State Government initiative. The Ogun State Government and DP World signed memoranda of understanding in Paris last week for the Gateway Deep Sea Port and the Ogun State Blue Marine Special Economic Zone. Officials said the agreements envisage more than $7 billion in initial investment and more than 50,000 direct jobs if the projects reach full development. Tinubu witnessed the signing and also met French President Emmanuel Macron.
Vice President Kashim Shettima has represented him at official functions, including the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York. Onanuga defended the President’s absence by pointing to South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el Sisi, who were also not in New York. Ramaphosa was booked off public engagements on medical advice after returning from the BRICS summit in India. Egypt sent Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly. Onanuga said Johannesburg and Pretoria made no uproar and that Egypt did not erupt. He accused Peter Obi of pretending not to know Tinubu’s whereabouts.
That comparison has been rejected by commentators who say the three absences are not alike. Daily Justice, writing on X, said it was embarrassing that Onanuga feigned ignorance about why Tinubu’s absence caused serious concern. Also, in a widely shared post Mr I Justin, also told the presidential aide to stop capping and to respect the Nigerian people who pay his bills. The commentary argued that Nigerians need explanations, not insults, after a government announced one timeline, extended it, missed its own deadline and then offered another vague promise.
Mr Justin and other critics say the digital age argument is a distraction. They say citizens did not ask whether a President can send instructions from abroad. They asked why the return dates keep changing, when the President will return, and what constitutional arrangement governs an absence that has now gone beyond the period first announced.
Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution provides that when the President is proceeding on vacation or is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, he is to transmit a written declaration to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Until he transmits a written declaration to the contrary, the Vice President is to perform the functions of President as Acting President. If that declaration is not transmitted within 21 days, the National Assembly is required, by simple majority resolutions of both chambers, to mandate the Vice President to act. Critics including the Save Democracy group have asked whether any such letter was sent to Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Speaker Tajudeen Abbas. Senate spokesman Yemi Adaramodu has rejected calls for lawmakers to reconvene, saying there is no basis for such a sitting. The Senate is due to resume on 29 September.
Mr Justin also revived the comparison with the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. The commentary said the two cases are not identical, but that the official script is familiar: describe the absence as routine, offer categorical reassurance, insist that the President can govern from abroad, and dismiss those who ask for institutional answers. During the Yar’Adua crisis then Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa used the phrase hale and hearty. Critics say they are hearing the same slogans again.
On the United Nations gathering, Daily Justice said Onanuga’s use of Ramaphosa and el Sisi missed the point. Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Jimoh Ibrahim, had earlier told State House correspondents that Tinubu had given his word that he would attend the 81st session and would sit very close to United States President Donald Trump in the front row. Ibrahim later defended the President’s non attendance by saying a head of state should not fly to New York merely for a 15 minute speaking slot. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said a seat was secured but the President disappeared.
Daily Justice also pointed to a long running freedom of information case in Washington in which American researcher Aaron Greenspan is seeking United States law enforcement records from a 1990s investigation into an alleged heroin trafficking network. Court filings in that civil dispute record that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged an official investigation of Bola Tinubu among others. A 1993 civil forfeiture decree in Illinois ordered about $460,000 in an account in Tinubu’s name forfeited to the United States. The Presidency says the Washington litigation is a records disclosure dispute, not a criminal prosecution, and that no court has found Tinubu guilty of a drug offence. Daily Justice argued that the unresolved American file still explains why many Nigerians treat the President’s absence from New York as more than a routine diary clash.
The commentary further cited reports that Nigeria retained Washington lobbyists under a contract that could reach $9 million, filed in United States foreign agent records through Aster Legal and DCI Group. A rival American firm claimed the effort was meant to clear a path to Trump and that the hoped-for meeting did not happen. The Nigerian government has not accepted that account of the contract’s purpose. Daily Justice said Nigerians still expected that such spending would at least help convey their President to the United States during the Assembly. It did not.
Tinubu attended the Assembly in person in 2023. Shettima represented him in 2024 and 2025, and again this year. Daily Justice said that pattern, together with Ibrahim’s earlier promise of a seat near Trump, is why the Nigerian case is not the same as South Africa’s or Egypt’s. Ramaphosa and el Sisi are free to visit the United States, did not spend public money on a lobbying drive aimed at a meeting with Trump, and do not face an alleged historical drug file in American courts. Their envoys, Daily Justice added, did not announce that their presidents would sit near Trump or even that they would personally attend.
Daily Justice also drew a distinction about location. During the Assembly week Ramaphosa was in South Africa on medical rest after returning from India. El Sisi remained in Egypt while his Prime Minister travelled to New York. Tinubu, by contrast, has been outside Nigeria for about four weeks, first in London and then in Paris, while the dates for his homecoming have been moved twice.
Onanuga said the President will return this week to mark Independence Day and to attend the Lagos premiere of a film in memory of Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, whom he called the martyr of the democracy Nigerians enjoy today. The documentary MKO, directed by Ose Oyamendan, is due to premiere at the National Theatre in Lagos on 1 October, with Tinubu listed as chief host.
As of Monday 28 September the Presidency had still not published a specific arrival time, a detailed reason for either postponement, or a public confirmation that the written declaration required by Section 145 was transmitted when the vacation began.
By A.Ikechukwu
