FORMER Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has lampooned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for offering scholarships to St. Lucia students, while pupils in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have been out of school for over three months due to government refusal to pay teachers.
Obi expressed his disappointment with the president’s action in a statement shared on his social media handles on Wednesday July 2.
“It is heartbreaking that our president, who is the leader of a country with the highest number of out of school children in the world and with the students in the capital of his own nation Abuja presently not attending schools, would travel to St. Lucia and offer scholarships to children there, while his own country’s education system is in ruins, and even currently his nation’s capital, the Federal Capital Territory, the supposed seat of governance, have public schools shut down and closed for months” Obi said.
The ICIR reports that Tinubu offered scholarships to students from St Lucia and other Caribbean countries to study in Nigerian universities during his trip to St Lucia.
“The scholarship programme for students from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to study in Nigerian universities will commence in the next academic year” the president said.
In a statement released on Monday, July 1, the president also announced that a proposal for visa waivers for holders of diplomatic and official passports from OECS member states was underway.
In his Wednesday statement, Obi maintained that Nigeria’s underdevelopment stemmed from deep-rooted negligence caused by failed leadership.
“This is not leadership, it is negligence at its peak. It is an act of betrayal against the Nigerian child” he said.
Obi questioned the rationale behind a country with the highest number of out-of-school children and a literacy rate below 60 per cent, far beneath the global average of 87 percent, offering scholarships to St. Lucia, a Caribbean nation with a literacy rate of over 90 per cent, well above the global average.
“Nigeria has approximately 20 million children out of school, according to UNICEF, the highest number globally… On Human Development Index (HDI), which is the most critical measure of development, Nigeria is ranked in the “Low Category” at 161 out of 193 countries measured, while St. Lucia, a Caribbean nation, has a literacy rate of over 90 per cent, which is above the global average of 87 per cent.
“So tell me, what sense does it make that a president of a country with such terrible and dire statistics would travel to a country with better indexes of development, especially in education, and still offer them scholarships funded by Nigerian taxpayers when Nigeria children are largely out of school and the teachers not yet paid for months?” Obi queried.
The former Anambra State governor urged Tinubu to focus on building a better nation for Nigerian children, stressing that citizens must reject the ongoing normalisation of misplaced priorities.
“President, by offering St Lucia students a scholarship, shows he knows how important education is, while depriving Nigerian students of the same access to education” he added.
The ICIR reported that public primary schools across the FCT have been shut down for over three months due to non-payment of minimum wage and other benefits to teachers.
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues.