The Issues In The Tinubu’s State Visit To The UK -By Hajia Hadiza Mohammed

There is a native proverb that states: nobody chases rat while his home is on fire. Only a fool does that. What Tinubu did by jetting out of the country ostensibly on a state visit to UK while bomb blasts rock the city of Maiduguri is analogous to the fool in the proverb chasing a rat while his house is on fire.

Several bomb blasts exploded in different locations, in the evening of last Monday the 16th day of March 2026 claiming over 20 lives of Nigerian citizens, injuring over 110 others and displacing thousands of others in Maiduguri, Borno State. The next day, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu traveled with a retinue of almost all the state governors, traditional rulers, his ministers and personal aides like an emperor on a picnic. It was a show of shame in London as the world watch the funfair while his home country is aflame with violence. Will the British prime minister or any other leader travel out of his country if this deadly attack were to be in his country?

Many Nigerians are saddened by the unfortunate incident in Maiduguri and Tinubu’s wrong response to it. Not even his half-hearted order to his service chief could make anybody think that he is serious about doing anything to help the victims, fight insecurity and forestall bloodbath that has become everyday occurrence since he seized power in 2023. Whatever Tinubu and his team intend to achieve by the UK visit has been diminished by turmoil in Nigeria and his apparent nonchalant response to it.

To Tinubu and his political jobbers this visit is a landmark achievement, judging from the way their propagandists and hirelings in the press put it: it is historic, the first in 37 years from any Nigerian president. To them, it is as Nigeria has launched its visit to the space. Well do I blame them? In the absence of any visible achievement anything can be termed an achievement, after all a drowning man can clutch at a straw.

But, Tinubu and his team cannot fool the international community with the state visit to UK. The entire thing is just a waste of tax-payers money because nothing tangible can be achieved through acts of junketing abroad when your home is in on fire. The international community and multilateral agencies have intelligence about Nigeria more than we can imagine and so they cannot be fooled by Tinubu’s showmanship and empty rhetoric. No genuine foreign investor would want to invest in an unsecure environment like Nigeria at present. Only criminal investors like the ones stealing our solid minerals and funding insecurity will.

Thus, Tinubu’s official visit to UK at this time of national emergency smacks insensitivity to the plight of the people. In fact it is difficult to situate Tinubu’s policies and his obvious lack of empathy for those he has sworn on oath to protect. I do not of any country that will take Tinubu and his team seriously. Tinubu’s area-boy diplomatic style is making mockery of Nigerians at the global stage. It has failed Nigerians as much as his ruinous economic policies. It was his poor leadership style and lack of tact while he held sway as the ECOWAS chairman led to the division in the ECOWAS region. Barely a year left of his tenure as president, he has just appointed ambassadors to other countries leading to mass rejection of some of his appointees. Everywhere he visits, he is confronted with protests and disgrace. At the Windsor Castle in England where he was received by King Charles, he was confronted by protesting members of the IPOB activists calling him a drug baron before his host and international press. What a disgrace to the man that turned Nigeria from the giant of Africa to the dwarf of Africa. And unfortunately for him, this is not Nigeria where his agents can mobilize touts and his army of area-boys for a counter protest.

Clearly, the entire thing shows that Tinubu’s diplomatic team are not doing anything. The unrecognized IPOB team seems to be more coordinated than the entire Tinubu’s diplomatic team. And I am not surprised. What do we expect mediocre his team? Tinubu’s appointments are the most sectional and in the history of Nigeria. He does his appointments based on loyalty and ethnicity rather competence.

Hajia Hadiza Mohammed 

hajiahadizamohammed@gmail.com

An actress, social activist, politician

London, UK