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2023 Presidency: PDP Seeks Backyard Victory, Asks Court To Compel INEC To Disqualify Peter Obi, Tinubu

Former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has condemned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s decision to offer scholarships to students in St. Lucia, describing it as a glaring case of misplaced priorities and a betrayal of Nigerian children.

In a strongly worded post on his X account on Wednesday, Obi said it was disheartening that the president of a nation grappling with the highest number of out-of-school children globally would extend educational support abroad while millions of Nigerian children remain deprived of basic education.

“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,” Obi said.

He added, “This is not leadership; it is negligence at its peak. It is an act of betrayal against the Nigerian child.”

Obi backed his argument with stark statistics, pointing out that Nigeria has approximately 20 million children out of school, according to UNICEF, and a literacy rate of under 60%, far below the global average of 87%. He highlighted the country’s life expectancy of just 54 years — among the lowest globally — and its ranking of 161 out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI).

“On the Human Development Index, 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% which is above the global average of 87%. In life expectancy, they have more than 72 years, within the global average, and on HDI, they are in the ‘High Category’,” he noted.

Obi questioned the logic behind President Tinubu’s action: “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 Nigerian children are largely out of school and the teachers not yet paid for months?”

He accused the president of recognizing the importance of education abroad while failing to address the crisis at home: “Mr. 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.”

Obi concluded with a call for national reflection and action. “We must, as a nation, reject these continued normalisations of misplaced priorities and build a better nation for us and our children,” he said.

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