Omoyele Sowore, a human rights lawyer and presidential candidate for the African Action Congress, has described President Bola Tinubu’s ongoing state visit to the United Kingdom as a “diplomatic excursion” that will provide no genuine value to Nigeria.
Sowore made the statements during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Wednesday, as Tinubu continued his historic two-day tour.
This is the first official journey by a Nigerian leader to the UK in nearly four decades.
Taking aim at the optics surrounding the visit, Sowore insinuated that the president’s health may be among the unstated motivations for the trip.
“These visits are nothing more than diplomatic excursions. Perhaps the president will also see his doctors; he has not travelled in about a month,” he said.
The activist-politician argued that the fanfare accompanying the visit masked a fundamental absence of tangible returns for Nigeria.
“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,” he said.