Tinubu travel more, as money not a problem – Tuggar

AMBASSADOR Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, is someone who is hardly heard since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu mostly runs foreign affairs with Tuggar tagging along.

He is usually taciturn. Many Nigerians would like to hear Tuggar speak on the salient issues of our relations with other countries and international organisations.

Tuggar had his primary school education in Kano, secondary school was in Ilorin and Advanced Level Studies, East Sussex, England. He received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, from San Diego, in the US, MA in International Security, University of Bath, United Kingdom, and a Master of Studies from Cambridge University, United Kingdom.

His remarkable tenure, for almost six years as Nigeria’s Ambassador to Germany, dovetailed to his appointment as Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, within weeks of leaving his position in Germany. Notable among his achievements in Germany were the return of stolen artworks worth over £100 million and the reactivation of the energy contracts with a German company.

Colleagues who know Tuggar describe him as making cerebral contributions while he was in the House of Representatives. What has happened to him? The burden of office? Indifference to public opinion or government’s policy of listening to itself and deciding to act without caring about what the people say?

Tuggar said Tinubu should embark on more foreign trips. He is not only not travelling enough but nobody should panic about the money to spend on those trips. An obviously angry Tuggar considered it beneath him to explain to Nigerians the importance of those trips, whatever they are.

People trained in those schools Tuggar attended tend to be more engaging when dealing with the public. They see public office as service, not a platform to “put their people in their place” over government policies and practices.

Tuggar made his defences of the high costs of these trips on live television to the bewilderment of his admirers who wondered what had happened to him.

Wasteful foreign trips did not start with Tinubu but that is not a sufficient reason to continue them. The economy is not as terrible as it was in the years other administrations embarked on jamboree.

Only Tuggar knows where he gets his figures from about the health of the economy to meet the financial consequences of these trips. The troubles are worsened by the fact that most of the expenses for these are in foreign currencies that batter the Naira daily.

Size of the delegations and duration of the trips are other factors that add to the costs.

Is it possible that as Minister of Foreign Affairs he is unaware of Nigeria’s ballooning foreign debts and that the country is still borrowing with leaner resources available to service the debts.

Why is he not making a case for our missions to be rescued from their state? He does not know that embassy staff are owed salaries, we owe rents, we are unable to meet our membership obligations to international organisations? If funding foreign trips is his private business, would he run them in the same way?

The Minister overstates the benefits of Tinubu’s foreign tours.

“Look at the benefits, you travel once and you get 2 billion dollars of investment like he did to Brazil, where other countries are chasing after them. But President Tinubu was able to secure that, to invest in developing livestock. They are the largest player in that sector, slaughtering 50 million chickens every day, 8 point something million cows and look at the Brazilian cows that are 500kg compared to ours that are 250kg. This will also solve herders-farmers’ crisis.

“In fact, I would rather say we are not travelling enough, we should do more. Nigeria has the money. How much does travelling cost compared to the benefits? And how much does it cost comparing it to the things that the President has already addressed?”

Tuggar decidedly misses the points. Outside the Brazilian example he gave, which has not materialised, what are the results of the other trips? What do our missions do if it takes the President’s presence to negotiate investments?

For Tuggar, $2 billion is a huge investment because he is the exchange rate. Has he factored in the practice of most of the money being the costs the Brazilians would put on the equipment and animals they would bring into Nigeria?

By August 2024, Tinubu had reportedly spent N2.3 billion on foreign trips and related expenses in only six months.

With an attitude like Tuggar’s Nigerians have to kit up for long absences, to expectations that the President should travel more to keep up to Tuggar’s expectations.
We are on a long trip of government officials turning on scary hostility to answer the simplest questions because they consider unworthy of engaging them.

Finally…

NOT a whimper has been heard from Nigeria about the policies of President Donald Trump, including the planned deportation of over 3,600 Nigerians in what may be the first phase. We can at least ask that our people are treated humanely as they are herded home. Maybe, the fear of Trump withdrawing their visas is the most important thing on the minds of those who should speak.

HAVE Nigerians stopped being our brothers’ keepers? Can’t we make an exception for Muhammadu Buhari, who left office less than two years ago as President? Buhari is complaining about the hard times. The times are so hard he said he can hardly cope. Any proof? He said that he survives on rent from one of his three houses. My suspicion is that someone has cornered Buhari’s pension that is ambly captured in the budget. May the times improve so that he doesn’t put a second house on rent soon. It is also possible, at a time the North is attacking Tinubu’s policies, that Buhari is telling Tinubu, “You have not done well.”

THE best way to avoid having issues with the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, Phd, could be to address him as His Excellency, as he excels in everything he does. Soon, his tenure extentions should be studied as a compulsory course in politics and imposed service. Congratulations, HE, IGP until 2027. I am suggesting, and beyond.

THE permanence of friendship or not in politics is playing out before our eyes. His Excellency, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, former Governor of Rivers State, former Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly, former Minister of Transportation – he was in each of these offices for eight years – is now listed as one of the caustic critics of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Once the star boy of APC, a key figure in the wrecking of PDP, two-time Director-General of Buhari’s presidential campaign, Tinubu has just felt a mediated version of Amaechi’s tongue. When he unleashed himself on us during his campaigns for Buhari, Tinubu and company applauded.

The truth, according to Amaechi is that Tinubu would do anything to keep power in 2027. You would think that a simple truth like this would not irritate the Tinubu camp as it is doing. Even the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Muhammad Matawalle a governor of Zamfara State, 2019-2023, who has done little about the insurgency that is claiming Zamfara, has time in his busy schedule, to warn Amaechi to stay off Tinubu.

NASIR el-Rufai left Chatham House, London, two years ago with people congratulating him that he was the next Minister of Defence. The former Kaduna State had extra bounce in his feet as he relished the moment. Tinubu had farmed out the question on insecurity to el-Rufai as the best head to handle it. People took it for a hint. El-Rufai was not even nominated for any position not to talk of being appointed. He is leading his own campaign on how poorly Tinubu has performed.

DEATHS while fetching fuel from accident scene of petrol tankers is the boldest reflection of the unimportance of life that our leaders have ingrained in our people who now are willing to die ekeing a living in the most dangerous ways. It is most difficult to explain to those who manage our humanitarian initiatives that with falling value of the Naira, the rising costs of living, that there are millions of Nigeria who do not earn N200, yes, two hundred Naira, a day. How do they survive? The answers are lost in statistics that do not realise there such people. Instead, they are averaged as “surviving on a dollar a day”.

WHAT is going on with our humanity? Are Nigerian social scientists studying the banditry, restiveness, killings and the brutalities entailed? What about those on the home front? Husbands are killing wives and the women replying in equal measures. Siblings are selling each other. Domestic violence has risen and the intensity of the assaults is terrifying. The assumption is that the harsh economic environment is translating to anxieties that lead to quicker flare ups. Can our experts provide answers to serve as survival skills and kits?

CONGRATULATIONS to the U-19 Nigeria female cricket team for an inspiring performance at the World Cup in Malaysia in its debut. The performance earned Nigeria a direct qualification for the next World Cup. Cricket is not only one of the neglected sports, it is almost rejected. The illegal National Sports Commission, in a consistent show of its version of accountable and latching at every event as photo opportunity, dispatched its Director-General Bukola Olapade, a half of the two-man NSC, to Malaysia, to hand the team $5,000, yes, five thousand dollars. How much did it cost to get Olapade to Malaysia, airfare and accommodation, in a class befitting his esteemed status? Was that the cheapest way of encouraging the team with $5,000? Again, congratulations to the team and the leadership of cricket which would continue the years of toil that birthed Malaysia 2025 well after the illegal NSC has gone.

.ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues