The Presidency has clarified that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is hale and hearty, saying his absence from Nigeria is due to his ongoing working vacation.
Bayo Onanuga, the president’s special adviser on information and strategy, said in an X post on Sunday that the President remained engaged in official duties while away from Abuja and was entitled to take his annual vacation.
It said, ‘President is hale and hearty. He has been on a working vacation, which he is perfectly entitled to. In this digital age, he does not need to be physically present in Abuja to do the work for which he was elected in 2023.
‘And we have seen that he has indeed been working, meeting investors in France, most recently facilitating a $7 billion deep-sea port in Ogun Waterside, an initiative of the Ogun State Government.
‘Two other important African leaders were not in New York for the UNGA: South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Ramaphosa booked himself off public engagements. Johannesburg and Pretoria made no uproar over Ramaphosa’s absence at UNGA. And Egypt did not erupt that Sisi did not go to New York. The Nigerian President announced he was taking his annual vacation and delegated attendance to his able and dependable Vice President.
‘Yet Peter Obi pretends to be unaware of President Tinubu’s whereabouts and asks the puerile question his followers are asking on X.
‘President Tinubu will return home this week to mark Nigeria’s 66th Independence Anniversary and honour MKO Abiola, the martyr of the democracy we enjoy today, by attending the premiere of a movie in MKO’s memory in Lagos.’
Earlier, Tribune Online reports that the presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, in a post on his Facebook page while commenting on Mahama’s address to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, September 24, 2026, questioned the absence of President Tinubu from the 81st UNGA in New York.
‘Where is the President of Africa’s most populous nation, a country of more than 200 million people – more than Ghana – whose leader has been absent from the global stage for three consecutive UNGAs?’ Obi asked.