Paul Ibe, media aide to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has criticised the Presidency over what he described as a recurring failure to disclose the return dates of President Bola Tinubu’s foreign travels.
The criticism follows the announcement that President Tinubu will depart Abuja on Monday, January 26, 2026, for a state visit to the Republic of Turkey. The Presidency described the trip as a multi-day diplomatic engagement aimed at strengthening bilateral relations.
In a statement issued on Sunday by the Presidential Spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, the visit was said to focus on deepening cooperation between Nigeria and Turkey in areas such as security, education, social development, innovation, and aviation.
According to the statement, the President is also expected to engage in high-level political and diplomatic discussions centred on shared interests in finance, communication, trade, and investment.
The agenda further includes meetings between top government officials from both countries, as well as the signing of several memoranda of understanding covering scientific research, energy, technical cooperation, media and communications, military collaboration, and protocol.
However, the Presidency did not specify the President’s return date, noting only that Tinubu would be back “at the conclusion of the visit.”
Reacting to the development on Monday via his X (formerly Twitter) handle, Ibe questioned the lack of transparency surrounding the President’s travel schedule, suggesting that the omission of return dates had become a pattern.
“What is this new trend of not giving a date of the return of the President whenever he is travelling out?” Ibe asked.
He further made a sarcastic remark on the open-ended nature of such trips, implying that they could allow for unscheduled stopovers, joking that it might be to see “if a few days in France to lounge and drink Piña Colada with the French squad can be squeezed in.”