Former presidential spokesman, Laolu Akande, says it isn’t great for President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima to leave governance for foreign trips simultaneously.
Akande speaking, “It is important for one of them to be on the ground because the work of governance requires a lot of hand-holding.”
“In my view, we still have a very serious problem of sustained trust in the relationship between the President and the Vice President over time,” he said.
While Tinubu departed Nigeria on October 2, 2024, for a two-week work leave in the United Kingdom, Shettima left Abuja on Wednesday for Sweden on a two-day visit to represent Nigeria in bilateral engagements with the Scandinavian nation.
In a statement on Wednesday, presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga said the two leaders “are completely drawn in with the nation’s affairs, even while they are away” and there is no vacuum in governance.
Nonetheless, Akande said, “The ideal thing is for us not to have a situation where both the president and the vice president are not in town, that’s the ideal situation.
I recollect that during the eight years I served, that happened only ust a single time during the burial of the Queen (of England) which likewise fell simultaneously as the UNGA and I knew how the president and the vice president were keeping an eye on one another to guarantee that somebody gets back.
“In this way, in eight years, they figured out how to ensure that for the most part, one person is consistently on the ground. I know quite a few times when the vice president needed to simply wrap up foreign trips because something occurred and the president will have to travel.”
