Obi Condemns President Tinubu’s Scholarship Offers to OECS Students, Says It’s Misplaced Priorities 

The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, has condemned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s scholarship offers to students from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to study in Nigerian universities.

Thelensng reports that President Tinubu announced the scholarship offers on Tuesday, which will commence in the next academic year.

Reacting to the development in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, Obi expressed dissatisfaction, describing the move as “negligence and betrayal of Nigerian children.”

He wrote: “I have consistently maintained that our underdevelopment is due to leadership failure. It is heartbreaking that our President, who is the leader of a country with the highest number of out of school children in the world and with the students in the capital of his own nation Abuja presently not attending schools, would travel to St. Lucia and offer scholarships to children there, while his own country’s education system is in ruins, and even currently, his nation’s capital, the Federal Capital Territory, the supposed seat of governance, have public schools shut down and closed for months.

“This is not leadership, it is negligence at its peak. It is an act of betrayal against the Nigerian child. Nigeria has approximately 20 million children out of school, according to UNICEF, the highest number globally, with a literacy rate of under 60% far below the global average of 87%. Similarly, the life expectancy stands at a mere 54 years, out of the global average measurement of above 70 years, one of the lowest in the world.”

According to him, on the Human Development Index (HDI), which is the most critical measure of development, Nigeria is ranked in the “Low Category” at 161 out of 193 countries, while St. Lucia, a Caribbean nation, has a literacy rate of over 90%, above the global average of 87%.

“In life expectancy of more than 72 years, which is within the global average. On HDI which Nigeria is in the Low category, they air in the High Category.

“So tell me, what sense does it make that a president of a country with such terrible and dire statistics would travel to a country with better indexes of development especially in education and still offer them scholarships funded by Nigerian taxpayers when Nigeria children are largely out of school and the teachers not yet paid for months?,” Obi asked.

He noted that the President‘s scholarship offers to foreign students show how important education is to him, while depriving Nigerian students of the same access to education.

“We must, as a nation, reject these continued normalisations of misplaced priorities and build a better nation for us and our children,” he added.