Presidency’s N37.6bn travel bill dwarfs response to hunger, insecurity crises entering fourth year
President Bola Tinubu boarded a flight out of Abuja on Sunday, beginning his 52nd foreign trip and a three-week “working vacation” in Europe — his third extended overseas leave in as many years. The optics could hardly be worse. Petrol sits at N1,310 per litre. Food inflation has topped 20 percent. And according to expenditure records published by GovSpend, the Presidency has now spent N37,639,227,853.51 — roughly $28 million — ferrying the president and his entourage abroad since June 2023.
The administration’s defenders call it earned rest ahead of the 2027 campaign season. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga framed it as preparation for the “hectic campaign” to come. That framing does not survive contact with the numbers. Since taking office on May 29, 2023, Tinubu has spent approximately 261 days — the better part of nine months — outside the country, cycling through at least 30 nations with France, London, and the UAE as his most frequent stops.
Spending peaked in 2024 at N25.27 billion, driven substantially by foreign-exchange purchases and funding for the Presidential Air Fleet, before nominally tapering to N2.71 billion in 2025. The 2026 budget has already earmarked another N6.14 billion for international travel — an allocation made in a fiscal year where insecurity has not receded and food prices have not stabilized.
The travel bill is not happening in a vacuum. As the president departed for Europe, gunmen were holding four NYSC corps members hostage after an August 26 attack in Kogi State that killed a bus driver and left kidnappers demanding N20 million per victim. Attacks continue across Plateau and Kaduna states. More than 600 people remain unaccounted for following separate violence in Niger State, and children abducted in Borno remain in captivity past the 100-day mark. None of this paused the itinerary.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused the president of governing by remote control while the country absorbs one crisis after another. The administration’s response — that security briefings continue remotely and governance is uninterrupted — asks the public to accept that a functioning state can be run indefinitely from hotel suites in London and Paris. Nigerians footing a 20-percent food inflation rate and a currency that keeps sliding are entitled to find that argument thin.
The Presidency has not released a full itinerary for this latest trip. It has, however, released the invoice.
