The Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Digital and New Media, Otega Ogra, has lashed out at former Anambra State Governor and Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, over his recent remarks criticizing the President’s diplomatic visit to the Caribbean and Brazil.
In a pointed post shared via X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, Ogra accused Obi of lacking the foresight to appreciate the strategic significance of the trip, which included engagements with leaders at the BRICS summit and bilateral talks in Saint Lucia.
“Someone who failed to plan for Anambra’s future and can’t point to a sustaining legacy from his admin can certainly not understand the importance of this trip by his President to the Caribbeans,” Ogra wrote. “To him, it is a ‘holiday’. To those in the know of geopolitics and where Nigeria needs to be and how it can get there quickly, it is a masterstroke.”
Ogra’s remarks were a direct response to Obi’s criticism of the presidential trip, which the opposition leader had described as ill-timed and insensitive, given the recent flood disaster in Niger State that has left over 200 people dead and more than 700 missing.
“This is a President going for leisure when he couldn’t visit Minna, Niger State, where over two hundred were lost and over 700 persons still missing in a flood natural disaster,” Obi said in a post on Saturday. “I didn’t want to believe that anybody in the position of authority, more so the President, would contemplate a leisure trip at this time.”
Obi went further to describe the visit as a “misplaced priority,” arguing that the administration should focus on urgent domestic crises rather than foreign engagements that appear, to many Nigerians, as recreational.
Ogra defended the trip as part of a broader diplomatic push to reposition Nigeria on the global stage, stating that critics like Obi are out of touch with the evolving dynamics of international relations and economic diplomacy.
The exchange underscores deepening political divisions in Nigeria’s post-election landscape, with Tinubu’s presidency continuing to draw sharp scrutiny from opposition figures amid mounting economic and security challenges. As both camps trade words, Nigerians remain concerned with how political leaders address pressing national issues.
