Former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi has faulted the decision of President Bola Tinubu to offer scholarships to Carribean students.
The president is on an eight-day working visit to Saint Lucia and as part of his efforts to strengthen bilateral relationship with the country, he promised to offer their students scholarships to study in Nigeria.
The Minister of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training of Saint Lucia Edward Shadrach has lauded the efforts of the president, with the students expected to resume to their various institutions in Nigeria next year.
Obi revealed his dissatisfactions with the number of out-of-school students and the ongoing strike by primary school teachers in Abuja, which has paralyzed academics in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He said the president should not have travelled at this time.
“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 Saint Lucia and offer scholarships to children there,” Obi said.
“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?”
In his key note address to Saint Lucia students, Tinubu encouraged them to use education to solve their problems and use it as a tool to fight poverty.
