The Presidency has confirmed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is in good health, clarifying that his absence from Nigeria is strictly for an ongoing working vacation.
In a statement posted on X on Sunday, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, emphasized that the President continues to attend to official duties while away from Abuja and remains fully entitled to his annual leave.
It said: “President is hale and hearty. He has been on a working vacation, which he is perfectly entitled to. In this digital age, he does not need to be physically present in Abuja to do the work for which he was elected in 2023.
“And we have seen that he has indeed been working, meeting investors in France, most recently facilitating a $7 billion deep-sea port in Ogun Waterside, an initiative of the Ogun State Government.
“Two other important African leaders were not in New York for the UNGA: South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Ramaphosa booked himself off public engagements.
“Johannesburg and Pretoria made no uproar over Ramaphosa’s absence at UNGA. And Egypt did not erupt that Sisi did not go to New York. The Nigerian President announced he was taking his annual vacation and delegated attendance to his able and dependable Vice President.
“Yet Peter Obi pretends to be unaware of President Tinubu’s whereabouts and asks the puerile question his followers are asking on X.”
Onanuga said President Tinubu will return home this week to mark Nigeria’s 66th independence anniversary and honour MKO Abiola, the martyr of the nation’s democracy by attending the premiere of a movie in MKO’s memory in Lagos.
PerSecondNews recalls that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), questioned President Bola Tinubu’s absence from the 81st UN General Assembly in New York.
Obi raised the issue on his social media page while commenting on Ghanaian President John Mahama’s address to the UNGA on Thursday, September 24, 2026.
“Where is the President of Africa’s most populous nation, a country of more than 200 million people – more than Ghana – whose leader has been absent from the global stage for three consecutive UNGAs?”