If it is true, then it is insensitive – Reno Omokri reacts to unconfirmed reports of Tinubu administration planning to purchase N5bn presidential yatch

‘’If the reports about President Bola Tinubu buying a ₦5 billion Presidential yacht are true, then it is most insensitive. Nigerians are facing some of the harshest economic realities of their existence. It shows a remarkable lack of empathy for the President to spend so profligately at a time when soldiers fighting the war on terror are dying and should be better motivated to build morale, pensioners are being owed, civil servants take home pay can no longer take them home, and fuel and food inflation is approaching 30%.

I supported the administration’s floating of the Naira because Nigeria cannot continue spending $1.5 billion monthly to defend the Naira. But if we have to float the Naira, why should the President float on water in a new yacht? What is the urgency, necessity and decency of such a purchase when there are Nigerians all over the Northwest, North Central and Northeast who are internally displaced by insecurity and whose needs for shelter far outweigh the President’s need for a new aquatic toy?

And this comes as it is revealed that the budget for the proposed student loan is just ₦5.5 billion. Are there people in the budget office who want to sabotage the President, or is the President sabotaging himself by fiddling while Nigerians churn in anger? Is there nobody close to the President that can tell him the truth? And if at all there is a need for a yacht (I can’t see the need for it), I am convinced that Niger Dock can build him a boat for less than ₦500 million.

It is not too late for the President to stop this purchase if he genuinely loves the nation as he claims. He should remember what happened to Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who also bought a yacht when his country was fraught with economic drought.

I will celebrate the President when he does well and eviscerate him when he goes astray.”