It is amusing to listen and watch social media diatribe when presidents make a faux pas. A social altercation could also break out when presidential image managers fail to respond to or hide from innocuous issues that blow out of proportion on the wings of speculations and gossip. This is what is happening now with the social media outrage over what President Bola Tinubu must have spent on hotel accommodation on his recent visit to New York City.
Keep in mind that the President was not on a sightseeing tour of the city “so nice they named it twice.” He was there as an honoured guest of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where he equally presented a scintillating speech that received critical acclaim back home. But trust the dogs to leave the meat of his trip to bark and run after the bones.
The Igbo say that onwero k’irunye aka n’ike ghara iruta nsi (one cannot dig into the rear-end without coming up with something smelly). In this case, the e-dogs didn’t have to dig; a snitch conveniently forgot a copy of a memo on social media which gave a clue to how New York may have been a jamboree for the President and his delegation, living it up in a 5-Star hotel.
The alleged memo appears credible. It is written in the best tradition of bureaucratese; I could tell because I learnt to craft similar (but good) memos once upon a time. The prayers in the memo were for the president to approve $422,820 for a 7-day stay at St. Regis Hotel, New York, and another $84,574 to spend as incidentals. The funds were to be sourced from the Federal Government’s Wheat Grain Levy.
Predictably, netizens, especially those opposed to Tinubu, are salivating over the story. Their angst is that the President should not have wasted half a million dollars to deliver a speech in New York. And then, what do the officials mean by “incidentals” that was smuggled into the hotel request? At a time when citizens are groaning over the prohibitive costs of everything in Nigeria?
What would netizens do if they found out that the trip cost taxpayers a lot more than the $507,384 for which they are complaining?
No ordinary citizen will ever know what it costs taxpayers when a President makes a trip abroad. No one is allowed to know because such knowledge borders on the security of the country. Even the United States, the supposed bastion of accountability, does not disclose this. The US National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) tried and failed and then had this to say about it: “What is known is that the planning for every trip requires comprehensive security arrangements including advance trips by security personnel months ahead of time, logistics and transport of multiple cargo planes and ships for supplies, and an entourage of cabinet members, administrative support and staff from multiple departments and agencies, and even “culinary specialists.”
Presidency travel watchers say that the single biggest budget might well be the cost of flying the presidential jet on these visits. It costs the US about $206,337 per hour to operate Airforce One outside the shores of the United States. If this applies equally to Nigeria, this would be calculated as the cost of flying between Nnamdi Azikiwe (Abuja) to JFK (New York) International Airports. Note however, that as the investigative journalist David Hundeyin who tracked the plane movement reported, the Presidential Jet made a stopover landing in Paris before returning to Nigeria. The cost would be over $5million if this were to be America’s Airforce One.
So, there we have it. When we focus only on what was spent at the hotel, we would be chasing a red herring. The problem is not making foreign trips but making them cost-effective, whether in seasons of drought or seasons of plenty. And we are in the season of drought now, the reason why reasonable people find problems with the half a million dollar hotel expense.
The first problem with the hotel bill is that it exposes the president’s decision to attend UNGA with an oversize delegation, the continuation of an African madness. Nigeria maintains a consulate in New York, complete with all manner of subject matter experts and protocol officers. Thus, the president does not need more than 10 persons to go with him to a talk shop like UNGA. So far, government has refused to publish the number of persons in the president’s delegation. If we were to determine by the hotel’s published average room rate of $2,000 per night during UNGA, the approved funds will accommodate at least 30 persons for seven days. That is a large delegation. And, by the way, the fact that taxpayers are not being told who went to spend their money in the United States raises questions that can only be answered with speculations.
The second problem with the bill is the memo which gives the impression that everyone was put up in the same five-star hotel. Today on its website, the lowest rate in that hotel is $1,020 per night. If everyone must travel with the President, the Consulate should have been able to arrange budget hotels that will not cost more than $300 a night for many of them. Apart from its sheer wastefulness, shepherding the entire delegation into one facility is fraught with security implications as well.
But, as we said before, netizens are pursuing a red herring on this one, because they have yet to factor other hidden costs of the trip. For instance, all the people on the delegation are entitled to estacodes for the trip. Most will source the funds from their various MDAs unless the Presidency decides to accommodate everyone. The cost will run into millions of dollars. Added to the cost of flying the Presidential jet to New York and Paris, one will not be surprised that over $6million was committed to the trip. The funds being debated in the social media are like “chicken change” as we say here, compared to what must have been disbursed and expended on the trip.
But, and this is a very big but: should we be against the trip? We must accept that the President of a country should undertake foreign visits. A President is the nation’s Number One diplomat who should ordinarily lead from the front. Apart from bilateral visits, there are also international summits that merit attendance. In some of these gatherings, the presence of a country’s Number One citizen will make a difference in achieving projected outcomes.
The challenge is getting bureaucrats to give citizens enough information to understand and appreciate the benefits of each presidential travel abroad. The fact that taxpayers are not being told who went to spend their money in the United States is what enveloped the trip in mystery and automatically triggered unhelpful speculations. Should we put this down to the teething problems of a new administration with excited political appointees wanting the experience of living it up in New York? It’s another wait and see.