In all the years Rtd. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari presided over Nigeria, he was fond of jetting off to London or Dubai for what his assistants called “medical trips.” He would sometimes go off for months without any care about those he was supposed to help at home.

Now, it seems newly elected president Bola Tinubu will be following in his footsteps.

Even before he has assumed office on May 29, 2023, Tinubu has traveled outside the country twice on what he terms “working visits” as part of his final preparation for his assumption of the office of president.

Tinubu’s spokesman Tunde Rahman said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Tinubu “will use the opportunity of the trip to fine-tune the transition plans and programs, and his policy options with some of his key aides without unnecessary pressures and distractions”.

That begs the question: Why did Mr. Tinubu feel the need to fine-tune his presidential plans outside Nigeria? Could he not have done the same thing in Lagos, Abuja, Sokoto or Port Harcourt?

Tunde Rahman said Mr. Tinubu will also the use the trip to “engage with investors and other key allies hoping to convince them of Nigeria’s readiness to do business under his leadership.”

Here is the question the Nigerian Community is asking Mr. Tinubu: How does traveling outside the country engender confidence in your ability to preside over Nigeria more effectively?

While Mr. Tinubu is on his way out of Nigeria, the out-going president Muhammadu Buhari is chilling in London while his teeth is being worked on. Why not? Take advantage of the free services while you can, right?

Mr. Tinubu’s victory is being challenged in an election tribunal by several candidates who contested the recent election, including Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.

The fall from grace of former Nigerian Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu is now complete after he was sentenced by a British court to nine years in prison for illegal organ trafficking plot.

The court also sentenced his wife, Beatrice, to four years six months while the medical doctor who acted as the ‘middleman’ in the whole sordid episode, Dr. Obinna Obeta received 10 years and a suspension of his medical license.

Ekweremadu, his wife and Obeta were found guilty last month by the British court for criminally conspiring to bring a 21-year-old Lagos cellphone street vendor to London to donate organs to Ekweremadu’s daughter, Sonia who needed kidney transplant to stay alive.

The London court heard how the Ekweremadus’ presented the street vendor as a cousin of Sonia’s in a bid to convince the doctors with the Royal Free Hospital in London to allow the nearly $100,000 operation to proceed.

The street vendor was said to have been offered up to $10,000 to become a donor after Sonia was forced to abandon her Master’s degree in film program at Newcastle University following a kidney failure.

The prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC told the court that the Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man and other potential donors as “disposable assets – spare parts for reward”.

During a televised sentence hearing, Mr Justice Johnson recognised Ike Ekweremadu’s “substantial fall from grace”.

Lynette Woodrow, deputy chief crown prosecutor and national modern slavery lead at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said it had been “our first conviction for trafficking for the purposes of organ removal in England and Wales”.

She said it highlighted an important legal principle which made it irrelevant whether the trafficking victim knew he was coming to the UK to provide a kidney.

“With all trafficking offences,” Ms Woodrow said, “the consent of the person trafficked is no defense. The law is clear; you cannot consent to your own exploitation.”

Nigerians living abroad sent home nearly $200b to help families and to invest in the country in the last eight years, according to a report by The World Bank.

According to the report, Nigerians in diaspora remitted a stunning $168.33 billion to the country.

But the huge inflow of foreign currency from diaspora Nigerians was not enough to stem the scarcity of foreign currency in the country leading to the free fall of the Naira, Nigeria’s local currency.

The World Bank reported that remittances to Sub Saharan African from abroad grew 5.2 percent to $53 billion, and the largest share of that went to Nigeria.

A breakdown of the figures released by The World Bank showed that in 2015, the Diaspora remittance was $21.2bn; it fell to $19.7bn in 2016; and increased to $22bn in 2017.

By 2018, it was $24.31bn. It soon fell to $23.81bn in 2019, and the pandemic caused it to plummet to 17.21bn in 2020. It made a rebound to $19.2bn in 2021 and by 2022 the World Bank estimated that the inflows into the country had reached $20.9bn.

The World Bank report said foreign remittances to Nigeria was the top source of non-oil foreign exchange for the country.

As of April 19, 2023, data from the CBN showed that Nigeria’s forex reserve was $34.43bn, an 18.4 per cent increase from the $29.07bn it was in 2015.

But Nigerians abroad are warning that the current economic condition in various North American and European countries may affect their ability to continue to send money home.

“Things are no longer the way they used to be. Things are tough no,” warned Blessing Okon, a resident of England who said she regularly sent money to her parents but is now cutting back due to the economic conditions.