Tinubu Postponed Trips: President Cancels G-20, AU-EU Summits Over Security Crisis
By: Abudu Olalekan
He was already packed.
Suit pressed. Speech notes folded in the breast pocket. Johannesburg first, then Luanda. G20 glamour, then the AU-EU handshakes. The usual presidential carousel.
Then two phone calls came within hours of each other.
First, Kwara. Sunday evening. Christ Apostolic Church, Eruku. Gunmen stormed in while people were praying. Shots. Screams. Blood on the pews. One worshipper dead, others wounded, some dragged away like goats to the slaughter.
Second call, Kebbi. Monday morning. Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga. Bandits on bikes. Over twenty schoolgirls gone. Just like that. The Vice Principal, Malam Hassan Makuku, tried to stop them. They shot him dead on the spot.
By Wednesday afternoon, Bayo Onanuga was typing the statement nobody in the Villa wanted to write.
President Bola Tinubu has postponed his trips.
No G20 red carpet. No bilateral smiles in Angola. Cancelled. Indefinitely.
He’s staying home.
Because sometimes the country just refuses to wait for your diary to be convenient.
Onanuga said it straight: the President wants fresh security briefings on both incidents. Every hour counts when children are missing and churches are turning into crime scenes.
Already, Tinubu has sent more soldiers and police to Eruku and the whole Ekiti Local Government Area in Kwara. He told them, go after the bastards who shot up a church. Find them. End them.
In Kebbi, he had sent Vice President Kashim Shettima on Tuesday to stand with the governor, cry with the families, promise the girls will come home alive. Shettima went. He came back looking ten years older.
Now Tinubu himself is waiting for the next update, minute by minute.
This is not the first time bandits have made him change plans. But this one feels different. Church attack plus schoolgirls in the same week? That’s not just crime. That’s a middle finger to the entire country.
People are angry. Really angry. On WhatsApp groups, on Twitter, in beer parlours from Birnin Kebbi to Ilorin, Nigerians are asking the same question: how many more times must we bury our people before something actually changes?
And Tinubu knows it. That’s why he’s not on a plane right now, sipping champagne at 30,000 feet while posing for G20 family photos. He’s in Aso Rock, probably pacing, phone glued to his ear, barking at service chiefs.
Sources close to the Villa say he was furious when he heard about the church attack. One aide quoted him saying “they shot people praying? In a church? We will find them and they will regret the day they were born.”
That’s the Tinubu most Nigerians voted for – the man who doesn’t tolerate nonsense.
Postponing foreign trips isn’t new. Buhari did it. Jonathan did it. But this one hits different because everyone knows these summits matter. G20 is where the big boys discuss money, trade, climate. AU-EU is where Africa begs Europe not to forget us completely. Missing them isn’t small.
Yet the President chose to stay.
Some will call it optics. I call it the bare minimum. When your people are dying and your children are being stolen, you don’t go and collect souvenir photos in Johannesburg.
You stay and fight.
Even if the fight is messy. Even if the bandits are winning rounds. Even if the answers are not coming fast enough.
Because leadership isn’t about attending every summit. Sometimes it’s about knowing which ones to miss.
Right now, twenty-four schoolgirls are somewhere in the forest, scared, probably crying. Worshippers in Eruku are burying their dead and wondering if church is still safe.
And the President postponed his trip.
For once, that feels like the right call.
May the girls come home safe. May the bandits meet the kind of justice that doesn’t need appeal.
And may Tinubu remember this feeling the next time another summit invitation lands on his desk while Nigeria burns.
Because we will remember.
