Onyekachi Eze 
The presidential candidate of Labour Party in 2023, Peter Obi has condmned the failure of President Bola Tinubu to visit scenes of natural and man made disasters to commiserate with the victims.
Obi on his X platform on Monday, noted that the president has not visited Niger State where nearly 200 lives were lost and several others missing, following severe flooding in the area, even when the incident happened less than an hour away by helicopter.
“Just days ago, over 200 Nigerians, innocent men, women, children, and even soldiers were massacred in Benue State.
“Again, no presidential visit; no physical presence at the scenes of pain. No genuine national mourning. No leadership face to comfort the grieving or give hope to the people,” he observed.
Obi compared the situation with the recent plane crash in India where over 200 people died, and said the Prime Minister was physically at the scene within hours.
“In South Africa, when floods claimed 78 lives, the president went personally to the affected communities, stood with them, and took responsibility.
“That is leadership with compassion. That is leadership that understands the value of human life.
“But here in Nigeria, we have normalised leadership without empathy, without accountability, and without a human face,” he said.
The Labour Party candidate said this confirmed his insistence that Nigeria does not just need another president but a leader with competence, capacity, character, and compassion.
Obi blamed Nigeria’s problem on leadership selection, and said there is the need to move away from voting based on tribe and religion, and begin to vote for people with competence, capacity, character, and compassion.
According to him, “leadership of a nation is such that it’s either succeeding or failing, none can be hidden.
“There are critical areas of leadership that must exist for a nation to move forward, and these are summed up in four Cs: Competence, Capacity, Character and Compassion.
“Where these four are non-existent, there is no magic you can do.”
He said Nigeria needs a leader who understands the issues, and who has the knowledge, experience, and clear ideas to solve them, adding that presidency requires someone with strength, stamina, and the mental energy to confront the complex challenges facing the nation.
“Leadership must be rooted in character and integrity because without integrity, public trust collapses, corruption thrives, and selfishness takes over.
“But perhaps most importantly, we need compassion, because when a leader lacks compassion, human lives are treated as statistics, and suffering is ignored,” he said.
