Ukishangaa ya Musa ............
Before he handed over the leadership of the country on May 29th 2007, the former Nigerian president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo remains the most widely traveled leader ever. The Ex-president's penchant for overseas trips clearly manifested itself in his first term in office (1999-2003).
Investigations also reveals that the former president
traveled out of the country 93 times in the first three years of his eight-year presidency and stayed outside the country for 340 days. It is also on record that president Obsanjo believed that traveling out to meet other leaders was the panacea to the prevailing pre-may economic doldrums the country was enmeshed in then. Little wonder that
he had to travel outside the country for over 400 times from 1999 to 2007.
It is also noteworthy that no president has beaten the track record of
Obasanjo who out of 366 days in 2004 reportedly spent 189 days outside the country when he assumed power on may 29, 1999, he had tremendous goodwill as Nigerians wanted a change from the total collapse of infrastructures and the rot in the various sectors of the economy. The benefits of the constant foreign trips have however remained a source of dispute between his admirers and critics alike. But the aides of the former president have justified the foreign tours, insisting that the trips were beneficial. Many of them argued that the overseas trips were inevitable in order to attract foreign direct investment with a view to revamping the country's ailing economy. They claimed that the development would follow the footsteps of the Asian tigers {Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia} that derived huge economic gains from the FDI in the early 90s.
According to an aide to the former president, who was also the minister of communications "Nigerians in Diaspora are coming back in droves to invest in the country and this is remarkable." But the critics of the former president said his trips abroad have pointed out that he-
Obasanjo's long and frequent absence from home have prevented him from building a business climate for both local and foreign multi- nationals ,enterprises and industrialists. Most especially, the epileptic electricity power supply as well as insecurity in the oil-rich Niger-delta region of the south of the country has been the major problem.
A famous human right activist in Nigeria faulted Obasanjo's travelling and said Obasanjo
does not stay in the country to perform his constitutional duties and leadership roles. He left the country to visit four countries- Germany, Italy, Britain and Ethiopia-in seven days'. Apart from the colossal sums of money which his travels have gulped, Obasanjo has admitted the failure of his globetrotting. Despite all complaints on his travels, the ex-president Obasanjo's friends have maintained that the biggest fallout of the president's foreign tours was the foreign debt
cancellation of $18 billion by external creditors of the Paris club. The feat remains the greatest achievement of Obasanjo's presidency till date. By:
Tunde Adelakun,
Created on: July 04, 2007
Who is the most widely traveled president - by Tunde Adelakun - Helium
President Obama "has now visited more countries in his first year in office than any other president did,"
McClatchy reports.
He's been to 16 countries so far this year and it is only mid-October (2010).
Obama is Most-Traveled First Year President