Opposition leader and former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, has lambasted President Bola Tinubu’s administration over its decision to allocate a staggering ₦712.3 billion for the renovation of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, calling it a gross misplacement of priorities amid widespread hunger and hardship across the country.
Mr. Obi, who is seeking to unseat President Tinubu in the 2027 general elections, issued a strongly worded statement on Wednesday, denouncing the expenditure as “profoundly troubling” and tone-deaf to the current suffering of ordinary Nigerians.
“It is profoundly troubling that at a time when millions of Nigerians are facing the crushing burden of hunger, the Federal Government has chosen to approve a staggering ₦712.3 billion—not to feed its people, not to lift them out of hardship, and not to invest in their well-being, but to renovate an airport,” Obi stated. “This raises a fundamental and urgent question: Where are our national priorities?”
The criticism comes days after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the airport renovation plan as part of broader efforts to modernise aviation infrastructure and enhance passenger experience.
Obi referenced a July 2025 United Nations report which warned that 34 million Nigerians were at risk of hunger by August — a figure he described not as mere statistics but as “real people — our parents, children, neighbours, and friends – who are going to bed hungry and waking up without hope of a meal.”
He also recalled Nigeria’s earlier investment in airport infrastructure, pointing out that in 2013, the country secured a $500 million loan from the China Exim Bank, supported by counterpart funding, to upgrade five international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt, and Enugu.
“If that massive investment was made barely a decade ago, what justifies an even larger sum today for just one airport—especially at a time when Nigerians are starving, internally displaced, and desperate?” Obi queried.
The 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate accused the Tinubu administration of prioritising “grandiose infrastructure projects” over critical human development indicators like food security, healthcare, education, and internal security.
“Development is about choices. It’s about understanding that national progress begins with the basics: human development, not with grandiose infrastructure projects,” Obi said. “A government that builds grandiose infrastructure while its people starve is not building a nation – it is betraying one.”
Meanwhile, in response to mounting criticism, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, defended the project earlier in the week, arguing that the allocated sum is modest compared to what other African nations have spent on similar airport upgrades.
Nonetheless, Obi insists the timing and scale of the project are both unjustifiable and insensitive, urging the federal government to redirect national resources toward urgent human development priorities.
