It is not an ECOWAS partner. It is not a major oil trading nation. It is not home to any diaspora lobbying group demanding this attention. But somehow, it is now a priority on Nigeria’s invisible balance sheet.

Meanwhile, at home, Nigerian children are dropping out of public schools, lecturers are striking in silence unpaid, unheard and unseen and graduates are stacking up degrees they cannot convert into jobs. The Nigerian university system is begging for help, yet our government is whispering sweet deals into the ears of island developers thousands of miles away.

The bitter irony is that St. Lucia is already hosting hundreds thousands of Nigerian students. Not as tourists. Not as diplomats. But as academic refugees, young men and women who have fled the ruins of Nigerian education to find learning in quiet classrooms where the roofs don’t leak, where lecturers show up, where fees make sense. St. Lucia, like Grenada, Dominica, and Barbados, has become a haven for Nigerian youths fleeing a government that now prefers Caribbean real estate to classroom funding.

In St. Lucia, classrooms are powered, structured, and safe. In many Nigerian universities, students sit on broken furniture, lecturers teach without pay, and entire faculties run on generators and goodwill.

Let’s not pretend this is the first time Nigerian leaders have played Big Brother while the house is on fire. We are always the giant of Africa until it is time to fund our hospitals, pay our teachers, or secure our own streets. We build railways in Niger Republic while our own are vandalized. We donate to West African peacekeeping while terrorists stretch from Zamfara to Borno. Now, we are nurturing the island dreams of some people while our students are sleeping four to a bunk in overcrowded university hostels with epileptic electricity and no water.

And let’s not forget that these same students are being asked to pay more. Public university fees have quietly doubled. Electricity tariffs are up. Petrol is unaffordable. There is no student loan infrastructure functioning yet, and no minimum wage that reflects the inflation crushing families. So while a billionaire and his circle polish Caribbean masterplans are on, Nigerian youth are building Japa files, applying for Dominican visas, and chasing scholarships in Cuba because Nigeria has made itself too hard to live in.

Our government must be told, clearly and urgently. Our country is not stable enough to be a donor. Our education system is hemorrhaging. Our economy is gasping. Our teachers are unpaid. Our students are leaving. Now is not the time to play empire. It is the time to rebuild the basics. Nobody builds a guesthouse while their own home is crumbling.

When leaders dream in dollars, citizens drown in despair.

As of 2024, Nigeria still ranks among the top ten countries globally with the highest number of out-of-school children over 10.5 million. Yet instead of channeling urgency toward this crisis, we are chasing palm trees in the Caribbean.

We cannot be throwing our resources at foreign islands while mothers in Bauchi sell firewood to pay school levies. We cannot be shaking hands in St. Lucia while teenagers in Enugu sell satchet water to fund NECO fees. We cannot prioritize global optics over domestic obligation.

If there is one thing this government must understand, it is that playing global landlord while your own citizens are tenants of failure is not leadershipit, it is abandonment.

Nigeria must stop trying to perform wealth. Because the world is not fooled. The only people fooled are the ones living through it.

And to President Tinubu, if no one around you will say it, allow this piece to serve as your open memo.

You cannot rescue Nigeria from the Caribbean. Nation-building begins at home, not at the beachfront of a foreign island.

You were elected to rescue Nigeria, not redevelop St. Lucia.

You were chosen to educate Nigerians, not entertain someone’s fantasies.

And if we keep selling out our future to fund private legacies, history will not forget.

But it will not forgive either.

St. Lucia may have won this round. But Nigeria just lost another piece of her future.