In 2018 the State House said Buhari had written to the National Assembly under Section 145. Its three statements on Tinubu's 2026 leave do not mention a letter

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu left Abuja for Europe on 30 August 2026 and, by the Presidency's own account, left Paris for Lagos on 29 September. The State House published three press statements about the trip on its official website, statehouse.gov.ng. We downloaded the text of each statement from the site's public content feed and read them in full. In none of the three does the Presidency say that a written declaration was sent to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. None of the three says that Vice President Kashim Shettima was acting as President while Mr Tinubu was away.

That declaration matters because of Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution. We checked the wording against the text of the amended Constitution held by the Constitute Project. Subsection (1) says that "whenever the President is proceeding on vacation or is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his Office, he shall transmit a written declaration to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to that effect". Until he sends them "a written declaration to the contrary", the Vice-President "shall perform the functions of the President as Acting President". Subsection (2) covers a President who "is unable or fails to transmit the written declaration" within 21 days. In that case the National Assembly "shall, by a resolution made by a simple majority of the vote of each House", mandate the Vice-President to act as President.

The first statement is dated 30 August 2026. Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser to the President (Information & Strategy), signed it under the title "PRESIDENT TINUBU BEGINS THREE-WEEK LEAVE". It is three sentences long. It says the President "will depart Abuja today for Europe to begin a three-week vacation as part of his annual leave", that "his first stop will be London, United Kingdom", and that he "is expected to return home after the working vacation to join the hectic campaign for the January 2027 election". It does not mention the Constitution, a letter, the National Assembly or the Vice President. The website's metadata gives the same timestamp for publication and last modification, 30 August 2026 at 18:15, so the page has not been edited since it went up.

The second statement went up on 21 September under the heading "PRESIDENT TINUBU EXTENDS WORKING VACATION BY A FEW DAYS". It says the President "will return to Nigeria at the weekend, following the extension of his working vacation by a few days", and describes a week in London followed by Paris, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron and the businessman Vincent Bollore. It says Mr Tinubu "has continued to keep in touch with home, directing the affairs of the nation". It also describes how duties were covered while he was away. According to the statement, "President Tinubu delegated Vice President Kashim Shettima to represent him at some official functions". It adds that after Mr Shettima left for the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 20 September, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, "will continue to do so". Delegating someone to represent the President at events is not the same thing as a Vice-President acting as President under Section 145. The statement does not refer to Section 145.

The third statement, dated 29 September, is headed "PRESIDENT TINUBU DEPARTS PARIS FOR NIGERIA". It says the President "has ended his working vacation" and was expected to land at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos that evening. He would stay in Lagos to attend an Independence Day film premiere honouring Chief MKO Abiola and to "hold strategic meetings with political leaders and associates over several days in preparation for the 2027 elections", and "will return to Abuja after his political engagements in Lagos". Like the first two statements, it says nothing about a written declaration to the National Assembly, either one announcing the leave or one announcing that the President was available again.

The dates come from the Presidency's own statements; the arithmetic is ours. A three-week leave starting on 30 August would have ended around 20 September. The President left Paris on 29 September, 30 days after he left Abuja, and the Presidency says he will spend several more days in Lagos before going back to the capital. Section 145(2) sets a 21-day period, but it is triggered only where a President has not sent the declaration. What follows is a resolution of the National Assembly. The subsection does not make anything happen automatically. Our reading of the text is an interpretation (grade C). No court has ruled on this trip, and no one has been found to have broken the Constitution.

The State House's own archive shows that the Presidency has sometimes said a Section 145 letter was sent, and has said so in the announcement itself. On 1 August 2018, Femi Adesina, then Special Adviser to the President (Media and Publicity), signed a statement titled "President Buhari to Proceed on 10-Day Holiday". It is still online at statehouse.gov.ng. Its second sentence reads: "In compliance with Section 145 (1) of the 1999 Constitution, a letter has been transmitted to the President of the Senate, and the Speaker, House of Representatives to that effect." The next sentence says: "While the President is on vacation, the Vice President will be in acting capacity as President." When we searched the site for "Section 145", this 2018 statement was one of two results. The other was Mr Buhari's 2018 budget address.

An earlier precedent is recorded in press reports rather than in a document we read ourselves. In January 2017, Vanguard and other outlets reported that the then Senate President, Bukola Saraki, read a letter from President Muhammadu Buhari on the floor of the Senate. According to those reports, the letter said: "In compliance with Section 145 (1) of the 1999 constitution as amended, I wish to inform the Distinguished Senate that I will be away in a short medical vacation from Monday January, 23 to February 6th, 2017 and while I am away, the Vice President will perform the functions of my office." We have not seen the letter itself or the Senate's Votes and Proceedings for that day, so we grade this account B.

Mr Tinubu's leave in 2025 was handled the same way as this year's in the public record. On 4 September 2025, the State House announced that the President "will depart Abuja today, September 4, to commence a working vacation in Europe, as part of his 2025 annual leave", and that "the vacation will last 10 working days". Like the 2026 statements, that announcement does not mention a Section 145 letter or an Acting President. A later statement, dated 16 September 2025, said he had ended that vacation early.

Our records have limits. The Constitution requires a declaration to be sent to the Senate President and the Speaker. It does not require the Presidency to announce the letter in a press release. A letter could exist and simply never have been published. We found no public record that one was sent for the 2026 leave, but we cannot rule out that it was. The National Assembly was on its annual recess for much of the period, so it held no plenary at which a letter could have been read. We did not find any Senate or House record that mentions such a letter for 2026, and we have not seen one.

People outside the government have been asking the same question. On 23 September, Vanguard reported that a group of former House members calling itself the Save Democracy Group had asked: "Was the declaration required by Section 145 transmitted to the leadership of the National Assembly?" The group said the National Assembly should either confirm that it had received a declaration or use the procedure in the Constitution. On 29 September, Vanguard reported that Kenneth Okonkwo, a spokesperson for former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had asked the Presidency to say whether a letter was sent. He was quoted as asking: "Did you see any letter?" In both reports these are the claims of political opponents. We report them only as what they said.

Published accounts show the Presidency's defence as an argument about where the President works from, not about paperwork. Daily Trust reported that Mr Onanuga said: "In this digital age, he does not need to be physically present in Abuja to do the work for which he was elected in 2023." The same paper quoted the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, as saying on 22 September: "There is no vacancy in Aso Rock." In the reports we read, neither man said whether a Section 145 declaration had been sent to Mr Akpabio's office or to the Speaker's.

Section 145 has a practical purpose. A declaration makes the Vice-President Acting President. That gives him the formal authority to exercise the President's functions, not just to stand in for him at events. The 21 September statement describes a different arrangement. The Vice President represented the President "at some official functions". When the Vice President went to New York, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who holds no constitutional office in the line of succession, took on the same kind of representational role. Meanwhile the statement says the President himself was "directing the affairs of the nation" from London and Paris.

Our method was as follows. We queried the State House website's public posts interface for the word "vacation" and for "Section 145". We saved the full text and publication metadata of each relevant statement from 2018, 2025 and 2026. We rendered the pages to image as they appeared on 30 September 2026, and we checked the Wayback Machine's index of statehouse.gov.ng news pages for the period from late August. That index held no captures of the three 2026 statements. We read the text of Section 145 in the amended Constitution. We did not contact the Presidency, the Senate or the House of Representatives before publication, and we did not obtain any National Assembly journal for the recess period. Vero Record will publish any Section 145 declaration for the 2026 leave that the Presidency or the National Assembly releases.

What this rests on

Full texts and metadata of five State House statements, downloaded by us from the site's public WordPress API (saved as JSON) and rendered as screenshots, plus the Constitute Project text of Section 145. The 2017 Buhari letter and the quotes from opponents, Onanuga and Akpabio are press reports (grade B). The day counts and the reading of Section 145(2) are our own (grade C).

What this does not establish

Whether a written Section 145 declaration was in fact sent privately to the Senate President and the Speaker for the 2026 leave; whether a letter of resumption has been or will be sent; what the National Assembly's records for the recess period show. We did not see the original 2017 Buhari letter.