By Omoniyi Salaudeen
“Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.”
—Richard Steele
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu marked his second anniversary in office on Thursday, May 29, 2025, representing a significant milestone in his first four-year tenure.
In presenting his scorecard, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), along with Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), showed both the visible and invisible, tangible and intangible achievements of the administration over the last two years.
All these were to justify the blank cheque given to him by the party for a second tenure during its recent National Summit held in Abuja.
The Chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum, Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State, supported by key figures in the National Assembly, including Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, gave the open endorsement in recognition of Tinubu’s sterling performance.
By giving the president a self-serving commendation under the present circumstances, the APC has demonstrated a disregard for public opinion in its governance approach.
Effectively, it has initiated another intense scramble for power, ignoring the electorate’s likely response to the administration’s shortcomings.
By doing so, the party has positioned itself against the people, acting as the sole significant opposition in the upcoming electoral cycle.
In power play dynamics, individuals or groups may seek power for altruistic reasons, including the promotion of the greater good or a drive for positive change. Some can be motivated by survival and self-preservation instinct to ensure their continued existence in a competitive environment.
Thus the hasty manner with which the National Chairman of the APC, Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje and his National Working Committee (NWC) endorsed Tinubu’s re-election bid for a second term demonstrates a complete disconnect with the people they govern.
They have elevated sycophancy over reality, deluding themselves of future victory based on the current wave of defections which has hit the leading opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party.
In the renewed rat race toward the next election cycle, there has been so much political razzmatazz in the polity, including nocturnal meetings, open gatherings and debates about the formation of a mega coalition.
The possible outcome of all these is yet to be seen. Despite the frenetic energy Atiku Abubakar and Nasir el-Rufai have put into the campaign, the alliance formation remains largely a dream pipe because their motive behind it is driven by selfish interest.
And unless the initiative evolves into a credible alternative platform capable of leading the change the people so much desire, the survival of the present multi-party democracy will be imperiled.
At present, the nation is at a critical juncture in its democratic journey. As the nation gropes in the dark as the wind of defection continues to hit the opposition, so too the threat of a gradual drift towards a one-party state looms larger by the day. Yet, there is no glimmer of hope that the ongoing defections emboldening the APC’s impunity will cease any time soon, even as multi-party democracy faces an uncertain future.
Juxtaposing the hyped ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’ with the administration’s performance over the last two years, it is now apparent that President Tinubu’s full capabilities have been displayed.
As such, the comprehensive failure of his administration in several key sectors has continued to raise concerns about the diminishing chance of good governance in the coming years, especially now that the state gladiators are warming up to switch over from governance to power politics.
In Nigeria, effective governance takes place only within the first two years of a new administration. The other lap of the four-year tenure is usually devoted to power struggle among contending forces, while governance takes a flight.
The current APC’s hasty and premature endorsement of President Tinubu and some of its first-term governors, amid the hardship of the economy, insecurity, rising food inflation, pervasive poverty, and general discontent, will surely have some negative consequences on the party and the polity at large.
One of the likely consequences is public disenchantment and voter apathy in future elections.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, saw this coming when he introduced the controversial bill seeking to make voting compulsory for eligible Nigerians. However, he got enough bashing from civil society organisations, legal experts, and the public for what they perceive as legislative rascality. And so the bill died on arrival, invitro!
Voter apathy does not just happen; it happens because of bad governance and a lack of social capital. It happens because of a lack of trust and confidence between the government and the populace.
For failing to gauge and reflect on the opinion of the populace about the abysmal performance of the Tinubu administration, APC will likely face the backlash of its action in due course. Apart from the perceived public disenchantment, the endorsement also tends to destroy internal democracy within its fold. That is the bane of the ongoing crisis the PDP has had to grapple with since it lost power in 2015.
The APC’s campaign manifestos encapsulated in the Renewed Hope Agenda highlighted key areas of focus for the Tinubu administration, including economic recovery, security, job creation, subsidy removal, accessible education, infrastructure development and stable electricity generation for industries and domestic consumers, among others. All these have turned into a rope of sand, making the masses look like the tempest poor: No food, no security, no money and no dignity.
Although the administration has recorded some significant progress in areas like infrastructure, debt repayment and education, especially the establishment of the Nigeria Education Loan Fund to provide accessible financial support to students, escalating insecurity, epileptic power supply, unemployment, rising debt profile and food inflation still constitute the major challenge the administration has to tackle head on in the years ahead.
In this dire situation, President Tinubu must wake up to his responsibility. He needs to tackle the current escalating security situation in places like Plateau, Benue, and the Northeastern Nigeria. The seemingly insurmountable security situation in these parts of the country has already accentuated the challenge of the economy and food self-sufficiency, contrary to the administration’s promise to foster a safe environment for citizens.
The vulnerability of the affected communities to incessant attacks by bandits and Boko Haram has been linked to the inability of the Federal Government to nip terrorist financing and arms supply in the bud. Nigeria’s inability to block terrorist funding channels, arms supply networks, and pipelines vandalisation has fueled insecurity in several parts of the country.
Now, insurgents have become more brazen, targeting hard military installations to assert their relevance and loot weapons. And the military appears to have been over-stretched across the Northeast, Niger Delta, North-central, and Abuja, creating operational gaps that insurgents exploit.
These are critical issues the APC ought to reflect on and possibly engage in public debate about the possible solution, rather than its premature politics of sycophancy and self-preservation.
Part of the motivation for the hasty endorsement is the perceived dominance of the party in the National Assembly and also at the state and local government levels.
Currently, there are 22 states under its control and more are still being envisaged to join the fold in the days ahead. Easy as it sounds, this may not be enough to guarantee electoral victory for the president in the coming election, if at all any lesson has been learnt from the experience of the PDP.
Unless caution is applied, the ongoing loud applause greeting the low performance of the APC-led government without concrete evidence of any appreciable improvement in the quality of lives of the citizenry may ultimately turn President Tinubu into a miserable loser at the end of the day.