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The President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, launched his campaign for re-election to a second term in office in 2027, in Kaduna, on October 24. His stomping for votes was devoid of any issues. He did not reference what he achieved in the last almost four years since he was declared the President in 2023. He did not make any promises of delivery in the unlikely event that he was declared the winner of the presidential election on January 16, 2027. Obviously, he is bereft of ideas in addition to his obvious low energy.
Two things stole the show in Kaduna last month. The first was his absurd and embarrassing claim that the poverty which is currently ravaging Nigerians was the handiwork of his rivals to the presidency. For him it did not matter that his political party, the All Progressives Congress [APC] has been in power at the centre for about 12 years. Tinubu was the national leader of the party in the eight years [2015-2023] that Muhammadu Buhari, a retired army major-general, was the President. Buhari’s era was a waste marked by retrogression. He took Nigeria back by at least 30 years. It was the years of the locusts marked by ‘’non-governance’’. Buhari was an affliction.
The second most significant features of Tinubu’s Kaduna campaign launch were the images and videos of security goons who were armed to the teeth, combat-ready, and detailed to guard posters and billboards. The posters and billboards were those that bore Tinubu’s images. They were pasted and mounted days before Tinubu’s visit to that state. Hungry and angry citizens had vented their frustrations on the canpaign materials, defacing the posters and pulling down the billboards. Apparently, many Nigerians in Kaduna who had been impoverished by the economic policies of the President and who could not reach him physically to extract their pound of flesh viisited their anger on the liveless posters and billboards. In some other states in the North, electrified wires were said to have been used to prevent seething Nigerians from vandalising campaign billboards of Tinubu. APC stalwarts can claim that those punching Tinubu in the face through his campaign billboards were instigated by the leaders and supporters of the opposition. It might as well be but Nigerians know better. Tinubu was a damaged brand. He’s still a damaged brand. And his brand will ultimately end in infamy.
Tinubu was in Akwa Ibom State last weekend after spending some days in Saudi Arabia as a prayer warrior. He was said to have gone to Uyo to commission some projects and grant some approvals for other projects. He was reported to have given the state government approval to build the Ibaka/Ibom Deep Seaport. President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party [PDP] who left office 11 years ago had also given approval for the construction of the same Ibaka/Ibom Deep Seaport. Buhari who left office almost four years ago, and who is dead, by the way, gave a presidential approval for the same port construction in 2019 or thereabouts. It should be noted that all the presidential approvals, including Tinubu’s, were from the podium. Elsewhere, in Lagos and Ogun states, such approvals were on paper – documented, signed and sealed.
The story of this seaport is similar to the reported recent directive by Tinubu for the clearance from the Lagos ports of electric power equipment, which had been abandoned there for over 20 years. The latest order by our obviously caring and concerned President was on the eve of a consequential election next year. Tinubu just noticed the abandoned equipment almost four years into his first and, hopefully, only tenancy in the Presidency.
The only problem is that his predecessor and fellow party man, Buhari, had given a similar order for the evacuation of the same abandoned electric power consignments in 2018, almost a decade ago. The same equipment were said to have been abandoned for about 20 years as at that time Buhari gave the marching orders. As far as the APC henchmen and propagandists are concerned, Nigerians are gullible and foolish. They know that Nigerians have short memories but they have failed to acknowledge that there are now social media search engines that refresh our memory at the press of a button.
It’s difficult to miss the fact that Tinubu set a record in Akwa Ibom last weekend – he slept in Uyo, the state capital – the first in the four years of his presidency. Apart from Abuja, where he is supposed to live, and Lagos, his alleged state of origin, where he has a private home, there’s no official record of Tinubu staying overnight in any other part of the country he is said to be ruling. But he has slept for more than 200 days abroad in about three years, from Europe to the Americas, to Asia and the Middle East. It used to be said that east or west, north or south, home is the best. This, surely, is not for Tinubu. For him Europe, particularly Paris, France, is the best. Olabisi Ajala made a name for himself by travelling the world on his scooter. He was a private Nigerian citizen who bore his expenses. Tinubu is the modern-day Ajala. But he is a public servant [overlord, really]. He junkets at the public expense. He is a rolling stone that gathers no moss.
And his travels and sundry indulgencies appear to be the only reasons for our national budgets. In Uyo, at the weekend, he appeared in some footages to be tripping and stumbling and staggering while he moved around. He frequently needed supporting and stabilising hands from his aides, including the pastor governor of the state. It could be down to the stress of ruling Nigeria and her demanding people. It could be old age since the mid-70s age he claims has remained controversial. One of Tinubu’s rivals to the presidency, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, recently claimed that the President was more of 90 years than 74, and that he had evidence to prove it. Nobody has asked him for the evidence though.
Tinubu’s penchant for tripping, stumbling, and being supported by the holding of his hand in public, and indeed falling flat, ‘yakata’, as happened in Turkiye while on a state visit, could also be as a result of a serious infirmity, which has been hidden from Nigerians. If truth be told, his recurring concerning public outings in Nigeria and abroad, which had led to the President of Turkiye, and the King of England, variously holding the hands of our President to stabilise him could be as a result of the combination of issues. Once, the President of Turkiye had had to pick up our President from the floor as he fell. It was an agonising public spectacle in the full view of the watching world. At that moment Nigeria hit rock bottom.
Other News
Back to the subject of the need for Tinubu to use the achievements of the budgets he has been implementing to campaign for his reelection next year. He was in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, also at the weekend. But it appears that in both states in the south south geopolitical zone, Tinubu forgot the many campaign tips he had been offered here pro bono. Tinubu inherited the 2023 budget from Buhari, and later drew up his own supplementary budget at the tail end of that year. The supplementary budget was essentially to procure high-end SUVs for government officials and non-government workers including the wife of the president. It was an achievement that the president can flaunt before voters. That should also apply to his use service-wide votes to procure two presidential toys – an Airbus jet and a bomb – resistant, armour-plated American custom made Limo.
Tinubu can also regale Nigerians at his next campaign stops that he has been scrupulous in obeying the Appropriation Acts since he assumed office. Yes, the national budget is a law. Furthermore, the Constitution stipulates that our budgets should start on January 1, and terminate on December 31, of every budget year. That has been the routine since 2024, the first full budget year under Tinubu. He should tell Nigerians that implementing a multiplicity of budgets simultaneously ended with the dubious 16 years of the PDP, and the lackluster eight years of his own party man, the late Buhari.
In addition, Tinubu holds the bragging rights for consistently drafting and implementing budgets that were not padded. It’s baffling that the president fails to tell our country men and women that he has been achieving more than 90% budget implementation/performance since 2024. It’s a surprise that he has been fighting shy, probably because of his self-effacing nature, of telling citizens that he has been fully funding MDAs [ministeries, departments, and agencies] of government. And that he had been enabled to do so by his courageous act of removing petrol subsidy within hours of his accesion to the presidency in 2023. A feat he achieved without consultations, and without any plans for the inevitable fallout of that policy. And that heavens did not fall, as Festus Keyamo said it would not fall if, and when, ADC presidential candidate, Atiku, gets finally and firmly deleted from the race by the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission [INEC].
Tinubu should be telling us while campaigning that it’s a mark of genius by a master strategist that two months to the official end of the 2026 budget cycle, he’s yet to submit to the national assembly [NASS], that good for nothing body, the medium term expenditure framework [MTEF] which usually preceded the budget estimates for the incoming year. It would not matter that nasayers would strive in their usual ‘’bad belle’’ politics to remind us that his regime is still implementing the 2025 and the 2026 budgets simultaneously. The wailers would conveniently forget that one of the spokespersons for Tinubu’s campaign council recently told Nigerians why, for instance, that the federal ministry of health got only N30 billion of the over N200 billion provisioned for its capital projects this year. Alwan Hassan said publicly on national television that because ministers paid bribes for their appointments and were more minded with recouping their investments than ministering to our needs, Tinubu had decided to personally handle the disbursement of budgetary provisions to MDAs. This is a prudent management of the commonwealth that the president should be harping on at every campaign stop. Why he is not doing so should be concerning.
Furthermore, Tinubu should be celebrating his unique budgeting style that confuses those who are determined to derail his progressive agenda. He has achieved this by domiciling budget provisions for solar security street lights in the ministry of justice; procurement of arms and ammunition in the ministry of education; N1 billion per borehole in the ministry of aviation and aerospace development; and the N10 billion Ebola emergency intervention fund in the office of the chief of staff in the presidency. This way the projects would have been delivered by the time the perennial obstructionists decoded the smart moves. It’s obvious that those who craft Tinubu’s campaign speeches are failing in their duty in this regard.
It’s down to the failings of the president’s speech writers that Tinubu was still being made to make promises about economic recovery when he campaigned in Rivers state on Saturday. How could a man who said on October 1, during his Independence anniversary broadcast, that Nigeria has entered the era of prosperity be promising to work hard at fixing the national economy if reelected in 2027? How? By the way, what actually does prosperity mean?
Let’s ask an online dictionary. ‘’Prosperity is the condition of being successful, thriving, or financially well-off. Financial and material well-being often refer to having an abundance of money, resources, or material goods, full employment, and strong economic growth on a personal or national level’’. In broader term, according to the dictionary, prosperity goes beyond money. It encompasses health, happiness, good fortune, inner peace, and the ability to thrive in relationships and life goals. Are there any things in Tinubu’s Nigeria that approximate this classical dictionary definition of prosperity? Are we even at the cusp of it?
Something to cheer
We beat the world. Yes, we did. Our U-17 female national team became world beaters on Saturday. They put smiles on our faces in spite of the grim situation of our country when they defeated their Japanese counterparts in Morocco. Not many gave them a chance in the tournament. But the Flamingos displayed the typical Nigerian spirit. And they triumphed. They became the first African female football team in any category to be crowned world champions. Congratulations to our amazons, and to Nigerians.
