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SEYI, elder son of President Bola Tinubu just cannot stay out of the headlines at the moment. Controversy seems to have become his second nature. If there’s none, he creates one. It seems to have become his oxygen of publicity. Joshua C. Kendall, an American award winning journalist and author of “First Dads : Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama”, might have had the Tinubu family in mind, especially Seyi when he wrote what history told us about First Families. He said they flood history in a sad and angry tide. “The presidency – and the perks, pressure and spotlight it brings with it- affects First Children in unpredictable ways, and it’s probably worth thinking about just who those people are before we elected their parents”. That’s the problem when the children of elected leaders start to behave automatically as if they are the elected leadership.
It could also come from overblown praise that makes a father appear too good-like. Remember how Bola Tinubu was ‘sold’ to Nigerians during the campaigns as a man who possesses all it takes to make Nigeria great again. Nigerians now know better. But these are the issues concerning his son, Seyi: When Nigerian voters cast their ballots for President Tinubu in 2023, they probably did not expect that Seyi now 39, would turn to be a bothersome, intrusive lark, a nuisance of some sort, a controversial figure, and a distraction to the enormous challenges that his father was elected to solve. That’s because, for all that goes into ‘selecting’ and electing a president, Nigerians tend to spend little time worrying about Tinubu’s children. All we knew was Tinubu’s defiant claim that “it’s my turn(Emilokan)” to be the next President of Nigeria. Now, just think about what Seyi, a pampered grown adult has done, the run-ins with some people and the controversies he has been involved in since his father became President and Commander-in- Chief.
The controversies he has attracted have hugged the headlines. If his bizarre, outlandish behaviour is not normal, you may ask, why? Does the President feel hurt watching his son each time his behaviour hugs the headlines? If, indeed the President does, why hasn’t he deemed it necessary to rein him in as he did early in his administration when Seyi reportedly barged in, without invitation, at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in the Presidential Villa? This is what the President said on that day: “I have noticed the undue access of people sneaking in and out of this Council, including my son, Seyi, sitting behind the cubicle. That’s not acceptable”. The president instructed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume to take note of his order.
But, whether the SFG did anything to restrict Seyi’s access to crucial meetings in Aso Rock, remains unclear. All the same, this question continues to be asked: Has Seyi gone beyond control or is his “unacceptable” behaviour something Nigerians must be concerned about? As you ponder over this question, this could be part of the answer you may be looking for. While some presidents’ children have provided valuable assistance to their Dads and their nation, others have tainted their fathers administration with scandal and corruption and becoming fodder for the press. In fact, if Nigerian voters new the effects some scandal-prone children of the president would have – good and bad and In between on the country – they might want to pay less attention to whose name is on the ballot, and focus on the character of children standing at that candidate’s side.
Seyi Tinubu fits into that category of a president’s offspring who is causing much public discomfort. The most recent nuisance conduct caught the attention of Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, in Lagos. It was the young man’s foolishness in excessive security escort. As American professor and public intellectual Avram Noam Chomsky said, “the duty of intellectuals is to speak the truth and expose lies”. Soyinka did exactly that on Seyi unacceptable behaviour. According to the Nobel Laureate, the excessive security battalion assigned to the president’s son was sufficient to “take over a small country”. So shocked and concerned was Soyinka that he contacted the National Security Adviser to the President, Nuhu Ribadu. “Do you mean that a child of the Head of state goes around with an army for his protection or whatever”, an exasperated Soyinka asked the NSA.
Soyinka humorously added, “if a major insurgency were to break out, perhaps the president should ask Seyi to go and handle it given the size of his escort”. Beyond the humour lies a matter of priority and fairness. It is unlikely that Ribadu did anything following the complaint by the Nobel Laureate. It’s also most unlikely that the President called his son to order. Which is why Soyinka advised that children of elected leaders must understand their place. “They are not elected leaders, and they must not inherit the architecture of state power simply by proximity”, he warned. In an opinion published in the New York Times, December 24, 2013, titled, “When a politician’s child goes astray”, the writer, Marc Santora, says that while “politicians strive to control the message, their teenagers and young adults are not known for their ability to stay on script”.
Let’s get the point clear. There’s nothing really wrong with a president’s adult children becoming trusted members of their father’s inner circle. In America, for instance, we have seen President Donald Trump’s adult children, Ivanka in particular, who, during Trump’s first term , served as a surrogate and Advisor. Same with Alice, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. As far as concerned Nigerian public can attest, Seyi has been carrying a briefcase of controversies all along that is not helping his father’s cause.
Recall that last year, Seyi came under fire following allegations by the President of the National Association of Nigerian Students(NANS) comrade Atiku Abubakar Isah. Isah had claimed that he was invited to Lagos by Seyi, and was offered a bribe of N100million to support the President’s reelection in 2027.
He also alleged that he rejected the offer because, the “president has not done well to warrant my support”. As a result, Isah alleged he was abducted and severely beaten by thugs allegedly hired by Seyi and forced to endorse a preferred candidate under duress. Seyi however denied all the allegations. He also dismissed claims that he led thugs to disrupt the venue of the hotel where Isah was reportedly attacked. In his book titled, “All the Presidents’ children: Triumph and Tragedy”, Doug Wead, a former adviser to President George H. Bush, noted that many children of presidents have knowingly and unknowingly become subjects of scandals that have raised trouble for their fathers. Those close to Seyi say he is a show off, a histrionic personality, though a good guy, very dependable in executing important assignments.
Taken as a whole, nobody is saying President Tinubu should disown his son, Seyi, as John Adams(2nd U.S. President) did to his second son, Charles who struggled with alcoholism, cheated on his wife and neglected his two children. President Adams was so exasperated by his son’s idiocy that he wrote to his wife, “my children give me more pain than my enemies”. I believe Seyi is being tolerated because of the role he might play in his father’s re-election bid in 2027. He could make a nobody, somebody. That’s why many people are flocking around him like bees to honey.
To be fair, Tinubu’s children are not alone in walking through the informal channels of power, cashing in on their father’s position. They don’t bother about conflict of interest. In the 1990s, Neil Bush, the oil man son of President H.W. Bush, was accused of violating conflict of interest regulations by serving on the Board of Silverado Banking Savings and Loans Association in Denver, Colorado, which went bankrupt in 1998 and received a billion-dollar bail-out from taxpayers. The scandal blew up during his father’s presidency in 1990, when a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lawsuit claimed “gross negligence”, and blamed Neil Bush and several other directors of not stopping the institution’s questionable loans practices. A $49 million settlement was agreed in 1991. The headlines not only embarrassed his father who had earlier described his son as a “perfect child”, but also the Republican Party.
But not so with Seyi. As a Board member of Chagoury, owners of Hi-tech construction company that got N1.067trn($1.2bn) as initial payment contract for the Lagos/Calabar Coastal Highway, ostensibly through the influence of Seyi, the administration saw no conflict of interest in the deal. It says as a businessman, Seyi did nothing wrong. This is what Neal Bush told TIME magazine in an interview published on July 23, 1990 for using the office of his father to feather his own nests. “I worried about the impact on my Dad and my role in this thing. I would be naive to sit here and deny that my father’s name didn’t have something to do with it, but I wanted to make it very, very clear I was not asked. I made it clear before joining the board of Silverado that I never would intervene in the regulatory process”. But he did.
But he did. Like Seyi, many presidents’ children have gotten into this kind of mess just because their Dads were in the commanding heights of power. The same thing happened during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, when his son, Jimmy, made millions of dollars in insurance business by allegedly “twisting” the accounts of the company away from other agents, using “political leverage” to ensure that his accounts, in the words of TIME magazine, “flowered like the lilies of paradise”. Nigerians know that “heavens would not fall”, (to paraphrase Nyesom Wike), if Seyi Tinubu makes Nigeria part of his family estate. It has become the ‘new normal’ in Nigerian politics under the present administration. And nothing will happen.
