TD Somebody please explain this to me.Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man whose identity, educational history, financial dealings, political associations and personal fortune have been shrouded in controversy for thirty years, is being discussed in Nigeria as though a second presidential term is a formality.
On what basis?
His achievements? His popularity? His economic miracle? Or simply the fact that he controls the machinery of the state and the opposition is too bloody useless to organise itself?
Under this administration millions of Nigerians have been pushed deeper into misery. Food has become a luxury. The naira has been battered.
Insecurity remains a national disgrace. Ordinary families are being squeezed until there is nothing left to squeeze.
And we are expected to sit quietly while commentators tell us the same man is positioned for another four years.
I find it revolting. Not even in the bad old days of military rule did I imagine we would reach a point where so many serious questions about the occupant of the highest office in the land could be waved away as irrelevant.
THE QUESTIONS THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY
Tinubu’s American financial history includes the documented 1993 civil forfeiture proceedings. His educational records have been the subject of bitter and unresolved controversy. His political and business relationships have repeatedly raised questions of conflict of interest and the concentration of wealth and influence in very few hands.
I am aware of the allegations that he was involved in drug trafficking and enjoyed the protection of American intelligence interests. Those allegations have not been established as criminal findings against him. But the Nigerian public is entitled to examine the evidence and to demand answers about his documented past. The presidency is not a shield against legitimate scrutiny.
Instead, his supporters behave as though questioning the president is an act of treason.
Then there is the family.
While Nigerians are lectured about sacrifice, patience and reform, the political elite continue to parade extraordinary wealth. Reports of a London mansion associated with Seyi Tinubu, said to have cost in the region of eleven million dollars, raise the most obvious question in the world: where did the money come from?
If everything is legitimate, transparency is easy. Yet in modern Nigeria, asking about the wealth of a politically connected family is apparently more offensive than the ostentatious display of that wealth itself.
THE TRIBAL APOLOGISTS
Whenever a powerful politician is challenged, the same chorus appears.
He is our brother. It is our turn. He is one of us.
To hell with that mentality.
Since when did a shared language or ethnic background become a licence to excuse political misconduct? Since when did the interests of one family outrank the welfare of over 200 million Nigerians?
A hungry Yoruba child is no less hungry because the president is Yoruba. An unemployed Hausa graduate is no better off because a northern politician promises him power. An Igbo trader struggling to keep his shop open gains nothing from ethnic slogans.
Poverty does not respect tribal boundaries. Neither does insecurity.
Yet Nigerians keep fighting one another on behalf of politicians who have far more in common with each other than with the people defending them. The elite eat together, do business together, marry into one another’s families and protect one another’s privileges. The poor fight over which tribe gets the next turn to preside over their suffering.
It is political madness.
THE MANUFACTURED PRESIDENT
I am equally tired of the stage-managed presidency. Every public appearance produces a fresh argument about what the president actually said, whether the speech was edited, whether artificial intelligence was involved, whether we are watching the man or a production.
I have no interest in rumours about his health or unsupported claims about doctored videos. My question is more basic.
Why can Nigerians not demand regular, substantial, unscripted explanations from their president about the economy, security, corruption and the direction of the country? A president answers to the people. He does not hide behind a procession of spokesmen, publicity advisers and praise singers.
WHAT OPPOSITION?
But the most appalling feature of the present situation is the opposition. Where is it? What is it doing?
Where is the discipline, the organisation, the common purpose, the willingness to put Nigeria before personal ambition?
Instead we have a collection of presidential hopefuls, recycled officeholders and professional opportunists, each convinced that his own ambition matters more than the future of the republic.
Everybody wants to be president. Nobody wants to compromise. Nobody will make the sacrifices required to build a serious national alternative.
And while they quarrel over who gets the ticket, who becomes vice president and who controls which structure, the ruling party is handed the one thing it needs most: a divided opponent.
The opposition should be confronting this government every single day with detailed alternative policies, credible leadership and relentless scrutiny. Instead its energy is consumed by rivalries, defections, grievances and the endless recycling of men who have already had their chance.
I have said it repeatedly: replacing one ageing establishment with another is not progress. Nigeria does not need another cabal, another court of political parasites, another set of men who regard the treasury as an inheritance waiting to be divided. It needs a change of political culture.
AN ELECTION IS NOT A CORONATION
And yet we are told Tinubu is on course for another term.
I reject the idea that any incumbent’s victory is inevitable. An election that has not taken place cannot be treated as a coronation. Incumbency, money, governors, structures and influence over institutions are enormous advantages. They are not certainty.
I STILL PREDICT THAT BOLA AHMED TINUBU WILL NOT GET A SECOND TERM
That is my personal political judgment. I believe events will change the trajectory of Nigerian politics before 2027. What those events will be, I cannot tell you. I claim no inside information. I am not predicting a military intervention, and I have no wish to see Nigeria return to dictatorship.
But politics is never as predictable as those who benefit from the present arrangement would have us believe. Economic pressure changes calculations. Alliances collapse. New forces emerge. Public opinion shifts. Something that looks insignificant today becomes decisive tomorrow.
What troubles me is that any such change may come despite the opposition rather than because of it.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
Nigerians once confronted military dictators with remarkable courage. Journalists went to prison. Activists were murdered. Students marched. Lawyers challenged arbitrary power. Ordinary citizens risked their lives for the return of democracy.
Today too many spend their time defending politicians who would not recognise them if they collapsed from hunger outside the gates of their mansions.
Political loyalty is bought with appointments, contracts and tribal sentiment, and the consequences are everywhere: weakened institutions, poisoned debate, accountability treated as an inconvenience, the national interest sacrificed to personal ambition.
There are still Nigerians who refuse to surrender, journalists, campaigners, lawyers, community leaders and ordinary citizens who demand accountability at real personal risk. But they should not have to carry the burden of an entire nation.
NIGERIA DOES NOT BELONG TO TINUBU
Nigeria is not the private property of Bola Tinubu. It is not the inheritance of the Tinubu family. It is not a franchise belonging to the APC, and it is not a prize to be passed around among a handful of godfathers. It belongs to the Nigerian people.
The presidency is a public trust, not a throne. The treasury is not a family bank account. And citizenship should mean more than defending whichever politician shares your surname, language or place of birth.
Corruption did not begin with Tinubu and incompetence did not arrive with the APC. But the failures of previous governments are no excuse for the failures of this one.
I refuse to accept that the degradation we are witnessing is the best Nigeria can produce, or that our children must inherit a country where accountability is optional for the powerful and suffering compulsory for the poor.
My prediction stands. Tinubu will not serve a second term. Whether events prove me right or wrong, I will not pretend that Nigeria’s present condition is acceptable.
The country deserves answers, not propaganda. Accountability, not ethnic excuses. Leadership, not a family enterprise. And an opposition with the courage and discipline to offer something better than the same familiar faces fighting over the same chair.
The tragedy of Nigeria is not simply that its leaders have so often failed it. The greater tragedy is how many people have learned to defend that failure, excuse it, celebrate it and call it loyalty.
That is the national sickness. Until we confront it, changing the occupant of Aso Rock will never be enough.
Kio Amachree
Letters from Stockholm
Stockholm, Sweden
