Opinion
By Steve Osuji
AN Abiding Calamity Looms: The game is bound to be up any time soon. The cover-ups, the “President Tinubu has said” and the looting bazaar will all come to a head soon.
As President Bola Tinubu’s health deteriorates by the day and he barely manages to be able to hold a pen, crises continue to brew in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Nigeria’s seat of power.
The president’s long-standing health issues which reportedly border on continuing age-related physical disambulation and cognitive dissonance have continued to impinge on his overall capacity to lead Nigeria and direct her day-to-day affairs adequately.
Not even the frequent shuttle to Paris, France (and the UAE?) for treatments seems to help much these days.
Presidency watchers indeed express fears that the increasing analgesic dosages required to keep the old body agile and active may be taking a toll on the president’s health.
The result is that President Tinubu is suspected to be on all sorts of medical props apart from heavy medications in order to keep up appearances as president.
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES
Observers and international communities have been on edge about Nigeria’s unstable presidency and the attendant crippling inertia in the polity.
It is common knowledge that President Tinubu cannot make an unscripted speech of nary ten minutes. Analysts say that would be akin to complete and total self annihilation.
This explains why Presidential interviews have become anathema in the Tinubu presidency.
During the 2023 electioneering, his team avoided interviews and debates like a plague knowing that these would spell doom for his aspiration.
The only place Tinubu spoke extempore was at Chatham House, but even that, he had to quickly rid himself of the mike before he harmed himself with it. Recalled that several times, he called on aides to speak on his behalf.
Monthly or quarterly PRESIDENTIAL CHATS had become a culture of the Nigerian presidency right from the time of ‘President’ Ibrahim Babangida through Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan and even Buhari up to a point.
But Tinubu would not dare host a national, live Presidential Chat. It would be akin to him committing harakiri.
This column wagers that the day Tinubu speaks to Nigerians live on a Presidential Chat, his tenure would probably end.
MEETING WITH CBCN AS FURTHER EYE OPENER
President Tinubu’s daily public activities have always been carefully managed and choreographed by his handlers media team.
Every bit of information is recorded, carefully edited before being released to the public. Nothing is left to chance. Most times, his spokespersons only second-guess his expected reactions and speak on his behalf. They hardly see him, according to presidency watchers.
However, the meeting with the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) must have caught the presidency off guard. Apparently, they got overconfident, allowing the meeting to be streamed live believing the President was in a sunny state among friendly visitors.
But it turned out to be a billowing catastrophe.
Which incumbent president in the world would say in public that “all is fair in politics,” just six months to a general election in which he’s a participant?
Does fair include knocking down your main challengers or putting a gun to the umpire’s head? Only a loony leader would say this to the hearing of the world in 2026!
Again, Tinubu told the visiting Synod of Bishops, probably the most learned group of heads in the land today that, “There was hunger even before he was born.”
This was of course in response to their homily that the mass of the people are roiling in unprecedented hunger under his watch. This was a first hand report and that he needed to act quickly to ameliorate the acute suffering of the people.
But our president answered like an oddball – an eccentric in a snooker room holding his cue stick at a jaunty angle.
News of millions of hungry citizens is all part of the game. The show must go on; in any case, we have a re-election to win in six months!
And the president, apparently provoked by the visiting bishops, charged at them: (Not in his words): What really do you guys do anyways? You’re supposed to be feeding your people too. See how portly and well-fed you guys are looking. If you feed your congregation every Sunday and the Muslims feed theirs every Friday, the population wouldn’t be so hungry! The president must have surmised, now irked by visitors.
It cannot be ascertained if the flippant, skull cap (zucchetto) worn by bishops dropped from any of the visitors’ head upon hearing this admonishment by the President of their country.
WHAT THE WHAT THE PALM WINE TAPPER SAW
But they certainly had heard enough! They must have left in a huff without showing it. As they left, they would be thinking or even saying to themselves that this president has obviously lost his marbles. They were so troubled that they needed to let Nigerians have an inkling of what they experienced in the Villa.
Even at that, as Igbo say, Diochi the tapper never reveals everything he sees from his vantage position of the palm tree, lest the community would implode. The men of God obviously wouldn’t relate all they observed during their visit.
But it wasn’t by coincidence that the leader of the team, John Cardinal Onaiyekan chose to provide further perspectives of the visit on a TV news show so Nigerians would have a feel of what they saw and experienced as they visited with President Tinubu.
The CBCN had probably visited every leader since Gen. Sani Abacha. They would usually issue a communiqué to shed more light and correctly put their position on record. But this time, conditions both within and without Aso Rock are more alarming than critical, it would appear.
BLISSFUL IGNORANCE OR MENTAL INCAPACITY
Many Nigerians are torn between the fact of President Tinubu’s incapacity and whether he is bereft of the basic knowledge of economics.
Perhaps he is afflicted by both – half cognitive dissonance, half stupidity.
From the first day, at the inauguration podium where he reportedly went off script and announced the casting off of so-called fuel subsidy, it was obvious that he was both untutored and dumb.
The so-called fuel subsidy in Nigeria is about 80% roguery from upstream to downstream, through importation and exportation processes. Rid the system of all these points of thievery, fuel prices will align with the prevailing Nigerian workers emoluments and living standards.
But when you unthinkingly yank off the so-called subsidy, fuel price becomes disproportionate and a gapping disequilibrium is created in economy. This explains why everything has fallen apart since the advent of Tinubu.
It’s the same with the economics of the exchange rate float. It’s stupid to float the currency of an economy that lacks a serious manufacturing base, and in which nigh everything is imported.
A government would float her currency in order to pursue an aggressive export drive and earn more forex. For instance, it pays China, to float her Yuan against the Dollar because she exports massively to the US and has her economy refreshed with each dollar inflow.
TINUBU has Nigeria’s economy upside down in the past three years: and he doesn’t even know it.
No matter what they tell you, the GDP has shrunk by about 50% of what his predecessor left : He doesn’t know.
Over 60 million Nigerians have been railroaded into poverty in three years: he doesn’t understand.
He has stacked up more debts in three years than all the previous governments from 1999: he couldn’t care.
Under his watch, debt repayment cost is higher than projected revenue: zilch!
And this: In some remote place called Woro, in Kaiama LGA of Kwara State, an indeterminate number of Nigerians (no fewer than 150) are being held in a bush near the Kainji Dam since February this year.
Recall that Kainji Dam is Nigeria’s number one hydro power plant. How come this area is an unmanned territory? The reason has to be that the country is bereft of leadership.
This president is a masque, he’s not exactly here with us.
THE REMI TINUBU SHOW
The engine of state must continue to grind. A make-believe presidency has been running in Nigeria for quite a while.
It started during Buhari’s era and it has lapsed into the Tinubu age.
The presidency is run by proxy. Today, the First Lady, Remi Tinubu, the Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, the president’s Spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, and to a lesser extent, Seyi Tinubu the first son, plus a few others outside the precincts of the Presidential Villa but who have unrestricted access like Dele Alake.
As the clock winds down, Remi continues to gain more clout and expand her sphere of influence in the Villa.
In situations of total eclipse of the president when no officials can gain access to him, it is Remi who passes second-hand instructions to the CoS and Onanuga.
In the Nigerian power structure, the Vice President is of course an outcast sequestered in the out house. He dares not approach the villa unless expressly invited. So the First Lady is the de facto vice president in the low moments of the president.
And she has grown in power and authority. For instance, she has been on a binge of endless fundraising which according to a source, has nudged up to about N100billion.
Though the fund is purported to be for charity activities, what is actually going on is serious abuse of office and extortion.
Dangote alone has pledged N20 billion to Remi’s nebulous initiative.
NNPC Limited is forking out N10 billion, and the Federal Government Social Action Fund is doling out N17 billion.
This is grand larceny, plain and simple. This is a president’s wife using the coat of arms to extort the nation.
While the president is weak and nearly incapacitated, there is nobody to exert control on her or her activities. This is why she would commit and get away with atrocities like these.
If Remi could extract money from the treasury and every contractor in the land, she can do the same with foreign entities too.
Just last Friday, a photograph of her appeared in a national newspaper receiving the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Yousef Mohammed Al-Balawi. Not even the Minister of Foreign Affairs could receive a foreign envoy in the Villa while the President is alive and present in the state.
She has been the chief endorser of the APC governorship candidates of the south west, starting from Lagos.
REMI’s RECRUDESCENCE
We have passed this road several times in the recent past. We saw Mrs Maryam Babangida get uppity and attempted to wield state powers as his husband sought to perpetuate himself in office.
Maryam Abacha in a copycat mode, tried to outdo her fallen namesake. She only managed to out-steal Mrs Babangida. That’s what we remember of her today.
Other strong first ladies after the military era were Dame Patience Jonathan, Hajia Turai Yar’Adua, Hajia Aisha Buhari and now Remi.
None of them left any remarkable legacies in all their pretense to aid women and the girl child. They simply helped themselves to untold wealth by abusing their status and exalted positions as wives of presidents.
But Remi today, seems to be in a class by herself finessing the system (or so she thinks) and breaching Nigeria’s treasury like a malevolent worm.
Nigeria has never been blessed with quality first ladies. Like the rest of them she had what my Uni IFE friends of yore called ‘Asso- so’ education. And just like her husband, her early education seemed checkered.
Remi is therefore, not quite an enlightened mind. Barely literate she is as pedestrian as a typical Iyaloja.
In her quest to project influence and power, she has been acquiring some phoney chieftaincy titles, decked in garish costumes that portray her as half Yourba goddess and half Jezebel. Always a moving statue of cosmetics, some of her ex staff have spoken of her volcanic temperament. She was wont to throw huge tantrums and lashed out at offending staffers in the days she was merely wife of governor. Emotional and social IQs, zero.
Philosophy, policy and high minded intellectual rigours are certainly not her forte. She’s no Eleanor Roosevelt by any long chance: the inimitable American First Lady who helped her wheelchair bound president-husband, FDR to greatness. Eleanor herself built a lasting legacy that left a huge imprint in the UN.
Remi on the other hand, seems like one kissed by Mammon. She seems perpetually engrossed in mortal combat with lucre. Craving and craving for even more. Not seeming to have enough.
Had she been imbued with a bit of intellectual endowment, she would rally a discrete team of sound minds to form a bulwark around her flailing husband.
Why is there no economic team or a notable think-tank around the president?
For the umpteenth time, this column insists that this is the punniest presidency in Nigeria’s history: peopled by too many Tinubu ball boys who can’t look him in the face, how much more discuss policy.
Better still, was she made in the mold of a circumspect matriarch, she would see to it that her husband endorsed a successor so she may remove him from the hurly-burly of politics in which they had been trapped perpetually for nearly four decades.
She would have feigned the Mandela example. Perhaps, history would have been kinder to Tinubu. We too would have forgiven him and forgotten the epic misadventure that was his presidency.
She would have packed her husband away to a faraway island where they would seek to find some peace and quiet for the rest of their lives. It is said on the streets of Lagos that what God has not given the Tinubu’s doesn’t exist in heaven.
To therefore keep hanging in there and clinging to power borders on mental health issues, some have said.
LAST LINE: AUGUST 15TH OSUN ELECTION, A TEST-RUN FOR 2027
Next Saturday, the people of Osun State will vote to choose a governor.
There are three frontrunners:
The incumbent, Gov. Ademola Adeleke, the ADC candidate, Najim Salam and APC man, Bola Oyebamiji.
It promises to be a battle royale in many respects.
Many analysts see a run off election.
Why?
The incumbent is of the Accord Party (formerly PDP, until N. Wike damaged it).
Apart from incumbency, a lot is going for him: he is said to have put up some modicum of good performance in spite of the federal government seizing the state’s LGA funds. Plus a relentless harassment of Osun state officials by the police and the EFCC.
The Adeleke family also has a strong political pedigree in Osun. Lastly, Gov Adeleke is loved for his huge human touch.
But APC which lost Osun to PDP in the first instance is bent on recovering it.
It’s going to be federal might versus the state.
ADC as the third force is equally formidable. It is backed by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, former two-time governor and strong man of Osun politics.
The street-think is that if INEC does it’s job right, the incumbent should return to his seat.
A.I
Aug. 7, 2026
Tags: INEC Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola Remi Tinubu Steve Osuji