At the recent inauguration of his party’s Presidential Campaign Council for his re-election, Bola Tinubu announced that he would limit his campaign appearances. He told his audience, “You’ve warned me not to let the rigor of the campaign distract me from governance; I hear you. I am in full agreement with your decision.’ We have no way to confirm or deny whether the conversation truly happened, but it is hard to imagine that his APC crowd is so dense that they think governance is separable from campaigning simply because their president is incumbent. It is even harder to imagine that Tinubu himself was uncritical of this stance and failed to point out that facing voters regularly is part of his duty of accountability as a public office holder. The story is likely fabricated by Tinubu to give the impression that he listens to his constituents. Tinubu then sealed his announcement with a promise to still make time to speak directly with Nigerians, even as he leads the campaign in the states and local government areas. Imagine a president running for re-election promising to “make time” to address his own country people. Is he so arrogant that he thinks making time to address the people whose mandate he is expected to seek is some kind of generosity?
Much has been said about Tinubu lacking the confidence in his achievements to face the electorate, and there is enough evidence to support that claim. His tenure has been so hard on Nigerians that he himself is not inspired to face the people he supposedly leads and defend his own record. The hardship Nigeria has witnessed under Tinubu’s regime is almost unprecedented. His inefficient administration has exacerbated the perennial problems of economic hardship and insecurity. It is ironic that he compared restoring fuel subsidies to the exodus of the Biblical Israelites, saying, “You cannot ask Moses to go back to Egypt.” Perhaps someone needs to tell him that if we go by his analogy, Nigerians are the enslaved Israelites, his entire cabinet is the taskmasters inflicting harsh conditions on the people, and Tinubu himself is the Pharaoh sitting on the destiny of the children of God. We all know how that story ended!
His defenders like to remind us that the country he took over in 2023 was severely distressed, but they also make it sound like it was unique to him. No president since 1999 has taken office without claiming they were taking over a mismanaged country and that they would start from scratch. Their inauguration addresses typically claim they would be coming to redress the suffering of Nigerians, only to leave us worse off. For now, there seems to be no reprieve on the horizon, and they have been careful to limit themselves to making vague promises while also preaching the virtues of suffering and endurance. Maybe it is high time they stopped living in denial and admitted the man just is not the one. His preparation for leadership has focused on the political side of things (buying loyalists and all that), not on mastering the issues that can translate into better lives for Nigerians.
It should not surprise anyone that Tinubu will limit his campaign appearances and “find time” to address Nigerians. He has been playing this game for a while. During the 2023 electioneering, he did not show up for any debate. His appearance at Chatham House in London in December 2022 should have been an opportunity for him to shine, but there is no polishing of his rusted iron. He delegated several audience questions to members of his campaign team. People like then-Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai (who has been practically forgotten in jail), Wale Edun (former Lagos State Commissioner for Finance who exited the Tinubu government under inglorious circumstances), and so on, were asked to respond on his behalf.
They tried to pass off this tactic as a display of his leadership abilities to source worthwhile hands and recruit them into his government, but the truth is that the man’s head is as empty as his heart. He obviously speaks little to minimize the chances of catching him on his gaffes and slips. The fewer chances to scrutinize his abilities, the better for him.
That is why, since 2023, besides meeting with his APC lackeys, you only see Tinubu on national occasions like Independence Day, religious holidays, and some special occasions when he appears in a pre-recorded broadcast and reads a speech into the camera. He shows up for a media chat once a year, and even that has been pre-rigged to reduce his chances of slipping up and revealing his weakness. They surround him with handpicked journalists who are guaranteed to be respectful (read: pliant), each trying to get their questions asked and never really taking him up on any issue in depth. His responses are shallow and incoherent, and they hardly ever probe deeper, partly because they are intimidated and partly because the interview format doesn’t favor profundity. If he truly wants to engage Nigerians through the media, he will do a one-on-one interview with journalists, but he dares not. He risks exposing the depth of his vacuity like that. His predecessor, the late Muhammadu Buhari, was similarly evasive, but he at least had several one-on-one interviews with journalists. Looking at Tinubu’s antecedents, you see a consistent pattern of a man disguising his flaws by running from any environment where he can face scrutiny. That suggests he lacks confidence in his abilities or his potential for growth.
The other part is that the man is also tired and does not look like he can withstand the rigors of campaigning across the 36 states. He is old, and probably cannot trust his own mind not to betray him when he has to speak extempore to a live audience without the support he gets at indoor events where the environment has been controlled in his favor. Ordinarily, his speeches do not inspire enthusiasm, but party members readily applaud his incoherent speeches partly because they have been trained to do so, and because they are hardly attentive to his words anyway. The man is clearly weighed down by old age. We cannot fault him for his biological destiny, but it’s also not out of place to comment on his lack of energy, since he insists on defying nature’s gravity and still running for president. He deceives nobody when he says he needs to focus on governance. The grueling demands of walking the campaign trail will tax a young, energetic body, how much more an old man?
On this score, Tinubu is no different from other old and enfeebled African leaders like him who have had to do the campaign thing. The most notorious in this regard is Paul Biya of Cameroon. The man practically governs from Switzerland, where he lives in a luxury resort and only visits his country occasionally. During his re-election campaign last year, it was clear this 92-year-old wasn’t going to show up to meet anyone. In a scene so absurd that it could only have come out of nowhere else but Africa, Biya’s supporters made up for his absence by using a cardboard cutout of his image as a stand-in while they campaigned for him. Biya made his first campaign stop on a Tuesday to rally voters for an election set for Saturday. Imagine that level of confidence and arrogance. The funniest part is that he still defeated his opponent. Yes, that is Africa for you. Nothing on this continent is ever straight, which is why we have a cluster of deadwoods, from Biya to Tinubu to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), holding on to power at all costs.