Tinubu and the arrogance of power: Contestation for power at whatever level is an intense undertaking. It is more so where the winners acquire the power to make authoritative allocation of the collective values of the people. But even at that, politics in a democracy is played within known legal boundaries, with laws that regulate the conduct of both the gladiators and political parties. Besides, for election results to have legitimacy, the processes must be fair and transparent. This presupposes a level playing field for everyone. The legal obligations and imperatives of fairness place ethical burden on those superintending over elections. That is Tinubu’s burden, which, characteristically, he is not enthusiastic shouldering. Yet, anything other than that corrupts the process and is tantamount to abuse of power. When politics becomes a game where everything is fair, public trust is destroyed, democracy itself is undermined and ethical standards are wantonly violated.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Listening to President Bola Tinubu’s response to the plea of Nigerian Catholic Bishops that he should make the yoke of Nigerians lighter, I couldn’t help but remember the Biblical story of King Rehoboam in 2 Chronicles 10:1–15.
After the death of King Solomon, Rehoboam, his son, went to Shechem to be crowned king and the whole assembly of Israel supplicated: “Your father put a heavy yoke on us. But now you must lighten the burden of your father’s service and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.”
Rehoboam asked for three days for consultations. And, indeed, he consulted, first with the elders who had served his father.
“How do you advise me to respond to these people?” he asked. “If you will be a servant to these people and serve them this day, and if you will respond by speaking kind words to them, they will be your servants forever,” they riposted.
The Bible tells us that Rehoboam rejected the elders’ counsel, opting instead for advice from young men who grew up with him. “What message do you advise that we send back to these people?” he asked. Have no pity on them, they admonished him. Tell them: “My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist! Whereas my father burdened you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. Whereas my father scourged you with whips, I will scourge you with scorpions.”
And he did exactly as he was advised. When the people returned after three days, they were stunned by his harsh response. The consequence of his foolish obduracy was dire. The hitherto united kingdom of Israel split into two nations with ten tribes following Jeroboam, leaving the pigheaded Rehoboam with only two tribes.
Last week, the leadership of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria went to Aso Rock, Tinubu’s lair, and spoke truth to power. Like Israelites who pleaded with King Rehoboam to ease their hard labour and obnoxious taxes, they confronted the president with some requests, none of which was self-serving.
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As the 82-year-old Cardinal John Onaiyekan, who was part of the delegation, disclosed in a television interview, the Bishops told Tinubu that the country was bleeding and the people, sinking under the weight of poverty, were pleading that their yoke be made lighter. Above all, they beseeched him to ensure free, fair and credible elections in 2027.
And just like Rehoboam, Tinubu lost it. Again, Cardinal Onaiyekan tells us what happened: “When the nation is bleeding, you can’t expect a polite meeting with the head of state. We needed to let him know. And his reply was that the nation was not bleeding. We told him that the economy is not helping the poor people, he told us that the economy is doing fine. Practically speaking, he told us, quite clearly, that he didn’t agree with us.”
From the video clips of that meeting available in the public space, Tinubu was quite agitated. You could see the ‘how dare you’ expression on the face of a man who is not used to being told the truth.
Tinubu said there was hunger in the country before he was born, which is true. But truer still is the fact that under his watch, poverty has become monstrous. Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of the Bretton Woods institutions that has supported his reforms to the hilt, said poverty in Nigeria reached 63 per cent in 2025, and about 27 million citizens faced food insecurity. Local institutions, some of them government agencies, aver that IMF’s figures are conservative. The number of acute food insecure Nigerians which was about 17 million before Tinubu became president is well over 35 million now.
The same goes for citizens living in extreme poverty. Before Tinubu’s presidency, the number was an estimated 87 million people. Now, it has climbed to about 140 million, making Nigeria home to the largest population of people living in extreme poverty globally. So, while we concede to the president that poverty is a historical reality, the fact is that he has done nothing in the more than 1,155 days of his presidency to mitigate the crisis. Instead, he has presided over the mass pauperisation of Nigerians. Great leaders are those who lift their citizens out of poverty, not those who deepen it because it is a historical reality.
But his rhetoric on politics is the most problematic and dangerous. Tinubu stoutly defended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), stating emphatically that the electoral body is fair to all. Those saying otherwise are wolf criers “afraid of their own shadows,” he said. To be sure, defending INEC is not his remit. He said he was not going to make it easy for his political opponents to sack him from office, declaring rather ominously, “We wrestle each other to the finishing point” because “all is fair in politics.”
In other words, Tinubu is telling Nigerians that he is an unabashed disciple of Niccolò Machiavelli’s “the end justifies the means” school of thought. But it is a lie from the pit of hell to say that all is fair in politics. And the reason is simple: politics in a constitutional democracy is a rules-based game that requires moral propriety.
There is also the issue of the full ramification of the ‘all’ that is fair in politics. For instance, if all the legal gymnastics and political roadblocks fail to stop some candidates from being on the ballot, will physical elimination be the ultimate solution since all is fair in politics? That will be a very dangerous proposition. But it is, nevertheless, a question that needs to be asked, more so when last month, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Peter Obi, said he may not even be alive to contest the 2027 poll.
Nigerians who think that Obi went overboard in his assertion forget that Chief Bola Ige, the sitting Attorney General and Minister of Justice, was brutally murdered on December 23, 2001, after reportedly hinting of his desire to quit government and rebuild the then floundering Alliance for Democracy (AD). Engr. Funsho Williams, Lagos State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant met the same fate at his Ikoyi residence in Lagos on July 27, 2006, shortly before the party’s primaries for the 2007 gubernatorial elections.
Chief Aminasori Alfred Dikibo, PDP National Vice-Chairman (South-South) was killed on February 6, 2004, presumably along the Ogwashi-Uku/Kwale Road in Delta State while travelling to Asaba for a zonal party meeting. Some Nigerians believe that he was killed elsewhere. Chief Marshal Harry, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) National Vice-Chairman (South-South) and key leader in Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential campaign, was murdered on March 5, 2003, at his Abuja residence.
There are many more. Most, if not all these cases remain unsolved. Sadly, each of these assassinations brightened the electoral fortunes of others. That is what happens when all is fair in politics. Last week, Prof. Wole Soyinka urged Tinubu to fulfil his 2023 promise to revisit these unresolved assassination cases. It remains to be seen if his advice will be heeded.
Granted, contestation for power at whatever level is an intense undertaking. It is more so where the winners acquire the power to make authoritative allocation of the collective values of the people. But even at that, politics in a democracy is played within known legal boundaries, with laws that regulate the conduct of both the gladiators and political parties. Besides, for election results to have legitimacy, the processes must be fair and transparent. This presupposes a level playing field for everyone. The legal obligations and imperatives of fairness place ethical burden on those superintending over elections.
That is Tinubu’s burden, which, characteristically, he is not enthusiastic shouldering. Yet, anything other than that corrupts the process and is tantamount to abuse of power. When politics becomes a game where everything is fair, public trust is destroyed, democracy itself is undermined and ethical standards are wantonly violated.
Cardinal Onaiyekan said the president’s disposition worries them. Hear him: “The position of Mr. President came very clearly in that statement that he made – in politics all is fair… If that is what politics is, that everything can be done provided you win election, there is a problem. We are worried about the fact that we see clearly that our government is bent on winning by all means and unfortunately they have a lot of means at their disposal to win and they are deploying all those means in a way that even if we have a free and fair election, the votes of the people may not count.”
Nigerian Bishops are worried that “if we do not rearrange our electoral system to make sure that our elections are free, fair and credible, it can lead to difficulties.” Most Nigerians agree. But Tinubu is not bothered and that is political arrogance writ large.
To be fair, anyone who achieves what he has been able to achieve politically by sheer subterfuge cannot but be haughty and conceited. Here is a man who defiantly proclaimed even before the primary elections in 2023 that it was his turn to be Nigeria’s president – emilokan – and it came to pass. As a candidate, he went to London to tell the world how he intended to achieve that goal: “Political power is not going to be served in a restaurant. It is not served à la carte. It is being determined to do it at all cost, fight for it, grab it, snatch it,” he proclaimed and did exactly that.
In the 38 months of his presidency, he has wielded absolute power in a way that no president before him did, bending the will of an entire country to himself. Today, he is the sole centre of power in Nigeria. The legislature and judiciary, independent arms of government, stand on his mandate. So, if he looks around and in the manner of the absolute monarch, King Louis XIV of France, proclaims: “L’État, c’est moi” – I am the state – he is right. After all, he has conquered Nigeria.
But even with the seeming conquest, there is a line that no human being should cross. Sadly, Tinubu is prepared to cross the line in the Nigerian sand so long as he gets a second term. That is tantamount to playing God, a foolhardy adventure which will neither augur well for him nor the country in the fullness of time even if he gets away with it in the short term.
