Opinion

A Confused President, Confusing People

Published

1 week ago

June 28, 2026

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s electricity promise has come under fresh examination as his administration grapples with persistent power challenges more than three years into his tenure

THERE are some things obvious about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that are so weird that they are unbelievable. They are like spells cast on Nigerians – they believe Tinubu with all the discrepancies that have become his badges of honour.

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What can we say about Tinubu that would be certain and when tested can be confirmed as true, reliable, useful for reaching a decision on Tinubu. We have come to know nothing about the man we call President.

It is. sometimes uncertain if Tinubu knows anything about himself. Is the much-vilified Tinubu the same as the one who is President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? The one who speaks for Nigerians, though there is a lot of quietness around him?

Each week is spent in denying promises that Tinubu made on the discovery that he cannot fulfilled those promises in a 10-year tenure. He must deny the promises.

An example is electricity which Tinubu explicitly promised. He anchored his re-election on it. Tinubu asked his audience at a meeting in Lagos, in December 2022, not to re-elect him if he failed to provide electricity.

Electricity supply deteriorated to a point that the immediate past Minister of Power was openly called “Minister of Darkness”.

He is also famously remembered for accusing Nigerians of wasting electricity by not turning off our air-conditioners and refrigerators.

Bayo Onanuga, presidential media adviser, who is likely to be seen these days praising state governments for using the generous federal allocations from Tinubu in developing the States, is very generous in recounting how Tinubu is developing Nigeria. He is quickly running out of ideas.

He has never been happier than in the past week when he believed he had navigated his sinking skills out of the electricity quagmire.

“Tinubu did not promise anyone 24 hours electricity,” Onanuga announced on television.

Triumphant, Onanuga finished off by paraphrasing Tinubu’s quote which all of them in the presidency had forgotten until the public nudged them into a frightening realisation that electricity was a major area of woeful failure.

From December 2022 when Tinubu made the promise till June 2026 it was not an issue. Tinubu thought his poverty alignment programmes would have hammered the people to the point that electricity would be of little importance in their lives.

Did Tinubu say, “If I don’t give you constant electricity for four years, when I come back for a second term, don’t vote for me.”? He did. The shock on the faces those listening to him showed that they never believed him.

At the time he made this promise, Tinubu was so desperate that he could have promised anything. He is back to that desperate mode.

He is throwing anything into a 2027 election that is slipping out of his control.

No conditions were attached to Tinubu providing “constant electricity”. If “constant electricity” did mean “24 hours of electricity” what does it mean?

How many How many hours of electricity are we getting daily?

All Onanuga could do was to ramble about meters, new electricity law, poor infrastructure and challenges of gas supply.

Obviously, the master strategist Tinubu knew nothing about the issues of the electricity sector. He found out and did something that shocked Nigerians.

Tinubu detached the presidential villa from the national power system and built a power system for himself – by all means possible. Several government establishments are following the example, including the Ministry of Power.

When the national grid collapses, Tinubu is no longer affected. When we call his attention to rising costs of living, killing costs of generating our own electricity with fuel and diesel purchased at outrageous costs, they blame the closure of the Strait of Hormuz or manufacture a more compounding excuse.

An Onanuga who lives on a budget that makes the cost of living irrelevant, dismisses our pains, claiming that we were bellyaching.

Nigeria was liveable, according to a Kenyan who possibly lives in the Rift Valley.

With the millions who support the President, there wasn’t one Nigerian from who Onanuga could extract a testimony of the bounteous goodness of Tinubu’s administration.

When Onanuga “opened his phone” on Arose TV, the fuller Tinubu quote stared at him. “By all means necessary, you must have electricity and you will not pay for estimated bill again.

A promise made, is a promise kept. If I don’t provide you with 24 hours electricity, and I come for second term, don’t vote for me”.

Onanuga panicked.

He decided to mutilate the quote so that he could delve into poor electricity infrastructure while Tinubu never mentioned any reason why he would not provide electricity.

Why was Onanuga labouring to deceive himself? Nigerians know what Tinubu told them. Tinubu must be ashamed of Onanuga about now.

There is a difference between failure and lying about a promise. For Onanuga, they mean the same thing.

Tinubu’s desperation is a child’s play compared to 2023. Mrs Remi Tinubu is on also centre stage insulting Nigerians for not being more industrious by engaging in street trading – prohibited in most States – which must have been how she made the billions she boasts the family has.

She wants Nigerians to engage in roasting corns, frying kuliku and survive on other menial jobs for which she claimed to have made billions of Naira available.

How does she get the billions and how does she allocate it? The money is hers. It’s hers to spend as she wills.

One thing she should desist from is insulting Nigerians. We know what to do under a President who knows what to do.

Are those she dashes jeeps being rewarded for their enterprise in roasting corn?

When Nigerians are lifting themselves up from the oppressions of the Tinubus we are blamed for searching for our survival when we have a President who cannot protect us, cannot provide for us, and largely behaves as if we are an inconvenience to him.

Tinubu, you can keep your electricity, by all means possible. It seems that 2027 is coming too fast. Onanuga will need more time to tell us about Tinubu – the Tinubu he does not even know.

Finally…
MAJOR-GENERAL Rabe Abubakar died in captivity with his kidnappers still free, with crocodile tears that the government is shading over the death.

There is a lot of deceit in the management of deaths, whether in battle or in “peace” time. If the General was too big to be rescued, what about thousands of “ordinary” people that kidnappers are still holding?

In this group are the elderly, women, children – the vulnerable as they are called? What tears are the government shedding for them? When will they be rescued?

THE deceit continues with the positioning of state police as the elixir to insecurity in Nigeria. If state police fail, as it could with the rush in implementing it, Tinubu’s docility and mismanagement of security can be explained as an indication of the enormity of the problem.

No matter how he fails, no matter how badly he fares, he must be seemed as infallible.

KILLINGS continue in Borno, Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara, where the state governments spend a lot of resources making excuses for the killers.

It is no longer surprising that governments offer no hope that the killers would be apprehended and punished for killing Nigerians, and increasingly, in the most brutal manners.

HUNGER is driving thousands of Nigerians to engage in propagating the sugar-coated achievements of the Tinubu administration.

Here is a government that has achieved so much that its latest research is on why hunger persists in the land.

MY sympathies go to all families that lost members in the past week to bandits, particularly the family of All Progressives Congress, APC, in Koko Besse Local Government Area of Kebbi State, Alhaji Muhammadu Besse, who was abducted with his friend, Muhammed Maibarga, said to have died weeks earlier in the bush.

Also read: Abba Yusuf Backs Tinubu, Seeks Kano Support for 2027

THE Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, was on Friday ruled “unregistered party” by the same court that ordered INEC to register it. All hands should be on deck to see our democracy survive as we look up to the courts again.

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Opinion

Seven prime ministers in a decade: What Nigeria can learn from Britain’s chaos

Published

6 days ago

July 2, 2026

Mariam Balogun

By Dr Toju Ogbe,

The resignation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, less than two years after leading the Labour Party to a landslide electoral victory, was dramatic, yet reflected a pattern we have become familiar with in recent British politics.

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Starmer now joins a procession of fallen prime ministers stretching back to 2016 – from David Cameron to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak.

None of these prime ministers was ousted through military intervention, popular insurrection, or a court order. Rather, each was ultimately brought down by the same political system that elevated them to electoral glory.

To the casual observer, the rapid turnover of British Prime Ministers in the last decade may appear chaotic, or even a symptom of political instability. Some argue that the British electorate has become ungovernable.

However, beneath the apparent chaos at Westminster lies an uncomfortable truth that African democracies would do well to examine, particularly Nigerians who wonder why our democracy has delivered so little despite almost three decades of uninterrupted civilian rule.

The turbulence of British politics over the last decade, presents an important lesson on democratic accountability beyond successful elections.

Once the prime minister is deemed a liability by their own political party, the mechanics of accountability are activated. The daggers are quietly drawn and the ruthless pressure to resign begins.

Every poll and survey on public opinion is closely monitored, local election results are taken as a referendum on leadership. Cabinet resignations begin to gain momentum and backbenchers get restless.

Once the news media smells an internal uprising, they amplify scrutiny of the prime minister, subjecting every move – speech, public appearance, political misstep etc to relentless examination.

Pressure gradually mounts until the prospect of bitter internal leadership challenge becomes impossible to resist. The Prime Minister falls.

For every British Prime Minister, winning an election is merely the beginning of examination, not the end. Political survival lasts only for as long as the prime minister maintains the confidence of his party and the parliament.

This is the muscle of British democratic accountability; a political culture that prioritises institutional survival over individual ambition. Starmer recognised this reality in his resignation speech:

“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”

That closing sentence alone is a masterclass in British institutional democracy. The party spoke. The leader listened. The correction comes from within.

Nigeria presents a strikingly different political logic.

Nigeria on the other hand, presents an interesting contrast with a different political logic and culture.

The notion that a governing party would overtly interrogate the performance of its own leader and engineer a transition to someone better equipped to maintain public confidence, is in most cases politically unthinkable in Nigeria.

Political parties in Nigeria do not coalesce around ideological principles; rather, they operate more as electoral instruments organised around powerful individuals.

Internal dissent is often dealt with as betrayals rather than as part of healthy democratic engagement. Godfatherism and transactional loyalties shape political succession and leadership retention.

Once elected in Nigeria, there is an inherent assumption that a governor or president has a fixed two-term lease on power.

While 10 Downing Street is preparing to welcome its seventh Prime Minister in a decade, Nigeria, in contrast, has had only two democratically elected presidents during the same period – one of whom is still serving.

Social and economic conditions may deteriorate. Insecurity may worsen. Campaign promises may be ignored.

Public frustrations may become unbearable. Yet, incumbent governors and presidents often remain insulated from meaningful internal scrutiny and are even routinely anointed as ‘consensus’ candidate for second terms provided loyalties to godfathers, rather than the electorates are maintained.

The consequence is that loyalty, instead of performance is often rewarded at the expense of accountability.

This is not an argument for a revolving door at Aso Rock, as frequent leadership changes, by themselves, do not guarantee good governance.

Rather it is a case for making accountability an integral aspect of party politics in Nigeria.

Although the Nigerian presidential system provides for a fixed four-year term regardless of party confidence, political parties should however, be more than instruments for election campaigns, activated to simply retain or take over power every four years.

Electoral victory, should not be the ultimate goal, but the starting point of public service where democratic legitimacy must be continuously earned.

Equally important, political parties must develop the institutional maturity to honestly evaluate their own leaders. They must prioritise public interest and institutional credibility over loyalty to ‘Godfathers’.

The ultimate lesson from Westminster’s revolving door is clear: the true strength of a democratic system, lies not in the ability to produce leaders, but the capacity to effectively replace them, when they no longer command confidence.

Protecting failing leaders from accountability weakens democracy and political parties must ensure that no leader is more powerful than the institution.

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As political parties gear up for the 2027 general elections, the political class must decide what matters more: we can continue to reward blind loyalty and endure predictable decline, or discover the courage to demand accountability from those who seek to lead us.