Bola Tinubu had almost lost his political goal twice in the past two-and-a-half years. In October 2020, Lagos #EndSARS protestors targeted Tinubu’s investments and properties, including TVC, The Nation, and Lagos Oriental Hotel on Victoria Island.
The attacks were so vicious and damaged Tinubu’s reputation that he seemed unlikely to regain public support, let alone run for president. Despite other circumstances, the #EndSARS-inspired attacks predicted Lagos’ presidential election result. Last year, Tinubu faced a clandestine coalition within his own party that seemed determined to deny him the APC presidential ticket.
Tinubu’s grit and resilience allowed him to overcome all this, including some of the most brutal campaign depictions in recent Nigerian political history. But, persistence and durability do not ensure political success, and in Tinubu’s case, they had to be joined with foresight and strategic thinking that had always meant making “investments” in individuals and communities that made little sense to an observer.
Tinubu’s now-infamous June 2022 “It is my turn” declaration meant that he had paid his dues to people, entities, and various ethnic and sociocultural communities across the country and was ready to cash in. His critics say, “I have done well by you, now it is your turn to do well by me” Mercantilist politics and entitlement are the problems.
Because of this, Tinubu takes office at a moment of deep societal divide and political polarization. Rightly or incorrectly, the majority of the younger generation sees him as the embodiment of the nation’s moral currency’s debasement and a continuation of the disastrous Buhari administration. This argument makes Tinubu equally responsible for the Buhari tragedy and engraves him as an immoral horse-trader.
Tinubu’s hatred is not limited to the young. For the part of the Christian community that feels aggrieved at the perceived disregard for the community’s safety and interests during the Buhari years, Tinubu’s choice of a Muslim running mate was the height of contempt, and the “Not My President” refrain steadily coming out of this constituency is a reflection both of its lingering annoyance at its perceived marginalization and the yet-to-be-proven belief that Tinubu acted in cahoots with both.
Tinubu cannot rest easy in his Yoruba ethnic home ground because his APC candidature split Afenifere, the Yoruba sociocultural organization. Tinubu also has a strained relationship with former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who clashed with him. At the same time, he was president, and Tinubu was Lagos State Governor (1999–2007). He made a late, inexplicable decision to stop the count when early results from throughout the country indicated a Tinubu victory.
Finally, the Igbo are rightfully disgruntled after another failed presidential bid, and the foreign world, which was sympathetic to Peter Obi but dubious of Tinubu, is divided between nonchalance and low-wattage anger.
Tinubu must reach out to these constituencies while paying off his political obligations to his supporters and organizations in the core northern region and sections of the lower Middle Belt, where concentrated support brought him over the line. Only a conscious and genuine effort by the Tinubu administration to expand opportunity, increase social mobility, and deepen popular faith in the Nigerian enterprise will satisfy the younger generation, many of whom are understandably uncertain about their immediate and long-term prospects in the country. This constituency, already powerful on social media and in Nigeria’s growing infotainment business, will shape public and international media perceptions of Tinubu and his administration in the coming years.
Tinubu must also reassure the Christian community that their political marginalization and social inferiority fears are baseless. Beyond symbolic politics, he must quickly stop Fulani herders from attacking Christian towns and churches in the Middle Belt and across the country. The Anambra-based International Organization for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) reported at least five thousand Christians killed in Nigeria in 2022 and over one thousand in the first three months of 2023.
As daunting as the political challenges sound, they are nothing compared to Tinubu’s economic situation, where an imminent debt overhang, dependency on oil revenue, industrial restlessness, rising unemployment, and a chronic culture of waste frustrate ordinary Nigerians’ entrepreneurial spirit and undermine the expectations of the country’s friends and allies. While it requires no extrasensory perception to see what needs to be done—diversify the economy, embrace fiscal discipline, invest in infrastructure, ensure transparency, curb public waste, unchain the private sector—that it continues to elude successive generations of political leaders is one of the more enduring mysteries of the Nigerian condition.
Insofar as Tinubu is eager to handle these issues, and while he must master the momentum of unplanned events to avoid being swallowed by it, one thing is painfully evident to every Nigerian student: he stands little chance of success if he does not first combat corruption. While every leader in recent memory has tried and failed—partly because corruption in Nigeria is normative and cannot be unilaterally corrected, no matter how earnest—Tinubu faces a greater challenge in that, given the torrent of recent accusations of graft against him, he must convince a rightly dubious public that he is above board and sincere in his promise to “change our mindset” and “kill corruption in our society.”
Bloomberg said that Oluwaseyi, Tinubu’s 37-year-old son, bought a London property the Federal Government wanted to take “over an alleged $1.6 billion scam” early this month. If the public thinks he’s just doing business as usual to enrich his family, his administration’s moral legitimacy will collapse.
Every day, lawlessness and civility are related to corruption but outside its immediate scope. Nigeria, where jumpy citizenry and careless police dispense out incident justice, needs more decorum. Many Nigerians rightly distrust governmental institutions, notably law enforcement and the courts, which they view as irritating at best and poisonous at worst.
The new administration must restore the legitimacy of the Nigerian state and its institutions. José Ortega y Gasset states, “Without a minimum of excellent manners, civilization has never been able to exist whether as a people, a tribe, or a nation.” Hence, Nigeria’s social order is threatened by mores’ coarsening.
Tinubu, a delegator, has a strong pedigree. As Lagos State Governor, he proved he had the skills (including foreign business ties) to govern and is clever enough to know that the coalition that won him electoral triumph may be different from the one needed to govern. Buhari has nothing to lose and everything to gain by asserting himself and assuming the diplomatic role that Africa and the world regard as Nigeria’s destiny.
Tinubu’s greatest ambition—and that of any Yoruba leader—is to be compared to the late philosopher-statesman Obafemi Awolowo. Tinubu must be pleased with being given an opportunity that Awolowo, with all his sagacity, never got.
Since 2007, Tinubu has been planning for the presidency, and he must now show that he has thought about governance equally.
