By Ugoji Egbujo
Tinubu’s government has become a propaganda factory. A government obsessed with spectacle over substance and relentlessly pursuing self-congratulation. A governance style that prioritises the trivial over the transformative.
Tinubu’s government is devoted to celebrating small, often inconsequential achievements while the nation is racked by hunger, insecurity, and economic stagnation. From commissioning incomplete roads to extracting political capital from funerals, Tinubu’s leadership appears trapped in superficiality. This penchant for gestures and gimmicks masks a troubling failure to check the nation’s drift.
Tinubu now thinks a funeral is a project. He had to order Shettima to go and bring back President Buhari’s corpse from London. There are better ways to appease the hungry folks in the North whose lives bandits have made miserable. After the funeral, Tinubu congratulated Shettima for carrying out a sombre task as if he had won an Olympic gold. A Muslim funeral, traditionally austere and devoid of fanfare, was transformed into a platform for political theatre. The idle senate, ever eager to please, has praised Tinubu for delivering a beautiful burial. The burial of Buhari has become the fourth mainland bridge. If the government could, it would have named the funeral after Tinubu. That is the extent of the self-obsession.
This fixation on frivolity is not new. Before Buhari died, Tinubu was in St Lucia for eight days. He visited community colleges which were on holiday. He addressed the parliament of a poor population half the size of Surulere. He collected awards and disbursed scholarships to the people. He couldn’t say he was looking for foreign investors, so he said he was reestablishing historical and cultural linkages.
The rationale for the visit stretched credulity. With a retinue of ministers and aides, all quartered in five-star beach hotels, gulping our scarce foreign exchange in estacodes, Tinubu frolicked. He astounded Gilbert Chagouri’s St Lucia. The St Lucia Times, a local newspaper, wondered how much of the financial burden of the visit would be borne by the peasants of the tiny island. That was the first time a president of a substantial country would visit the inconsequential island. And this president sat there for eight whole days, looking for people to meet and greet to justify the trip. Nigerians will never be told the cost of that trip.
From St. Lucia, Tinubu jetted to Brazil for a two-day BRICS summit as an observer. The conference lasted two days. After the conference, Tinubu vanished. He couldn’t be bothered. Nigerians were left to speculate whether he had returned to St. Lucia, decamped to France, or simply gone off the grid. The president of the largest Black nation on Earth, unaccounted for. Once he learnt of Buhari’s imminent death, he resurfaced. He dashed to an airport in Brazil, went through a column of what looked like a hurriedly assembled Boys Brigade unit furiously beating their band, and headed for Abuja. This pattern of absence and disengagement underscores a presidency that seems detached from the urgency of Nigeria’s crises. If Buhari hadn’t died, Tinubu might have stayed longer outside Nigeria.
Tinubu’s elaborate celebration of small things illustrates this disconnect. Before his St. Lucia sojourn, he commissioned a 30-kilometre stretch of a 700-kilometre road. The length of the completed portion remains in dispute. Why the rush to inaugurate a project that has barely started? The answer lies in a broader pattern of superficial governance. In Abuja, Tinubu and FCT Minister Wike made a habit of commissioning small streets, one at a time. If Tinubu had built Abuja, he might have spent a century commissioning it. The amplification of minor feats isn’t just a sign of emptiness, it’s dubious.
Funerals are now projects, meanwhile, when bandits massacre communities, Tinubu doesn’t show up. His condolence and funeral appearances are reserved for royals and political heavyweights, whose deaths carry perceived political capital. Politicians don’t attend the funerals of the poor. However, mass burials of innocent people killed by terrorists because the state is derelict in its duties should attract presidential attention. But even in optics Tinubu’s government is tone deaf. At the recent funeral prayers for the departed Awujale, Tinubu declared that his presidential victory ‘completed the history of the Yoruba’.
Often, understanding the president can prove more difficult than solving a riddle. That statement is as grandiose as it is divisive. By its most benign interpretation, this ethnic framing raises questions about the extent to which his leadership prioritises Yoruba interests. Tinubu has engaged in relentless concentration of power in the hands of the Yoruba and the arbitrary award of multi-trillion-dollar contracts to his business partners. It’s difficult to estimate how much this ethnic conception of his victory has affected Tinubus’ warped evolution.
At the recent National Executive Committee meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Tinubu’s priorities were laid bare. It didn’t include the widespread insecurity ravaging the land. He urged governors to secure land from Wike for a new APC party headquarters. His party members rose and sang what has become the international anthem of sycophancy. He milked it. Perhaps that will be another building named after him. The focus is on a new office for a political party. Not a world-class hospital. The government can foot the bill for extended stays at the London Clinic. A government out of touch with reality. A world-class hospital, equipped to treat leaders locally, would spare Tinubu frequent trips to France and save Nigeria the embarrassment of repatriating former leaders’ remains from London. Yet, the audience cheered. The entire political class is complicit in this superficial agenda.
Only as an afterthought did Tinubu address the widespread hunger ravaging the country. His solution? “Wet the grass”—a euphemism for handouts. Perhaps only fearful of the anger that comes from hunger. After two years in office, Tinubu has failed to curb insecurity, boost food production, or stabilise the economy.
His administration imports food from India after removing subsidies for ordinary citizens. The only subsidies permitted are those that cushion the lavish lifestyles of political officeholders. Tiinubu knows that Handouts, like buckets of water thrown at a raging bushfire, cannot address the structural issues of power shortages, insecurity, and declining industrial output. Without comprehensive policies to tackle these root causes, Tinubu’s gestures are as fleeting as they are ineffective. But perhaps Tinubu is the master strategist. He can make an omelette without eggs
Tinubu’s albatross is his ego and the sycophancy that surrounds him. Tinubu seeks and encourages his deification. This culture of adulation stifles accountability and emboldens a leadership style that prioritises personal glory over public good. Until Tinubu shifts his focus from self-congratulation and political conquests to substantive governance, the country will remain trapped in a cycle of unfulfilled promises and squandered. Nigerians deserve a president who confronts the nation’s challenges with depth, urgency, and inclusivity—not one who revels in small victories and empty gestures. Nigeria deserves a purposeful political class.
*Dr. Egbujo is a commentator on public issues
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