Tinubu is the Law!
By Festus Adedayo (PhD)
"Everything is my business. Everything. Anything I say is law… literally law." Barbara Geddes, et al., in their How Dictatorship Works (2018), quoted Malawian dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda as having once said the above.
In Nigeria, a little more than a week ago, they all came in quick succession: A National Assembly where libido ran riot; a son who said his father was Nigeria’s best president; a corps member who condemned that same father as terrible; and that president, when he wakes up and looks in the mirror, like Banda, sees himself as “the law.” In the hands of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria appears to have become one complex, complicated web of mess and intrigues.
When a people suffer such a plague of multiple, endless afflictions, my people deploy a phrasal description to denote it. So, they compare such a situation to an "egbinrin òtè." Egbinrin òtè is a situation that defies solution. It scorns the biblical exhortation that affliction would not rise a second time. Under Tinubu’s egbinrin òtè Nigeria, afflictions come in multiple folds. Literally, egbinrin òtè means "leaves of conspiracy." In usage, however, it is a scary, endless tale of repetitive sorrow. The affliction is sustained by a coldbloodedness or bloodlessness. When you cut a leaf out of the branch of this tree, another sprouts immediately. In manifestation, you can compare an egbinrin òtè situation to the biblical cursed fig tree, doomed to bring out a sap of sorrow.
The 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, French philosopher and journalist Albert Camus’ 1942-published book, The Myth of Sisyphus, explains egbinrin òtè better. Using Greek mythology of the gods’ punishment for Sisyphus, we see a man condemned to a repetitive labour. In Tinubu’s Nigeria, like Sisyphus, citizens seem to have been condemned to a ceaseless and eternal task of rolling a boulder uphill, only for it to roll backwards downhill. In Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s words, "every day na the same thing."
Seyi Tinubu, son of the Nigerian president, was in Adamawa State last week. As he spoke to youths, arrogance dripped out of him like foul-smelling beads of sweat. Except for the bombastic claim that his father was "the greatest president in the history of Nigeria," which empirical facts do not support, every other claim in that address lacked collocation, context, or even logic. Who are the "they" who keep coming "for your father" and for "me"? Whose father is "Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu"? Did Seyi mean fatherhood in the sense of Tinubu being the Nigerian president?
Fatherhood requires responsibility. It is not just by an accident of seminal fluid. Not every person who occupies Aso Rock is the Nigerian’s father. Children must see themselves in their father and vice versa. Nigerians will indeed desire that Tinubu fatherlizes them, in which case, he will act like a father in all material particular. To the millions of Nigerians who go to bed hungry every night, and the democratic tenets that Tinubu stomps upon like a matador, he is better described as a dictator next door.
If you attempt to overstretch blood ties but fail in family responsibility, my people will stop you in your strides. They then will tell you that, when issues get to the brass tacks, a “mother-of-all” can identify her biological children (Ìyá ẹgbẹ mọ iye ọmọ ẹ). If Seyi needs to hear the truth, what Nigerians see in Tinubu isn’t a father. That is why his other claim that the Tinubu economy has "benefited all" must have rankled suffering Nigerians. When he said his father was "the only president that is not trying to enrich his own pocket," many Nigerians must have fainted.
In Nigeria, for close to two years now under Tinubu, we are faced with what, in grammar, is called irregular comparative and superlative adjectives. They are adjectives that don’t follow methods. When you conclude that a decision coming out of Aso Rock is bad, wait for the next minute—worse one will follow. When you begin to lament the worse situation, then the worst happens. And this trajectory happens endlessly, like Sisyphus'.
As Seyi was waxing illogical in his mis-canonization of his father in Adamawa State as "one who gave the youth the wings to fly," another egbinrin òtè was billowing. Ushie Rita Ugamaye, a serving corps member, was literally told that in Tinubu’s Nigeria, the youth can only fly if they grovel at the president’s feet. In Bob Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, I was told that even while locked up in the sacristy of your closet, you could only criticize old Bob in whispers, lest the wall transmit your criticism to the Führer.
In a social media post she made, Ugamaye lamented the excruciating existence Nigerians live under Seyi’s father’s government. Speaking directly to him, she said: “I don’t know if there is any other president that is as terrible as you… you are such a terrible president.” Thereafter, the NYSC authority subjected Ugamaye to threats and eventually got her to apologize for her views on the grueling economic life Nigerians live today.
Ugamaye’s tortuous week in the hands of Tinubu’s hirelings is a mirror of the kind of life citizens live under repressive governments. Another example of this kind of rule was under Malawian President Banda. The people lived in palpable fear of their president. Not only was dissent criminalized, condemnation of the Führer was treasonable.
Then, another billow of a smouldering egbinrin òtè oozed out. On March 18, Tinubu wielded the big stick. He imposed a state of emergency on Rivers State, suspending the governor, Siminalayi Fubara, deputy, and the House of Assembly for six months. In my last week's installment, I referred to Tinubu as a partial judge. With the proclamation of emergency rule, he earned another infamous medallion. In his nationwide address, which read like a coup speech, Tinubu unapologetically removed the veil of his partiality. A few hours later, allegedly under heavy disbursement of grafts, the two national parliaments gave his coup against democracy legislative imprimatur.
The proclamation of a state of emergency in Rivers State by Tinubu should tell Nigerians that what we have today is personal rule disguised as civil rule. In such rule, the people are forced to swallow dosages of authoritarianism. Barbara Geddes et al. also said that a major feature of personal rule is that the ruler conscripts the judiciary, castrates the political system, and gets a pliant legislature. An icing on the cake of this infamy is a captive populace.
Tinubu is one of the boldest leaders in the history of Nigeria. A few days ago, news filtered in that he had just awarded a $700 million contract for the renovation of Tin Can and Apapa ports in Lagos to ITB Nigeria, a construction firm his son, Seyi, is said to be a director in. Nigerians ranted at the opacity and compromise behind the awards, but to Tinubu, the people could go jump inside the lagoon.
I seem to think Tinubu has swallowed the Devil. With his raw hand, he can pull chestnut from a red-hot furnace. He is not afraid to bite any bullet. The whole world may be on the verge of being incinerated, but the street folk looks at the end game. It is a trait you get on the street.
Tinubu is the law. He is the legislature. He is the Führer. And if left unchecked, Nigeria might soon have its own Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
ADEDAYO is a columnist, journalist, author, lawyer, and political scientist.
(First published by the Sunday Tribune, March 23, 2025)