By the time you read this, President Bola Tinubu may have read the traditional Independence Day national broadcast. It is usually full of platitudes used to inspire the citizenry, reassure them of the glorious promises of the nation despite present challenges, forge national unity and patriotism and encourage the people to be ready to lay down their lives for the uplift of the nation. Things like those.
When we were much younger, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Independence Day broadcast drove us to our radios or the black-and-white screens of the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA. The level of decay we live with today was nowhere in the horizon of our imaginations. The situation, however, dramatically changed when Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu joined in their quest to capture power. The All Progressives Congress, APC, founded by the duo eventually seized power using their acolytes.
A former APC chieftain, Abubakar Kawu Baraje, confessed that the bandits decimating security in the North-West and North-Central (including his own Kwara State) were imported by some leaders from neighbouring countries to fight former President Goodluck Jonathan if the 2015 elections were “rigged”. They soon turned into Frankenstein Monsters which the Buhari regime tried but failed to subdue; the Tinubu administration has so far not been able to get rid of them.
Other negative legacies that Buhari and Tinubu openly or tacitly promoted are extreme nepotism and ethnic hatred. Buhari shamelessly broadcast to the world that he would not be fair to all Nigerians; that he would favour only those who voted for him (mainly the North and Tinubu’s followers). He implemented his threat, particularly against the South-East. In the process, he resuscitated widespread agitations for Biafra and triggered the rise of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to stardom in the East. To worsen matters, Buhari also fulfilled his earlier threat to spread sharia to all parts of the country by throwing the Northern borders open and inviting armed Fulani fighters to invade forests all over the country to seize indigenous people’s lands and occupy.
Nnamdi Kanu is three years in Federal Government custody because he formed the Eastern Security Network, ESN, to defend Igboland from Fulani invasion.
When Tinubu took over on May 29, 2025, people like me had hoped he would correct Buhari’s machinations by putting an end to nepotism, flushing out bandits and herdsmen terrorists, rebuilding the fractured system and fostering a united nation. Instead, he chose to continue Buhari’s extreme ethnic nepotism, loading the juiciest offices with people from his ethnic stock, particularly his personal trusted bagmen and women. Where even Buhari shied away from a Muslim-Muslim ticket, Tinubu readily went for it, full of confidence that the opposition to this would be easily absorbed. But in doing so, he violated the Federal Character Principle in the Constitution which was enshrined to promote national unity, sense of belonging, solidarity and patriotism.
The result is that the South-East has been joined by the North in feeling largely cheated. Buhari’s minions (the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC) in the APC have left to gang up against Tinubu in the African Democratic Congress, ADC. Right now, the argument is not that Tinubu corrected Buhari’s blunders as Nigeria’s leader. Rather, Tinubu’s spokespersons are mocking Buhari’s political orphans, asking them: “how does it feel to wear the pinching shoes”? If we are to go on like this, how will Nigeria survive? How can Nigeria be united?
I don’t think that Buhari and Tinubu were bothered about national unity, though they blithely pontificated it just for political correctness. When Buhari was in power, some “Northern youths” saw the Biafra agitation which Buhari triggered as reason to harass and intimidate the Igbo residents in the North. On the one hand, they issued a “quit notice”. But, on the other, they opposed Biafra referendum and exit from Nigeria which Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, were pursuing! What do you call a person who can’t make up his mind about something?
Tinubu’s minions have adopted exactly the same “strategy”. Immediately after the EndSARS protests in October 2020, the Tinubu group started promoting the fallacy that IPOB and Igbo residents were responsible for the mayhem that followed the Lekki Toll Gate Shootings. And since 2023 when Tinubu lost the presidential election in Lagos, the ethnic profiling, intimidation and baiting against the Igbo residents of Lagos intensified. Indeed, it has reflected in very belligerent policies and governing attitudes by the Lagos State Government, or at least perceptions of such, towards Igbo business and economic interests. The venom-laden verbal shootouts at each other in the social media between the Easterners and Westerners are mortifying. If care is not taken, this may end very badly for the continued existence of the country.
It is incumbent on President Tinubu to show patriotism and leadership. Even if he does not believe in them, the office he is occupying puts the burden on him to do the needful. Rebuilding Nigeria goes beyond meaningless National Orientation Agency, NOA, propaganda, while doing opposite what you are preaching. Tinubu should call his minions to order, including elements in his party and the Lagos State Government to let Igbo be. Also, Ndi Igbo should calm down. Those who live in Lagos should live in peace with the indigenes, avoid unnecessary overreaching and remain law abiding.
Nigerians must make up their minds once for all about the Igbo. Give them their full share of the Nigerian commonwealth or let them go to their Biafra. It is not natural to want to stay with someone you do not like.
That’s unfair!
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