…in a nation with scandalous levels of corruption, the month in which an anti-corruption agency is legally required to report is a major milestone.
By SONALA OLUMHENSE
Days after his return from an official trip to Japan and Brazil, President Bola Tinubu last Thursday jetted out on “vacation” to France, his perpetual personal home.
“The vacation will last 10 working days,” a spokesman explained, adding that it is part of his 2025 annual leave.
And for those who are concerned that he spends so much time in the French capital, they cleverly smuggled in a second location. “President Tinubu will spend the period between France and the UK,” the spokesman said.
The meaning of this is that Tinubu will not be seen in Nigeria for over two weeks. Not that it matters. It is evident that while Tinubu enjoys the pomp, power and circumstance of being president, he resents the responsibility and hungers for the certainty of societies that have laboured to be workable and stable, and leaders who lead.
Tinubu does not fool anyone: Nigerians know that he is in it for himself. The insecurity that has made life almost impossible for Nigerians enjoys no recognition from their leader and is partly responsible for the mounting hunger the United Nations decried just weeks ago.
“Nearly 31 million people in Nigeria are now facing acute hunger, a record number,” said the WFP, which added that its operations in northeast Nigeria will collapse without immediate, sustained funding.
“This is no longer just a humanitarian crisis, it’s a growing threat to regional stability, as families pushed beyond their limits are left with nowhere to turn,” the agency said.
That did not resonate with Tinubu. He had foreign itineraries to plan.
How bad is the situation? In July, Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission reported that more people, over 2,266, were killed by bandits or insurgents in the first half of 2025 than in all of 2024. Keep in mind that the NHRC is a Nigerian organisation.
“These were not mere figures on a report,” said the Executive Secretary of the NHRC, Tony Ojukwu. “They were fathers, mothers, children, and breadwinners; families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, and futures extinguished in moments of senseless brutality.”
That was no concern of Tinubu, who had places to go. Foreign locations.
In a different theatrical production, Nigerians might have expected a voice like that of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka to offer thunder and lightning for them. But he has since traded in his chips, the tiger in its old age surrendering its “tigritude” for the comforts of a grovelling pussycat at the palace.
Nigerians might also have expected the famous writer to speak up on First Lady Oluremi Tinubu last week, announcing a personal bank account for the collection of her birthday gifts, allegedly to build the National Library, citing “my love for education.”
As someone who, a few months ago, wrote in celebration of libraries and archives, following an announcement by Education Minister Tunji Alausa, that President Tinubu had directed TETFund to support the construction of the National Library, I welcome Mrs Tinubu’s newfound love for education.
But not in the form in which she has chosen to express it. The National Library is a federal concern to which the government is paying attention.
It should be left to do that, and to fund it according to the law. That process has no place for extraneous interests or suspicious private charity.
If Mrs Tinubu wants to help, she can prevail on her husband to demonstrate urgency.
This does not mean that she cannot do other things. Education in Nigeria is a broad field crying for help, including schools even in the Federal Capital Territory, where students learn under trees or on the floor.
Concerning libraries in Abuja, and speaking as someone who has driven around the city looking for functional libraries, the federal capital needs not just the central National Library edifice, but an extensive public library system.
A strong beginning here, as I have previously advocated, is for the first family to remake into public libraries the EFCC fortified quarters, which were gratuitously converted into “State House complexes” in 2023.
Is this a sacrifice that Mrs Tinubu is willing to make? I mean, she can swiftly deploy her birthday haul into remodelling those buildings with a view to making them available to the Abuja Library System.
The question is whether she really loves Nigerians or merely wants to be praised for claiming to love education.
Finally, the EFCC.
It would probably not be September without the ‘anti-corruption’ commission being in the news, even if for the wrong reasons.
As I have written here since 2008, in a nation with scandalous levels of corruption, the month in which an anti-corruption agency is legally required to report is a major milestone.
Our EFCC has failed this test every year since 2006, when Nuhu Ribadu, its pioneer chairman, broke ground by showing up at the National Assembly to make the presentation.