₦airaland Forum

marlow1962:
Reno the omokri, anyhow sha man must wack.

PulaPower:
Hypocrites. Tinubu is not hard on oppositions, nah dem oppositions dey looseguard..

Tinubu’s stance as opposition was confrontational and absolutist. When he was outside power, he interpreted procedural or institutional resistance in maximalist terms as existential threats to democracy, not routine political or legal friction.

Tinubu in opposition would not recognize the defenses now offered on behalf of Tinubu in power. He would reject them, loudly and repeatedly, and he would mobilize against them.

In today’s Saturday Tribune column, I set Tinubu’s actions as president against the blistering response he himself would have mounted if he were in opposition, drawing on his own record to show how sharply the two diverge.

You may resent Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but you can’t deny that he has earned his place in Nigerian political history as one of the, if not the, most consequential opposition figures in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. He constructed a carefully planned political and rhetorical template to oppose central governments effectively and then converted the symbolic capital he gained into a path to the presidency.

By May 29, Tinubu will mark his third year as president. He is beset by the same constraints his predecessors faced and is reacting to opponents almost exactly as they did, perhaps with even more viciousness and guile.

But the opposition seems to be in the wilderness. It is flustered, incoherent, spineless, and in strategic disarray. It would do well to study how an opposition Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have confronted an increasingly tyrannical and devious President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

If Bola Ahmed Tinubu were in opposition today, watching a president preside over widening and deepening oceans of blood and rising insecurity, constrict the space for alternative parties, intensify economic hardship and offer only perfunctory condolence optics amid horrendous mass slaughters. He would launch a sustained, strategic, organized, merciless and unsparing regime of critical engagement using every available medium. We know this because we have a record of him doing precisely that.

My recollection of his key moves as an opposition politician aren’t intended to be exhaustive. They are merely representative.

In March 2013, for instance, in remarks widely reported at the time, Tinubu said that if President Goodluck Jonathan could not guarantee security, he should “honorably resign.” By November 2014, his tone had hardened. According to TheCable, Tinubu said that in any serious country Jonathan would have resigned over the scale of insecurity in the country.

In the same 2014, he accused Jonathan’s government of “failure, lack of capacity, vision and creativity” and of misleading Nigerians about the true state of security.
That is the vocabulary Tinubu reaches for when he is not in power. He did not treat insecurity as a complicated policy arena deserving of cautious language. He treated it as evidence of unfitness for office.

An aggregation of all his statements about the insecurity that pervaded the country when Jonathan was in government (which has become worse on his watch) amounted to this: insecurity equals loss of legitimacy. That was one of his most potent rhetorical blitzkriegs against Jonathan, which traveled beyond the shores of Nigeria.

The same pattern holds for economic distress. On January 11, 2012, in an article published by PM News, Tinubu attacked Jonathan’s removal of fuel subsidy, dubbing it the “Jonathan tax.” He said the policy breached the social contract between the rulers and the ruled, described it as a punitive imposition on the poor and, crucially, urged Nigerians to resist it.

He wrote that citizens had a duty to “peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition.” That line matters. It shows that Tinubu, in opposition, does not merely diagnose hardship. He authorizes not just rhetorical dissent but physical rebellion against it.

Following his exhortation, there were disabling, convulsive and fatal nationwide protests and strikes. Tinubu aligned himself with that mood. He did not urge patience. He gave moral and political cover to resistance. Some even said he funded the protests, called “Occupy Nigeria,” in which at least 12 people died. It ultimately forced Jonathan to reverse the withdrawal of subsidies, which Tinubu is now implementing with more soullessness than Jonathan ever did.

He also does not leave resistance unorganized. On February 6, 2013, opposition parties merged into what became the All Progressives Congress. Tinubu was one of the principal architects of that coalition. The merger’s stated aim was to end corruption, insecurity and economic stagnation. It was a calculated attempt to convert grievance into power. Tinubu did not wait for electoral cycles to do their work. He engineered an alternative.

When he believed the Jonathan administration was using institutions against the opposition, he said so without equivocation. In January 2014, during the Rivers State political crisis, Tinubu described the disruption of opposition activity as “a frontal assault against democracy” and even a “coup against democracy.” In November 2014, after the chaos at the National Assembly, he again held Jonathan responsible. He saw pattern, not accident, and he said it plainly.

He went further. In October 2014, when Jonathan sought legislative approval for a $1 billion loan to fight Boko Haram, Tinubu opposed it. He argued that the funds could be used for political purposes rather than security. In other words, he was willing to recast even security spending as partisan maneuvering. That instinct has not been erased by time.

Now bring this record forward.

On April 2, 2026, President Tinubu met victims of the Plateau killings at the airport rather than visiting affected communities, with the presidency citing time and logistical constraints. Strip away the explanations and look at it from the vantage point of opposition Tinubu. This is the sort of image he historically converts into a political weapon. He would not defend it. He would amplify it as proof of cold detachment and deadly incompetence.

In fact, the seemingly intractable and worsening sanguinary communal upheavals that are spreading all over the country and the rising mass abductions for ransom that seem to be unabating would have constituted more than sufficient grounds for opposition Tinubu to delegitimize the presidency of President Tinubu.

There is also the matter of political space. Tinubu’s own rise was made possible by the constellation of opposition forces. The 2013 merger was a deliberate construction of an alternative to an incumbent he portrayed as incompetent and anti-democratic. If he were outside power today and perceived any effort, real or imagined, to frustrate the emergence of rival parties, such as we are seeing with the ADC, he would not respond with restraint. His record from 2013 to 2015 shows a readiness to build countervailing structures and to accuse incumbents of undermining democracy.

In early 2013 when there were credible fears that INEC might block or frustrate the registration of the new opposition merger that became the APC, including the controversy over a rival party using the same acronym, Tinubu framed any attempt to deny registration as authoritarian sabotage of democracy by the president.

Tinubu’s stance as opposition was confrontational and absolutist. When he was outside power, he interpreted procedural or institutional resistance in maximalist terms as existential threats to democracy, not routine political or legal friction. And he routinely blamed it on the sneaky wiles of the president, not the institutions that were responsible for the actions he railed against.

Opposition Tinubu would have put the blame for INEC’s withdrawal of recognition of the David Mark-led leadership of the ADC squarely on President Tinubu’s desk and would have called it Tinubu’s fascist, cowardly, fear-inspired strangulation of a rival, oppositional political space.

What emerges from this is not a series of isolated reactions but a coherent oppositional method. Tinubu indicts insecurity as presidential failure, frames economic pain as betrayal, promotes and legitimizes physical public resistance, works to consolidate opposition power and heaps all blames for the misfortunes of the opposition on the president. He combined rhetoric with organization. He did not do half measures.

Tinubu in opposition would not recognize the defenses now offered on behalf of Tinubu in power. He would reject them, loudly and repeatedly, and he would mobilize against them.

Criticism of Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the grounds that his NADECO-era allies or Southwest loyalists no longer protest policies they had consistently condemned misses a basic truth about power. People rarely mobilize against themselves, their benefactors or the networks that sustain them. Expecting otherwise is naïve.

The more useful lesson is not to lament their silence but to study Tinubu’s own playbook when he stood outside power. He exemplified disciplined opposition, coalition building, strategic messaging and relentless pursuit of institutional leverage. Those outside the orbit of power should stop waiting for insiders to revolt and instead organize to displace them. Power is not donated; it is taken. Tinubu has proved that.

Richtaiwo:
I don't get it. Are you blaming Tinubu for Otti's despicable performance?

Richtaiwo:
How come Abia is missing in the states with good record? I thought an angel is in charge of the state.

"The report highlighted structural deficiencies in audit independence and oversight... It is noted that subsequent assessments in 2022, 2023 and 2024 showed stagnation, deeper decline and further weakening of accountability systems, respectively.

Thirty of Nigeria’s 36 states scored below average on transparency and accountability in the use of public funds, according to a new subnational audit index released on Tuesday.

The findings are contained in the 2025 Subnational Audit Efficacy (SAE) Index published by the Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLSI) and presented in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to the report, six states scored above average, with Ekiti State topping the ranking at 72 percent. Gombe State and Yobe State followed jointly in second place with 68 percent each, while Adamawa State (57 percent), Delta State (53 percent), and Osun State (53 percent) completed the top performers.

At the bottom of the ranking, Abia State and Rivers State placed last, both scoring 9 percent. Other low-ranking states included Benue State (10 percent), Taraba State (14 percent), Imo State (18 percent) and Kwara State (19 percent), while the remaining states recorded scores ranging between 21 per cent and 48 percent.

The index, PLSI’s flagship annual scorecard, assesses public finance management and policy implementation across the 36 states through the lens of audit processes and key actors in the public audit cycle.

The report highlighted structural deficiencies in audit independence and oversight. Only five states have implemented financial autonomy for the Office of the Auditor-General, while 12 states have established administrative independence for the office, reflecting only marginal progress from 2024, with just one additional state advancing reforms.

Transparency gaps remain pronounced. It found that 18 states failed to publish audit reports on state accounts, while 21 states did not publish audit reports on local government accounts. However, this represents a slight improvement from 2023, when 21 states failed to publish state audit reports.

The report further found that 18 states published Citizens’ Accountability Reports in 2024, up from 11 in 2023 and eight in 2022. Oversight mechanisms were also found to be weak. Only three states currently have effective Public Accounts Committees (PACs), a slight increase from two in 2023 but still below the five recorded in 2022.

Similarly, just four states demonstrated meaningful involvement of civil society and media actors in audit processes, up marginally from three in the previous year.
PLSI said the slow pace of reform underscores the need for stronger political commitment and sustained institutional action to safeguard audit independence as a cornerstone of accountability and development-orientated governance.

The 2025 edition introduced a modified methodology, the first in six years, incorporating public audit functions at the local government level.

The assessment weighted state-level performance at 80 percent and local government performance at 20 percent, drawing on data from audit institutions and public accounts committees and offices of the Accountant-General, as well as civil society and media organisations.

Speaking at the launch, Olusegun Elemo, PLSI’s executive director, said earlier gains in fiscal transparency driven by the $1.5bn World Bank-supported States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability & Sustainability programme between 2018 and 2022 had not been sustained. He noted that subsequent assessments in 2022, 2023 and 2024 showed stagnation, deeper decline and further weakening of accountability systems, respectively.

Despite the generally weak performance, the 2025 index, however, recorded a modest performance. After two consecutive years of decline — from 31.81 percent in 2022 to 30.58 percent in 2023 and 29.47 percent in 2024, the average score rose to 34.5 percent in 2025, representing a 5.03 percentage point improvement.

According to Elemo, while the progress signals a positive shift in strengthening audit and public financial management systems, its true value lies in whether it translates into tangible improvements in service delivery, equitable resource allocation, and the everyday lives of citizens.

To address the gaps, the report urged state executives, including governors and ministries of finance, budget and planning, to fully implement financial autonomy for Offices of the Auditor-General through first-line charge mechanisms, ensure timely release of funds and establish audit service commissions or boards to guarantee administrative independence.

It also recommended the mandatory and timely publication of audit reports and Citizens’ Accountability Reports for both state and local government accounts. State audit offices were advised to shift from compliance-based audits to performance and value-for-money audits across key sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, gender and climate.

In addition, public accounts committees were urged to strengthen oversight by ensuring prompt review of audit reports and enforcing the implementation of audit recommendations, a critical step given the limited effectiveness of such committees across most states.

PLSI noted that while incremental gains are evident, Nigeria’s subnational governments must accelerate reforms to build resilient accountability systems capable of supporting sustainable development and restoring public trust in the management of public resources.