Insecurity: Is Tinubu Fiddling or Fibbing? By Ugoji Egbujo

The most patient Nigerians are now exasperated. President Tinubu has run out of excuses. A once-passive nation is waking up to its perilous predicament. Indefatigable Pastor Enoch Adeboye says he has tried. He now begs his congregation to help him speak to Tinubu. It appears the President is inaccessible not only to  senators. Does Tinubu need deliverance?

For years, many dismissed Adeboye’s silence and customary optimism as conspiratorial. They said an Ijaw man like Goodluck Jonathan was not so lucky. Only tribal loyalty, they argued, could explain it. Elders watching a tethered goat go into labour without raising alarm. It seemed Adeboye was doing a Soyinka—treating his friend Tinubu like a sacred cow. Yet others felt both men had paid their dues. Nigerians should seize the bull by the horns and leave old men to the blessings and toothlessness of old age.

But a nation bleeding and gripped by the jugular has no patience for tribal sentiment, filial bonds or cowardice. The menace of bandits, jihadists and insurgents has reached demonic proportions. Tinubu insists the deteriorating insecurity is the handiwork of his political enemies. This cynical view makes the crisis more hopeless. If massacres and mass abductions were organised by opponents, should that not make them more soluble? Adeboye’s public advice suggests  the self-acclaimed master strategist has proved a lousy Commander-in-Chief.

Adeboye wants Tinubu to sit up and command his troops. Give the service chiefs a three-month ultimatum to sort out the mess or quit. The problem, he implies, is that Tinubu, like civilian presidents before him, fears the military.  He has the courage to bully governors into his party but cannot hold the military accountable with real vigour. Had his priority been leadership and substance rather than control and political conquests, he would have reorganised the security architecture and perhaps hired vetted external capacity during the transition phase . Instead, he appears content fiddling and fidgeting, pampering both the military  top brass  and the rampaging insurgents. For as long as politics permits, even if schools across the country are all shut down.

The federal government should keep a public diary. Nigerians deserve to know how many schools are closed because of insecurity, how many children cannot attend classes because of bandits, how many have been killed, kidnapped, raped or maimed, and how much has been paid in ransoms by governments and citizens. A national album of the tragedy . A  transparent national register or dashboard tracking these figures, alongside government actions, would shame complacency and inform better policy. It might also convince a weary public to support a credible no-ransom stance. When citizens see the true cost of feeding banditry, they may accept that starving the criminal economy—while building credible rescue alternatives—is essential to ending the scourge. Transparent bookkeeping might also humble military commanders. Confronted with unvarnished numbers, some might resign on their own.

Adeboye does not need to join any “On Your Mandate” choir to earn the right to be heard.  His frustration is telling . As one of the most influential Christian leaders in the country—the man who ordained Tinubu’s wife a pastor—he deserves attention. It does not help Tinubu that even this revered pastor is as baffled as the danfo driver at Oshodi about the administration’s counter-insurgency strategy. If Adeboye advised Buhari quietly and must now counsel Tinubu publicly, then  perhaps Tinubu needs  ‘deliverance’  . The Igbo say a grasshopper captured by the noisy bird okpoko is deaf.

Insecurity was the major challenge Tinubu inherited. A prostitute prepares in advance  for gonorrhoea. The problem was visible from a thousand miles, yet he came unprepared. His party has been in power for over eleven years, yet he still believes sophistry will stem the tide? Had he embraced the crisis with truth and urgency, he would have earned the people’s trust. Instead, he surrounded himself with voices that fed him eulogies. He paid more attention to appearance than substance, and propaganda became the default panacea. It is not impossible he genuinely believes he has solved insecurity and that opponents simply poured sand into his Ijebu garri. Perhaps, because the crisis undermines his messiah complex, it must be deconstructed dubiously.

In any case, with general overseers like Reno Omokri and political soothsayers like Fayose and Wike around him, Tinubu does not need Pastor Adeboye. He does not need to hear that his failure as Commander-in-Chief has put schoolchildren’s lives in jeopardy. Fayose claims Makinde arranged the abduction of the Oyo children. Wike wondered why protests erupted only when Oyo pupils, not Abuja’s , were kidnapped .  Unfortunarely these childish insinuations  inform national policy . Such deflections are beneath serious leadership. Security is primarily a federal responsibility. State governments can support but cannot substitute for national coordination, intelligence and rapid response. Effective command requires owning the problem, setting measurable targets and holding commanders accountable without fear or favour.

Adeboye first offered the advice six months ago. Nothing fundamental changed. He retweeted it two days ago. Security is an existential issue. The President has the constitutional authority and the tools. What remains to be seen—and what citizens, religious leaders and the National Assembly must continue demanding—is whether he will wield them with the ruthless focus on results the moment requires. When will the Commander-in-Chief be held accountable? Perhaps that job belongs to the electorate.  Perhaps , with many   children  in the bush and many  shut schools , the time to speak is now. 

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