Threading on dangerous grounds

By Sunny Ikhioya 

Stories coming out of the seat of power these days are disillusioning; it is as if we are playing games of pirates and vikings, superintending over the commonwealth. Stories of audacity, recklessness, greed and ride over the common man. It is challenging the people on what they can do. Is President Tinubu aware of all the shenanigans going on under his government? If yes, it must be a very unfortunate situation, as these are what he fought against throughout the sixteen years of the PDP administration. If true, then it must rank at the highest level of hypocrisy, because he knows that the Nigerian people are tolerant and permitting of rulers’ excesses; he has studied the psychology of the average Nigerian and knows that their capacity to absorb pain is elastic, it has no limit, government can do anything it likes and get away with it. But there is a limit to arrogance and deceit; the Peoples Democratic Party realised this too late.

In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson emphasized the need for strong institutions and the rule of law. As a sitting governor of Lagos State, Tinubu used the court to emphasise the independence of the state government from the federal government; he fought the Obasanjo PDP government to the Supreme Court level and won. He also used constitutional means to win his party the government seat of Osun State, and Aregbesola was sworn in as governor. Why are we not seeing the progressive side of Tinubu now that he has become president? What happened to him? In one of his press interviews, the leader of one of the political parties said that they went to visit the president. In the course of the discussion, they appealed to him to help ensure a free and fair environment for the coming elections.

His response was that he has fought the main parties to get to where he is presently and it is not his job to make things easy for the opposition. In a way, he is right because he will not be the one to help the opposition unseat him, but he should have assured them that the elections will be carried out according to the constitutional provisions and nothing else. When a government begins to disregard the constitution and the rule of law, when it supervises the weakening of its controlling institutions, when it discounts the need for accountability, it is tending towards a failed state; that is what Acemoglu and Robinson were trying to tell us in their book Why Nations Fail. They argue that “the key differentiator between countries is institutions. Nations thrive when they develop inclusive political and economic institutions, and they fail when those institutions become extractive and concentrate power and opportunity in the hands of only a few.” President Tinubu and his team know this; why they have decided to make governance so opaque is what is bothering. It cannot be said that the politicians of today can’t handle democracy, after all that we have gone through. There are too many unhealthy allegations that need to be addressed by this administration. We had highlighted insecurity and how we are failing in that regard.

Today, it is the question of accountability. Why can’t this government be open in the handling of the country’s account? Vice President and presidential candidate of the ADC party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is the latest to cry out over this. In his press release the former vice president made this statement: “My attention has been drawn to a deeply troubling report by the International Monetary Fund, published on July 1, 2026 by Reuters, which reveals that the Tinubu led APC administration failed to record public expenditures amounting to approximately 2 percent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product in recent official budgets, with Nigeria’s economy valued at about ?441.5 trillion; the figure translates to a staggering ?8.8 trillion in public funds spent entirely outside the statutory framework of Nigeria’s official budget documents, unaccounted for, unaudited, and hidden from the Nigerian people.” He went further to describe the development as “the most consequential act of fiscal impunity in Nigeria’s recent democratic history.” The former vice president called on Nigerians, the media, civil society groups, the National Assembly and other democratic institutions to demand accountability.

Citing the IMF’s latest Article IV consultation and its resident representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, Atiku alleged that the discrepancy stemmed from large scale government projects executed outside the budgetary framework. What is worse here is that it is the same IMF that has been egging the government on that Atiku is quoting here. We said it before that Tinubu must decide on whose side he wants to belong, whether on the side of the World Bank/IMF or that of the people of Nigeria. Again, the embarrassing scandal of the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC. What is the government waiting for before it takes decisive action against all of those that are involved? In a decent clime, all concerned would have been put on suspension by now, pending the conclusion of investigation. On the 17th of June, 1972, the powerful United States president, Richard Nixon, was forced to resign his post as president for his role in the Watergate scandal.

What was his offence? Introducing spying devices in the office of the opposition Democratic Party. That is how it works: when you are guilty, you face the law. That is how institutions work; everyone including the president must be subjected to the rule of law. It is still unclear how Adeyemi managed to bypass all the bureaucratic bottlenecks, including the EFCC and the Central Bank, to scam Nigerians. Definitely, people in high places were involved, and the presidency has confirmed this.

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, said investigators from the Department of State Services, DSS, the Nigeria Police Force and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, should identify and prosecute those within government institutions who allegedly assisted Adeyemi in carrying out the scheme. According to Ajayi, there is no doubt that internal collaborators helped Adeyemi forge presidential appointment letters, maintain 34 bank accounts in the names of fictitious government agencies, host foreign ambassadors and even open a Central Bank of Nigeria account while parading himself as head of the PFIPC. These are things that should not be tolerated in any way or left to hang on people’s imagination. Everyone involved should immediately be sanctioned until proven otherwise. It is also good that we run an open and transparent government and allow our institutions to function according to how they were set up to operate. Otherwise, we will be treading on dangerous grounds.

• Sunny Ikhioya writes from Lagos.

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