*PEBEC DG cites Mandela, Rawlings, says controversies cannot erase president’s political record
Michael Olugbode in Abuja
The Director-General of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu, has drawn a historical parallel between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and former South African President Nelson Mandela and Ghana’s former leader Jerry John Rawlings, arguing that the controversies surrounding a political leader’s biography should not be allowed to erase the record of his political accomplishments.
Audu, who is also the National Publicity Secretary of the City Boy Movement, made the argument in a commentary in which she maintained that history ultimately judges consequential leaders by the institutions they build, the changes they introduce and the political transformations they drive.
Her intervention comes amid continuing public debate over Tinubu’s political record, his educational history and the economic reforms implemented by his administration since assuming office in May 2023.
Audu argued that the appropriate approach was neither to glorify the President nor to dismiss his entire political career because of disputed aspects of his biography.
“His certificates may be questioned. His biography may be contested. But his political accomplishments cannot simply be written out of history,” she said.
According to her, history does not demand that consequential political figures possess “immaculate biographies”, but records what they built, changed, defended or transformed.
She invoked Mandela’s political evolution as an example, noting that the former South African leader moved from imprisonment and armed resistance against apartheid to becoming the country’s first democratically elected president and a central figure in its transition to constitutional democracy.
Audu similarly referenced Rawlings, whose political career moved from military intervention and revolutionary government to elected constitutional leadership in Ghana.
She stressed, however, that the comparison should not be interpreted as equating Tinubu with either Mandela or Rawlings.
Rather, she said, the broader historical lesson was that political identities and legacies could evolve and should be examined across the entirety of a leader’s career.
“History rarely evaluates consequential political figures from a single chapter of their lives,” she argued.
On the long-running controversy over Tinubu’s educational credentials, Audu urged Nigerians to distinguish between allegations, disputed facts and matters established by available evidence.
She cited the 2023 litigation in the United States involving Chicago State University, noting that the university’s registrar confirmed that Tinubu attended the institution and graduated in 1979, while the dispute included questions over the provenance and authenticity of a particular diploma copy submitted to Nigerian electoral authorities.
Audu maintained that public officials should remain open to scrutiny, but argued that criticism should be confined to what evidence establishes.
“Political achievement cannot make legitimate questions disappear. Neither should legitimate questions be exaggerated beyond the evidence in order to invalidate everything that followed,” she said.
She contended that Tinubu’s political career itself constituted a substantial body of evidence that should form part of any assessment of his leadership.
According to Audu, Tinubu’s emergence as President was the culmination of decades of political activity spanning the Senate, the pro-democracy struggle, Lagos State governorship, opposition politics and the formation of the political coalition that produced the All Progressives Congress (APC).
She argued that whatever judgment Nigerians might make about his politics, his ascent could not reasonably be described as accidental.
“His career was constructed over decades of alliances, defeats, negotiations, institution-building, political calculation and electoral contests,” she said.
Audu further argued that formal educational credentials, while important, were not the only evidence of political ability.
“Achievement is also evidence,” she declared, pointing to decisions, institutions, political coalitions, administrative systems and electoral contests as part of the evidence through which a political leader could be assessed.
She went as far as describing Tinubu as potentially possessing exceptional political ability, arguing that his decades-long political survival and eventual emergence as President demonstrated capabilities that could not be explained by certificates alone.
A major part of Audu’s argument focused on the Tinubu administration’s economic reforms, particularly the removal of the petrol subsidy and the reform of the foreign-exchange regime.
She acknowledged that the reforms had imposed significant costs on Nigerians, with inflation, food insecurity and the rising cost of living becoming major concerns.
Independent assessments have similarly recorded both gains and significant social pressures. In its June 2026 Article IV assessment, the International Monetary Fund said reforms over the previous three years had strengthened Nigeria’s macroeconomic stability and resilience, while also warning that conditions remained difficult for many Nigerians. The IMF estimated poverty at 63 per cent and said 27 million Nigerians had faced food insecurity in late 2025.
The IMF also said the ending of fuel subsidies, cessation of deficit monetisation, tighter monetary policy and exchange-rate liberalisation had reduced fiscal vulnerabilities, rebuilt external buffers and improved foreign-exchange market functioning.
At the same time, the Fund called for stronger social protection, greater fiscal transparency and accountability, and reforms in areas including electricity, agriculture, infrastructure, security and human capital.
For Audu, the mixed record reinforces rather than undermines the need for a more nuanced assessment of Tinubu’s presidency.
“A reform may be economically consequential and socially painful,” she said, arguing that Nigerians should be capable of recognising both dimensions simultaneously.
Audu’s central argument was that Tinubu’s controversial biography and his political achievements should be examined together rather than treated as mutually exclusive narratives.
“History is not acquittal, history is accumulation,” she declared.
She cautioned against what she described as two opposing approaches: portraying the President as beyond criticism on one hand, and treating every controversy surrounding him as sufficient to invalidate his entire political career on the other.
“Biography should be scrutinised, his government should be criticised where evidence warrants criticism, and his achievements should be subjected to precisely the same evidentiary standard and commendation,” she said.
Her remarks echo a broader defence of the administration’s reform agenda. In July, the State House reported calls at a City Boy Movement national retreat for sustained public support and grassroots engagement around the Federal Government’s reforms.
Audu ultimately made the strongest claim of her intervention by declaring Tinubu “Nigeria’s greatest president to date”, a political assessment that remains her stated position rather than an independently established historical fact.
The broader question raised by her intervention, however, is whether Tinubu’s eventual place in Nigerian history will be determined primarily by the controversies surrounding his past, the immediate hardships associated with his reforms, or the longer-term institutional and economic consequences of his presidency.