Beyond akara leadership

Nigeria’s First Lady, Remi Tinubu, would be the subject of two fascinating books.  The longer one would be autobiographical, because nobody can tell her story, let alone in the detailed form I presume she would like it.

I imagine that the former Senator, one-quarter politician, one-quarter wife, one-quarter Aso Rock Quarterback and one-quarter writer and editor, could produce her manuscript in one night.

And that the book would be published the following day, given that her account would require no additional eyes.

On the presidential campaign trail in February 2023, she famously admitted having begged the wife of now Vice President Kashim Shettima for money.

But then, three months later, just days before her husband took the oath of office, she declared her family to be rich and not requiring the resources of the state.

And she is, according to her own accounts, a generous woman.  Various reports in the past three and a half years identify her with grants, scholarships, food relief, agricultural support, disaster relief, and support for elderly citizens and conflict victims.

In June 2026, she appeared to tweak her giving, offering politically targeted personal vehicles to APC women leaders in non-APC states.

Days later, she formally appeared to step into the Renewed Hope fairgrounds, perhaps to set the tone for the forthcoming election campaigns.

But it was her arrival in the pigsty, not the playpen she appeared to imagine: “We’re trying to give hope, and to start Akara business doesn’t take a lot of money,” she said. “To start roasting corn, or somebody even said kuli kuli doesn’t take much. We didn’t give them a loan; we gave it to them as a grant…

“I remember giving for TB. When I heard there were so many TB cases, I gave N2 billion. To breast cancer, I gave a billion. For food malnutrition, I gave half a billion…”

I know power and money can change people, particularly First Ladies, and make them lose perspective.

One recent First Lady, cornered with tens of millions of US dollars, said they were an assemblage of gifts.  Another one humiliated her police ADC publicly for failing to deliver billions in cash gifts he had allegedly collected on her account.

Mrs Tinubu can avoid that crossroads: the one where temptation crosses paths with temptation.  I could recommend strong, professional advisers, but I am not sure there is an answer to the question as to why anyone would listen to anyone less powerful or rich.

Nonetheless, Mrs Tinubu’s comments have seen Nigerians emptying their frustration upon her on social media.

The fundamental issue is her lack of clarity about who or what she is in Nigeria’s constitutional set-up.

The Office of the First Lady is simply a shorthand expression for whoever currently holds matrimonial, alias “other room”, chores.  It is a domestic location publicly identified.

It is certainly not a real office. The First Lady is not, and cannot be, elected by anyone, and she has no executive authority to appropriate, disburse, or administer public funds. She has neither location nor voice in the law.

What this means is that when Mrs Tinubu ventures outside the private quarters of Aso Rock and speaks about funds she has “provided,” she must choose the words that follow very carefully.  When she described her family as being “rich,” that was clearly referring to private resources.

Usually, when people like Warren Buffett or Aliko Dangote speak in the same way, the world can track the authority behind their words.

If the funds to which Mrs Tinubu says she is providing are public funds, were they appropriated by the National Assembly?

If so, through which ministry, department, or agency, and when?  Because that is what the law says.

If they are not, she is breaking the law. Being related to a public official does not make you one, and public funds are subject to full constitutional scrutiny, transparency, audit, and legislative oversight.

For emphasis: the constitution does not disburse power or funds to an unelected spouse to perform governmental functions without constitutional accountability.

I must also flag Mrs Tinubu’s tell-tale pronouns: she switches between “I” and “We” as if they are options from a government playbook.  When is she “we” and when is she “I”?  Someone owes Nigerians an important clarification, so we do not mix up church offerings with infrastructure funding, the Auditor-General will be querying three months from now.

And then we come to her diagnosis, which suggests that she has come to teach Nigerians resilience. Nigerians are among the hardest working people anywhere, as anyone who works or competes with them would testify, and as is evident within our borders.

Our privileged elite, particularly those for whom traffic is routinely halted so they can breeze by in their opulent 100-SUV convoys, may be unaware, but Nigerians are not poor because they lack hustle. Nigerians are not hungry because they are lazy.

Nigerians are not unemployed because they have refused to sell things by the roadside. Nigerians are struggling because public policy has failed them.

A government cannot impose harsh economic reforms, preside over rising inflation, insecurity, currency instability, multiple taxation, poor electricity, collapsing purchasing power, and then tell citizens to go and trade by the roadside as if hardship is merely a motivational challenge.

To suggest roadside businesses as a national economic policy is condescension.

It is to walk through the battlefield and bayonet the injured.  What Nigerians need, and cry for, are public policies to set them free to live and work in dignity.

And this is what the APC feasted on to win the presidency 12 years ago.

The party called it the APC Manifesto, but it betrayed Nigerians so profoundly that within two years of taking power in 2015, I labeled it a historic swindle.

Bola Tinubu appeared to agree that we were right.  In 2023, he launched his Renewed Hope Agenda, which was basically the APC manifesto sprinkled with local perfume.

Both documents sing and dance in the language of lions and tigers, but stink like mice and cockroaches.  As the government’s Renewed Hope review starkly demonstrated on its third anniversary just one month ago, Hope is a layer of lies atop a column of deception.

This is why a country of over 200 million people, many of whom are trained in some of the finest institutes worldwide, are being offered patronising roadside businesses on insecure streets.

We want our people to sit down and shut up rather than rise and conquer.

Let us be clear: charity cannot replace governance.

Nigerians are looking for governance, not tokenism. Offering shallow public palliatives while the elite spend billions on jets, yachts, SUVs, mansions and foreign travel and hurling no-bid contracts at friends is the same insult as throwing loaves of bread at hungry voters from moving trucks.

A graduate selling by the roadside because there are no jobs is not an economic success story.

A mother hawking under the sun because food prices have doubled is blackmail, not “empowerment.”

What are the Nigerian people asking for?  Leadership.  And it is not complicated.