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Tinubu to Obasanjo: You’re a hypocrite! Nigeria’s father of bad leadership
President Bola Tinubu, on Monday, returned fire to Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former President, two days after the latter all but blamed him for the critical state the country has found itself, accusing the former military Head of State of hypocrisy and lacking in moral position to criticise any of his successors, given his own bad records.
On Saturday, Obasanjo, the Keynote Speaker at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, accused Tinubu of driving the country towards a failed state similar to Somalia and Yemen, due to his penchant for corruption and anti-people behaviours.
Hear him: “As we can see and understand, Nigeria’s situation is bad. The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more the nation sinks into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment.
“That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity.”
But in his clapback, Tinubu, via Bayo Onanuga, his spokesman, listed a surfeit of all that were bad during the tenure of the former President, who holds the record of Nigeria’s longest serving leader with a record of 11 years, having added eight years tenure to his three years as military Head of State, insisting that the dismal outing was partly what the country was suffering today.
Full text of Tinubu’s reply, read: “In a recent display of his characteristic self-importance, former President Olusegun Obasanjo once again took to the public stage to bestow his unsolicited wisdom on leadership and governance in Nigeria. From his lofty perch, he blamed those who served after his tenure for the nation’s myriad challenges.
“Unfortunately, the former leader’s habit of casting aspersions on every subsequent administration has devolved into a recurring pastime, overshadowing the expectation of an elder statesman to join a constructive dialogue on attaining national progress.
“In his latest critique of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he pejoratively called ‘Baba Go Slow’ and President Bola Tinubu, who he tagged ‘Emilokan’, Chief Obasanjo used the platform provided by Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum at Yale University to unfurl his latest treatise on leadership and public morality. He also used the forum to write off Nigeria as a failing country.
“The irony of Chief Obasanjo using the platform that celebrates Achebe to sermonise on the ideals of good governance, statecraft, economic management, and corruption should be apparent to discerning minds. When he was alive, Chinua Achebe was a universally acclaimed moral, cultural and literary icon with scant regard for Obasanjo.
“It is on record that Professor Achebe rejected the third highest national honour bestowed on him by the Obasanjo-led administration in 2004 on the grounds of the prevalence of abuse of power, corruption, poor leadership, and, in particular, state-sponsored brigandage endorsed by Chief Obasanjo in Achebe’s home state of Anambra. In Anambra, the former president actively supported the abduction of a sitting governor, Dr Chris Ngige, by non-state actors led by Chris Uba, a younger brother of Obasanjo’s senior aide.
“In rejecting the 2004 national honour by the Obasanjo administration, Achebe declared: “Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is…too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 honours list.”
“Brazen illegality and assault on the Constitution of Nigeria reached a disturbing height under the leadership of Chief Obasanjo. “During Obasanjo’s era, the unconstitutional impeachment of four governors who belonged to his party occurred. The governors impeached by minority members of the Houses of Assembly were Joshua Dariye of Plateau, Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo, Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa. A man under whose watch all of these egregious infractions occurred should certainly not be the one to give any lecture on leadership and corruption. He should not be taken seriously as he reeks of profound hypocrisy of the worst form.
“Former President Obasanjo has continuously pumped himself up as the economic wizard of Nigeria. But a reality check showed he was nothing of such. He left unresolved many, if not all, of the problems of Nigeria, which he itemised in his lecture.
“He even recently admitted that his government made a mistake by not focussing on gas development, as the Tinubu administration does today. All oil and gas players know that Nigeria has more gas than oil. The only positive of the Obasanjo era was fiscal and monetary policy management buoyed by a consistent rise in crude oil prices throughout his eight-year tenure.
“This rise in crude oil prices started in 2000 and peaked in 2013 when it reached over 100 dollars per barrel before a decline in 2014, which set the oil-dependent economy downward. The current economic crisis the All Progressives Congress administrations have been battling since 2015 is the product of the poor choices in economic management made by Obasanjo and the two successors from his party.
“Obasanjo prides his government on paying the $15 billion debt owed to the Paris Club. Still, it was not a wise decision as it was done when the country’s critical economic infrastructure across sectors was in shambles.
“While oil receipts brought money into the country, Obasanjo failed to fix the deplorable federal roads or expand the national road network. He did not repair the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the Lagos-Abeokuta road leading to his hometown in Abeokuta, the Otta-Idiroko road, and many others.
“His administration also should have paid more serious attention to universities and polytechnics. In a joint vote of no confidence in our tertiary institutions, Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, sought to profit from their weaknesses by establishing their private universities.
“As a sitting President, Chief Obasanjo abused his office to advance personal interest against the spirit and letters of our constitution when he corralled leading businessmen, women and government contractors to donate billions of naira for his Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library and Resorts in Abeokuta and his Bell University in Otta.
“After wasting billions of naira on a failed third-term project in 2007, Chief Obasanjo hurriedly organised a sham electoral process that would go down in history as the most fraudulent election held in Nigeria since 1960. The beneficiary of the sham election, Umaru Yar’adua, admitted that the election was seriously flawed and, as Justice Muhammed Uwais’s panel recommended, worked towards electoral reforms.
“It is hypocrisy writ large when a man who presided over the worst election in Nigeria demands the sack of the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
“For eight years, the Obasanjo administration made no significant investment in security by modernising the Armed Forces. He did not redesign the national security architecture or change the military doctrine. The most critical investment in our armed forces, especially the military, since the administration of President Shehu Shagari in 1980 was made by the APC-led administration of President Buhari from 2015-2023.
“When President Buhari assumed office in 2015, the Air Force had fewer than three serviceable fighter jets, and the Navy barely had one serviceable vessel. Within eight years, President Buhari acquired over 40 new fighter jets of different capabilities, including 12 Tucano jets.
“He also acquired naval ships to strengthen the Navy. The APC administration of Buhari developed the air wings of the Army and Navy and changed the entire Armed Forces into one of the most potent fighting forces in the world.
“President Tinubu has continued to sustain the same support and funding to the military and other security agencies. It is the reason the country is winning in the multi-pronged fight against Boko Haram terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, and other perpetrators of violent crimes.
“In the last year, over 400 terror and bandit kingpins have been eliminated, and thousands of Nigerians have been freed from their abductors. The insecurity that engulfed Nigeria started under the Obasanjo administration with militancy and kidnapping of expatriate oil workers in the Niger Delta, which later became a festering wound from which the nation has not recovered. Boko Haram, which became a violent movement in 2009, began its build-up under Obasanjo’s regime.
“On matters of integrity, honesty, and morality in public leadership, Chief Obasanjo is certainly not a paragon of virtue for anyone to model after. Nigerians can still remember the messy public spat between Chief Obasanjo and his then-vice president, Atiku Abubakar, over PTDF money that led to a Senate Public Hearing in 2004.
“The sordid details of the public hearing included unsettling evidence of how Obasanjo instructed his Vice President to buy Sport Utility Vehicles for his mistresses with PTDF funds. There was also the Halliburton bribe scandal, which the US Congress probe revealed. Bribe payments were made to the highest political authorities at the Villa while Obasanjo was in charge.
“Nigerians will also remember how the Obasanjo administration invested $16 billion on electricity, which left the country in utter darkness. The colossal amount spent on power was so embarrassing that President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s successor, ordered a probe. Similarly, Obasanjo’s privatisation programme was scandalous. It did not deliver real value for the country.
“His administration cheaply sold national assets to cronies who stripped the assets of the state-owned enterprises. A case in point was the aluminium smelter company ALSCON in Ikot-Abasi, Akwa-Ibom State, built by the military government at the princely sum of $ 3.2 billion. It was sold for 130 million dollars. Obasanjo also sank money into Turn Around Maintenance of our refineries, which never worked, leading to the massive importation of refined petroleum products.
“Such was the miasma of corruption under Obasanjo that the former governor of Abia, Orji Uzor Kalu, his party member, petitioned the EFCC, accusing Obasanjo of gross abuse of office.
“If Chief Obasanjo had addressed the many problems he critiqued in his poorly written Yale lecture when he ruled Nigeria for eight years, President Buhari and President Tinubu would have had a much lighter burden of fixing the country.
“While the Tinubu administration diligently works to overcome the country’s economic challenges, it would be better and more advisable for former President Obasanjo to temper his self-righteousness in his public discussions regarding our nation’s temporary difficulties. Instead, his remaining years would be better spent reflecting on the missed opportunities during his own time in leadership, both as military head of state and civilian president.”
Atiku Abubakar seventh attempt at the presidency has been halted by the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which held that David Mark is not the fit and proper person to assume the position of the National Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) – the camp that produced the former Vice President as candidate of the party.
Hours after the former VP, who had attempted the bid for the nation’s number one job and is on the seventh edition by virtue of his nomination for the 2027 presidential election by the Mark, agreed with the position of the Federal High Court, Abuja, restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from recognising or participating in any state congresses organised by the former Senate President.
Justice Okon Abang, while reading the lead-judgement in the three-to-one split, said there was no reason for the appellate court to set aside the April 29 order by the lower court, adding that Justice Joyce Abdulmalik, who barred Mark and his executives from interfering with the tenure and functions of the party’s elected state executives, was in order.
Agreeing that the responsibility for conducting state congresses of political parties rested with elected state executive committees and not with the national leadership, he ordered INEC not to recognise the executive produced as a result of the defective process.
Though his position was echoed by Donatus Okorowo in the majority, Justice Abba Mohammed, who disagreed sharply, with a dissenting judgment, held that the case that precipitated the restraining order bordered on a non-justiciable internal affair of a political party, adding that lower court was wrong to have assumed jurisdiction to entertain the matter.
By Ken Harries Esq
Some speeches disappear with the applause that greets them. Others acquire greater force with the passing of time. Their words do not change; history simply grows into them. Years later, they resonate with fresh power, not because they have been rewritten, but because the nation has finally arrived at the realities they foresaw.
One such speech was delivered in April 2012 at the 2nd South South Economic Summit in Asaba. There, Senator Godswill Akpabio, then Governor of Akwa Ibom State, presented what many regarded as an ambitious vision for maritime corridor and blue economy development.
Speaking before political leaders, investors, and development stakeholders at the 2nd South South Economic Summit in Asaba, Akpabio outlined what many regarded as an ambitious vision for a model state in particular and regional development in general. Long before the Ibom Deep Seaport became a national priority, he argued that Nigeria needed new maritime gateways, integrated industrial clusters, aviation maintenance facilities, and modern logistics infrastructure to unlock economic growth. His vision was not simply about building a port; it was about creating an economic ecosystem capable of transforming a region and strengthening the nation’s competitiveness.
Fourteen years later, those remarks read less like political advocacy and more like an economic blueprint whose underlying logic has steadily been vindicated by events and times. Looking back today, his address appears almost prophetic—not because it predicted the future in mystical terms, but because Nigeria has gradually grown into the ideas it contained.
Truly visionary speeches never fade; they gather strength with time. This one deserves renewed attention, not because every prediction has materialised exactly as envisioned, but because it reveals a quality increasingly scarce in public leadership: the ability to think beyond electoral cycles.
Nigeria has never lacked projects. What it has often lacked are leaders willing to imagine the infrastructure of tomorrow while grappling with the demands of today. Akpabio’s vision was shaped by precisely that instinct.
At a time when public discourse was largely focused on roads and recurrent expenditure, he spoke instead of logistics corridors, industrial ecosystems, aviation maintenance, manufacturing clusters, export processing zones, maritime and blue economy opportunities, and security reform—not as isolated initiatives, but as interconnected pillars of national competitiveness.
His vision for the then proposed Ibaka Deep Seaport, now known as the Ibom Deep Seaport, best illustrates this broader philosophy. Rather than presenting it as another state prestige project, he framed it as a strategic response to structural inefficiencies in Nigeria’s maritime sector and the wider economy. He argued that the Lagos ports were already burdened by severe congestion, with vessels waiting for extended periods to berth, driving up costs, disrupting supply chains, and delaying the delivery of critical imports, including pharmaceuticals.
His objective, however, was never to rival Lagos, but to complement it. The distinction is fundamental. No major trading nation concentrates all its strategic maritime infrastructure within a single corridor. Successful economies spread capacity, ease bottlenecks, and create multiple gateways through which commerce can flow efficiently. Nigeria has long recognised this principle in policy documents; Akpabio was among the few public leaders articulating it so clearly more than a decade ago.
Equally significant was his emphasis on geography. He reminded his audience that Ibaka possessed a naturally deep coastline requiring little or no dredging, with water depths of approximately fifteen to seventeen metres. According to his account, the location had been identified as suitable for a deep seaport as far back as 1963, yet decades passed without meaningful progress. His observation that “being a minority area, there was nobody to push it” reflected a broader concern that strategic national investments have too often been influenced by political considerations rather than economic merit.
Whether one agrees entirely with that assessment is, in many respects, secondary. The larger point is that Akpabio consistently argued that national infrastructure should be driven by economic logic, strategic necessity, and long-term national interest rather than sentiment or political convenience. More than a decade later, that remains a lesson Nigeria is still striving to learn.
Yet, to see the 2012 Asaba address merely as a speech about a deep seaport is to miss its larger significance. The Ibom Deep Seaport was never presented as an end in itself. It was conceived as the anchor of a much broader economic ecosystem—a platform around which industries, manufacturing, aviation, logistics, free trade, and investment could flourish.
Akpabio envisioned the acquisition of about 14,000 hectares of land to support a self-sustaining industrial city comprising fertiliser and ammonia plants, refining capacity, manufacturing facilities, and a Free Trade Zone. What development economists today describe as industrial clustering was already embedded in his thinking. The port was simply the gateway.
That broader vision deserves a discussion of its own. Today, Ibom Deep Seaport in that Asaba Speech has berthed.
•Ken Harries Esq is an Abuja-based Development Communication Strategist.
Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja, on Monday, granted allowed Uche Nnaji former Minister of Science and Technology, to go home, on the condition of a N20million bail bond.
Nnaji, who was arrested at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja on July 1 by officials of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Offences Commission (ICPC), while returning to Abuja, was granted bail after pleading not guilty to a six-count certificate forgery charge.
The anti-corruption agency alleged that Nnaji, Minister of Science and Technology between August 16, 2023 and October 6, 2025, when he resigned office after a crisis regarding his university degree broke out is currently the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu for in the 2027 general election, squaring up against Peter Mba, the incumbent, who incidentally won his office in 2023 under the same PDP, before defecting to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
He was accused of forging his academic credentials, especially a degree certificate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) alongside presenting a bogus National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate during his ministerial screening process in 2023.
At the proceedings on Monday, the former Minister pleaded not guilty to the charges, and following an application by James Onoja (SAN), his lawyer, was granted to bail in the sum of N20 million with one surety in the like sum, who must also be a civil servant resident in Abuja, not be below grade level 15.
The court, which ordered the surety to depose to an affidavit of means, mandated the former Minister to also surrender his international passport and not travel outside the country without permission, while fixing September 21 for the commencement of the trial.
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