President Tinubu’s Delusions of Grandeur & Detachment from Nigeria’s Economic Crisis

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

Excerpt from President Tinubu’s address of members of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organization in China (NIDO China).

The country is going through a very tough phase of reform. And this reform is taking a very bold and hard decision. For example, you might be hearing from home in recent times about fuel prices… You see their good roads here. You see electricity being constant. What is the critical path to pave the way forward… Mine is to provide the leadership, and I’m committed to that.

President Tinubu’s address to Nigerians residing in China during his recent trip reveals a bewildering detachment from the struggles, pains, and frustrations of ordinary Nigerians amidst an economic crisis, unprecedented in recent memory. His tone, laced with an unnecessary swagger more befitting the announcement of success and victory, rather than expansion of multidimensional poverty, shows a deep insensitivity and disdain for the plight of his fellow citizens.

His choice of the words, “The country,” inadvertently distances him from the vast majority of the people he governs, in sharp contrast to what one might expect from a leader who, in the same speech, declared a “commitment to leadership to pave the way” towards economic recovery and growth.

Instead of invoking a sense of unity with “Our country,” Tinubu’s words, “The country,” delivered with typical swagger in his voice felt more akin to “Your country,” as if he were a mere observer rather than an integral part of the nation experiencing these hardships.

In the weeks preceding Tinubu’s China visit, Nigeria faced debilitating fuel scarcity and skyrocketing prices, yet he maintained a deafening silence. One might have hoped his first public address would acknowledge these hardships, expressing solidarity with Nigerians, urging them to please stay the course, and reaffirming a message of “we are in this together.” Sadly, no such assurance was offered, nor was there a glimpse into his administration’s roadmap for relief.

Instead, Tinubu, in both body language and tone, chose to dissect the issues with clinical detachment, as if he were a researcher discussing a foreign subject on Al Jazeera. Completely missing from his ramblings about “seeing, yes, seeing the steady supply of water and electricity in China and finding the critical path forward” was any mention of what the government is doing to address the immediate challenges of fuel scarcity and the daily pump price increase.

His insensitivity and aloofness during this address echo the obliviousness of Nero’s fiddling. Indeed, if a leader’s insensitivity were an Olympic event, his China performance would have earned him a gold medal.

His recent woeful performance in China is reminiscent of a similarly dismal display in France while addressing a comparable group: Nigerians in the diaspora. This emerging pattern is disturbing for two reasons.

Firstly, his China performance raises serious questions about President Tinubu’s understanding of the challenges Nigerians face and, more troublingly, his commitment to serving the people’s best interests.

The dissonance between his triumphant tone rather than that of sober reflection more befitting of the current crisis further highlights a disconnect that is as bewildering as it is appalling.

Secondly, and perhaps far more disturbing, is what his performance on two successive occasions before Nigerians in the diaspora suggests. It raises the question of whether he suffers from delusions of grandeur.

In France, President Tinubu boasted about his inauguration day speech, claiming it did not initially contain the contentious issue of fuel subsidy removal—a claim that is untrue—and that his aides had advised him against addressing it. Despite this, he portrayed himself as being “possessed with the courage” to declare the end of the era of fuel subsidy.

Contrary to his self-aggrandizing narrative, the prepared speech actually contained a paragraph devoted to the issue of fuel subsidy, making his embellishment during his interaction with diaspora Nigerians in France both unnecessary and contradictory to the continuation of fuel subsidies in his administration. This not only fuels distrust of the government but also suggests a possible detachment from the realities faced by the Nigerian people, potentially stemming from delusions of grandeur.

The silver lining is that all the issues discussed above pertain more to leadership style, body language, and communication rather than substantive policy. However, that doesn’t diminish the importance of effective messaging in building public trust and support.

Although there is currently no credible, realistic alternative to Tinubunomics, even the most well-crafted policies— such as Tinubu’s fiscal and monetary plans intended to steer Nigeria back to sustainable socio-economic growth—can be undermined by a leader’s actions and demeanor. After all, successful brands like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Samsung continue to invest in advertising, recognizing that substance alone is never enough.

The challenge with Tinubunomics lies not in the policies themselves, but in President Tinubu’s tendency to inadvertently demarket and devalue his own policy initiatives through his unempathetic, self-aggrandizing rhetoric.

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