TINUBU NOMINATED DEAD SENATOR AS ENVOY TO HEAVEN OR HELL? By Barrister Solomon Dalung
The latest blunder from the presidency has reinforced what many Nigerians have long suspected: the governance crisis confronting our nation has clearly overwhelmed President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. For years, many inflated his political mystique, branding him Jagaban, genius strategist, Lagos magician, and the all-powerful Emiloko priest. These epithets fed a cult of entitlement that outpaced both competence and reality.
To be fair, Tinubu’s rise to power was not accidental. He meticulously planted political structures across Lagos, tightened his grip on the South-West, and finally fused his machinery with other parties to form the All Progressives Congress (APC). When the APC captured power in 2015, he positioned himself as the party’s de facto leader, challenging even the traditions of President Muhammadu Buhari. The rewards of victory were shared between Tinubu’s ACN and Buhari’s CPC, leaving other merger partners to scramble for leftovers.
Tinubu secured the vice presidency, ministerial seats, including the powerful Ministry of Power, Works and Housing under Babatunde Fashola, and strategic agencies for his loyalists. It became common knowledge that major contracts and patronage within those ministries and agencies were cornered by companies aligned with him. Yet, even with these privileges, Jagaban’s appetite remained insatiable. His sense of entitlement, constantly massaged by a chorus of sycophants, grew into an exaggerated self-belief.
This arrogance was on display in 2023 when he dismissed public debates, snubbed critical scrutiny, and proclaimed “Emiloko”, meaning it is my turn. For him, democratic power was not a mandate to earn but a trophy to seize. As he once infamously declared, “Power is not served a la carte; you grab it and run away with it.” But after grabbing power in one of Nigeria’s most controversial elections, he has found himself unable to run away with governance.
Every crisis he claimed to have inherited has worsened, from economy, security, national cohesion, political stability, all collapsing like a stack of cards. Corruption, nepotism, injustice, abuse of due process, and raw incompetence now suffocate our national life. The once-boastful Jagaban now appears humbled into a confused and rudderless character.
The embarrassment reached a new low when President Tinubu nominated the late Senator Adamu Talba of Yobe State as an ambassadorial nominee. When a government begins appointing the dead, it suggests a presidency running on empty, grasping for wisdom so desperately that it is now sending envoys to the afterlife, whether to seek intervention in heaven or to negotiate with hell.
Yet, where are the orchestra of gatekeepers, Bayo Onanuga, Daniel Bwala, Sunday Dare, and Gbajabiamila, the high priests of propaganda who once shielded the Jagaban’s excesses? Even the Senate President read out the ambassadorial list without noticing a deceased nominee, further revealing the calibre of individuals presiding over our leadership space.
Nigeria today drifts on autopilot while the captain slumbers, lulled by the praise-songs of charlatans. The nation deserves better than a government that cannot distinguish the living from the dead.