By Lanre Adewole
JUST like the country he presides over, President Bola Tinubu looks run-down. The saying “like father, like son” is mainly pejorative but it will be factual saying “like Nigeria, like its leader”. But the majority of Nigerians aren’t asking after his health or showing concern for his well-being. They just want him to “deliver”.
But if the people are now expectant beyond empathy, blame the one who raised their hope to the mesosphere. He even said he wanted no pity because he asked for the job. Such hubris.
A friend of the president, very committed to his re-election, jokingly said “eniyan wa ti fi enu ja eran sobe ju” (our man, the president, overboasted). If you ask for no pity, then meet your self-imposed delivery deadlines. You won’t be qualified for understanding or patience for delayed results. Both require empathy and the one carrying the presidential weight said “don’t pity me”. So why are his surrogates demanding from the Nigerian people what their principal said he didn’t need? He was very confident he would hit legend stuff as Nigeria’s leader. Before the boast, he possibly studied the pitfalls of those before him and saw what they could have done differently for results. However, there is this joke about spectators always seeing checkmate moves in games, but their sight and insight shrivel the moment they climb the hot seat as players. The Yoruba will say gbogbo oya lo npe ara e lodu (everyone tags self the best), to warn against premature self-salute and the race further encourages consistent humility with the saying about the one who hasn’t seen real battles priding self a real man.
President Tinubu who glittered as a critic and opposition leader is grappling with an ashen face poor governance has left him in three years and even his close associates can feel the hostilities in the street and homes, towards him. If the current raging emotions in the land; North and South, persist till ballot day next year, no primate or mamalawo is needed to predict the president’s fate. But his own still hold he’s an electoral magician who regularly pulls the chestnut out of fire at the last minute. I wish the president’s camp well.
Regardless of his performance so far, Nigerians can’t be insensitive to his well-being. They vested him with the assignment and must be concerned about his total health if he must deliver; if just to ensure there is no window for excuses.
His predecessor’s excuse was that he took the Presidency late in life. He was 73. Then the country went and elected a successor again at 71, which disputants are pointing to as football age. Three years into his presidency, his health has remained suspect, and he had undertaken as many missions abroad as his predecessor, with fewer full disclosures by the incumbent, being the difference. Truthfully, the former was of sterner quality than the current, though neither made their medical records public like presidents in first world countries who can’t hide theirs, even if they try.
Poor or total absence of accountability from leaders to their people especially in Africa, is age-long. Even the ones the Yoruba will call f’oni ku, f’ola dide (constantly ailing) won’t go beyond “paying a state visit” in explaining being wheeled off airport tarmacs and practically airlifted to America, Europe or Saudi. Some are even moved in wheelchairs! Yet they owe their people nothing in their thinking and those demanding, are branded enemies of the state that must be crushed.
Today, the oldest president in Africa is 93-year-old Cameroon’s Paul Biya. He was re-elected for the eighth term in October 2025 at 92. Incidentally, he is also the oldest country leader in the world.
The oldest president Nigeria has elected was Buhari. But one of the leading contenders for next year’s presidential election is poised to break that record. If former VP Atiku Abubakar is elected next year, he would be close to 80, taking office on May 29. He would be around 88 relinquishing the reins of power if he serves two terms. Even Atiku will be breaking the Biya record in a way; the Cameroon nonagenarian was a fresh-looking under-50 in 1982 when he transitioned from being prime minister under President Ahmadou Ahidjo to succeeding him. In Cameroon’s 66 years of existence as an independent nation, just two presidents have ruled it and one has been in charge for 44 years!
Its shouting-distance neighbour, Equatorial Guinea, bears a similar burden of geriatric sit-tightism, in the hands of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been ruling since 1979 as the second president of the parlous nation. In fact, in sit-tightism longevity, Mbasogo takes the world record, though second to Biya in the oldest rulers’ metric. Mbasogo is the world’s longest-serving leader, clocking 47 years in power this year. He is 83. Atiku will however also be beating him in taking office as a gerontocrat, if he dumps the president next year because the Equatorial Guinea leader took office at just 36!
President Tinubu, a clear front-runner to secure re-election, will be 75 next year and about 79, rounding off his second and final term in 2031. Peter Obi, the last of the trio with a real chance of becoming president in 2027, is 64 and would be just 65 taking office next year if election fortune smiles on him in the February poll. Doing eight years of two terms, will make him about 73 and if he sticks to his one-term promise to Northern Nigeria where power should swing after South’s eight years of which Tinubu is about completing four, he would be under 70, bowing out. He has a real chance of maturing into a statesman after presidential service, just like his “kinsman” Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. History awaits all of them.
Really, advancing in age before presidential sojourn, may not be the whole problem but it’s definitely a substantial part of the whole. Buhari testified to it. He wished he was younger than 73 in 2015 when presidential fortune found him. He mourned the age disadvantage, because he knew the advantage of youthful agility, vigour and vitality. He was once young as a chiselled, ramrod army officer. He even had a chance at national leadership at just 41 years and 14 days, to make a difference as a military dictator. He fumbled it. Even the challenged eyes could see his ineptness and intellectual brevity practically surrendered real leadership to his now-late deputy; Tunde Idiagbon. The clearest proof of Buhari being a titular head of state was the junta being toppled during the second of only two times Idiagbon was abroad in the 20 months the regime lasted. While the second visit to Saudi Arabia on Hajj pilgrimage was the last, the first trip was a year earlier in 1984, when he led a high-level government delegation to the then USSR, meeting with then Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko.
Aging or not, Buhari was, at all times, a leadership fiasco and prepping Nigerians for his imminent failures with ageism after taking office, is what the Yoruba will qualify as a filthy wife using her husband’s death as an excuse not to run a bath. The question is, was the unhygienic one bathing when husband was alive?
But age or more like aging (because much older famous people are still displaying a lot of agility including the Mbasogo man in Equatorial Guinea who is about 10 years older than the Nigerian leader), is likely a primary marker for President Tinubu’s debatable poor performance so far and this is not me doing the dog giving its puppy breast to suck while pouncing on cutlings of corpulent grasscutter for lunch (aja mo omo tire fun lomu, o mo todu oya ki mole) thing. With Buhari, a self-identified non-performer now enjoying a relishing nostalgia with some Nigerians when juxtaposed with the incumbent and considering he was the older of the duo at their presidential entry points, the age argument won’t favour my kinsman.
But aging, should.
Science describes aging as “the progressive, natural deterioration of biological functions over time. It leads to structural and physical changes, an increased risk of chronic diseases and cellular senescence—when cells stop dividing”.
When Tinubu was Jonathan’s nightmare as the leader of the opposition, vibrancy wasn’t lacking in him, always jabbing the administration animatedly. But during the Buhari years, something biologically inclement would appear to have befallen the former Lagos governor so much so that his campaign for president produced hilarious but painful-to-watch-for-alajobi memes and crude internet jokes. As he accepted his party’s nomination, his barely controllable hand jerks were too noticeable to miss. Now, the president is rarely seen publicly doing the job and also MIA at optically significant political events. For someone who needs to market his deeds to the electorate though the campaign hasn’t officially kicked off?
What’s really up?
Except someone with compromised faculties, no one comes into a job as prestigious and powerful as the Nigerian presidency, to fail, especially someone as addictive to power, control and legacy as the President. So we should believe he’s doing his humanly possible to fix the country and renew our hope in Nigeria’s tomorrow. But there is a limit to what anyone ailing bodily can do, no matter how bright the mind remains. Buhari returned from his London doctors and told the country he was advised to sleep more. That was a commander-in-chief no longer available for emergencies! And it would be foolish for him to disregard the doctors’ advice! At least he would need to be alive to be C-in-C! For his successor, we don’t even know what his doctors told him!
The post Let’s Pray for the President! appeared first on NgBreakingNews.com.
