By Lasisi Olagunju
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 27 January, 2025)
Two major projects were announced in Abuja last week: a polytechnic and a military barracks. Both were named after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I thought the president would say no to such fawning sycophancy. But no. He appears to love it. He actually sat and presided over the inauguration and naming of the barracks.
A man goes to the stream to bathe and all maidens of the village struggle to be his wife or at least his mistress. That is the fortune of our president today; every loin scrambles for his hood. A sycophancy championship is afoot. If I were the president, I would be afraid and worried. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was offered the crown three times, and three times he rejected it. Yet, that gesture was used to consummate a conspiracy against him.
Niger State governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago, about this time last year, was overwhelmed by his love for our president. The governor looked up, he looked down, he thought of how best to sujada to the father of the nation. He raced to the airport in Minna and yanked off its recently printed name. The airport belongs to the Federal Government but the Niger governor told Tinubu’s TVC that in appreciation of the president’s magnanimity, he thought the only way his state could celebrate him (Tinubu) “for now” was to name that airport after him. Governor Bago said: “I sat down with my stakeholders, we got his (Tinubu’s) consent and his approval and here we are.”
Just nine months earlier, the place was named Dr Abubakar Imam Kagara International Airport. Abubakar Imam (1911-1981) was a writer and pioneer in journalism in Nigeria. He edited Nigeria’s first Hausa language newspaper, Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo in 1939. Naming the airport after him in June 2023 was thought appropriate and fit. But by March 2024, the airport had another naming ceremony. It became Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Airport. Bago said Imam’s name had been given to a polytechnic since he was more a scholar. If I would be a bad boy, I would have used that point to ask Bago if he renamed the airport after Tinubu as a confirmation that the president is a frequent traveller.
The president did not see anything wrong in his name being connected with such a change with such an argument. He was at the unveiling event in Minna to “commission the remodeled and upgraded terminal.” Tinubu was less than ten months in power when that honour fell on his shoulders. A commenter told BBC pidgin that time: “If na me be President Tinubu, I no go even accept di change of name.” Fortunately for Governor Bago and his stakeholders, Tinubu wasn’t that person.
Many more of such ‘recognitions’ will roll in for our president now that the world knows what tickles our Daddy.
Someone looked at all the frenzy and ‘feverity’ of last week in Abuja, and combined them with last year’s one in Minna, and suggested that we do something more monumental: we should change the name of our country to Tinubu Kingdom. Another suggested an amendment: ’empire’ would be more appropriate. An emperor presides over an empire.
They may be right. If IBB, the man who built Abuja, had been as smart and quick and alert as this president, the Presidential Villa would by now be called Ibrahim Babangida House; or the city itself named IBB City. But the smart General was slack; he missed that opportunity to house every subsequent president in his ‘house’ and city. And if each of Tinubu’s other predecessors had been as alive as the incumbent, the FCT and the 36 state capitals would by now be galleries of their names and labels. But they were all like Babangida – too shy, or too careful – to do what Napoleon now does.
And, why not change Abuja, our federal capital’s name to Tinubu? After all, the Liberian capital, Monrovia, is named after James Monroe, America’s fifth president who pioneered the creation and colonization of Liberia. Monrovia, until 1824, was known as Christopolis. It was originally created in 1822 by Monroe and his friends as a solution to the problem of having too many blacks in their United States. We have a local example. Port Harcourt, our garden city, owes its identity to the name of Sir Lewis Harcourt, the British Secretary of State for the colonies who approved and supervised the amalgamation that birthed Nigeria.
There are more ancient local examples that will strengthen our argument for a total, comprehensive and permanent immortalisation of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. And it is significant that these positive vibrations are coming from northern Nigeria where there are plenty of points to pick from history. History says Daura, the spiritual home of Hausa people, is named after a woman, Magajiya Daurama, the ninth queen of that town. History adds that even the city called Katsina is named after a princess of Daura named Kacinna. There is a major town in Jigawa State called Hadejia. Hadejia is a toponym derived from the names of a hunter and his wife who founded the town. Their respective names were Hade and Jiya. We can use these examples to promote our next motion that the FCT should become the next addition to our president’s honour. For regional balancing, I wanted similar examples from Yorubaland to bolster our argument but I spent the whole of yesterday asking around if there was a traditional Yoruba town named after a human being, living or dead. I am still searching.
Tinubu as governor of Lagos State did not do these things for himself or for those who made him. Those he made in Lagos have not done so too for him. So, he is lucky Nigeria is bigger, more generous, more appreciative.
It is true that Abuja is not Lagos. The demons controlling the aura of both places are different in the virulence of their demands and expectations.
In ‘The Art of War’, Sun Tzu says “the superior man must be watchful over himself when he is alone.” Tinubu is the superior man here. You would think he would be “watchful over himself” from the assaults of sycophants and parasites. But no. He enjoys every bit of the game. He is too big to be bothered about external corruption and internal corruptive tendencies. A large mirror is placed before him everywhere he goes, and he loves the big, ‘beautyful’ something he sees in that mirror. So, why risk his anger by warning him about his nakedness? I also join my voice to the voices of his worshippers and adherents, people who say he is an idol.
If a man would be blind, my people warn such a person to be completely blind. Half-blind persons are perfect mongers of trouble. We can’t copy America’s presidential democracy without copying everything in and about it. The United States is currently savouring the sweetness in our sour soup: a lawmaker is proposing a third term for Donald Trump who started his second term just last week. America is fated to fall in love with the content of our shithole. We should reciprocate that love.
Give-me-I-give-you is what the toad croaks at the river bank. We should also go the American way by making idols of our presidents, past and present – particularly the present. Let us name our country and its capital, Abuja, after this hardworking Tinubu. Washington State and Washington DC in the United States are named after America’s first president, George Washington. Many of his worthy successors were similarly honoured with cities created in their names: There is the city of Lincoln in Nebraska named after Abraham Lincoln; There is Jackson in Mississippi named after Andrew Jackson; Jefferson City is in Missouri, the name honours Thomas Jefferson. There is also Madison in Wisconsin; it is named after President James Madison. We should not ask if these presidents did all these for themselves during the lives of their presidency. Except we are an ungrateful lot, our own president deserves honours as those that are sure to last beyond the end of the world. That is what an appreciative nation does.
An airport, a polytechnic and a barracks wearing the name of an incumbent president who is less than two years old in office is nothing. Those who did it have not done a tenth of what obtains in other countries of this continent. Hastings Kamuzu Banda was president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994 – thirty short years. I first came in contact with him and his ways in Jack Mapanje’s ‘Of Chameleons and Gods’ taught me by Funsho Aiyejina (God repose his soul). While he was alive, Banda got his name inscribed on everything he touched: roads, hospitals and schools and everything that would make him live forever. At his death, 14 May of every year was declared ‘Kamuzu Day’ in celebration of the life of the father of the nation. An attempt to denigrate his memory surfaced soon after his exit. A succeeding president, in a fit of madness, declared 14 June as ‘Freedom Day’ to mark the end of Banda’s dictatorship. That insult did not last beyond the next election. Banda’s spirit moved against that president and his place another took. Another president soon came to sanitise the memory of their lord and saviour. He cancelled the dirty ‘Freedom Day’. Banda’s name is on an international airport and on other national monuments. That is how countries show gratitude to their fathers.
Literature scholar, Reuben Makayiko Chirambo, in 2010 wrote a piece in ‘Africa Today’ on the memories “of the Father and Founder of the Malawi Nation, Dr. H. K. Banda.” He wrote that some of Banda’s supporters hailed him as Ngwazi which means ‘Conqueror’. Some others called him Nkhoswe – ‘guardian’, ‘protector’, ‘provider’. Yet, to a large number of others, he was simply “savior, messiah, father and founder of the nation.” Banda’s fanatics pronounced him Wamuyaya – meaning, president for life. When I read that, I wanted to say may that not be our portion in Nigeria. But I cautioned myself. That would have been a very subversive prayer. May my mouth not kill me.
For those who say that it is too early for Tinubu to start inscribing his name on our breasts and buttocks, they should go check Banda’s records. It is from Chirambo that we read that in 1963, one full year before Malawi got independence, Kamuzu Banda had already boasted that: “I am dictator of the people by consent . . . by permission.” He was that open and transparent even before he took full control of the country. Leaders who would be ‘father’ and ‘saviour’ of their nation don’t sneak in their dagger under their tunic. They come early in broad daylight clutching the flashing torch of narcissism. Banda did his dictatorship so well that a cowardly Malawian poet, Frank Chipasula, in 1981 wrote a poem from exile in celebration of the president. The title: ‘A Monument to a Tyrant’.” If we work hard enough, Banda can be our model. We will benefit from his memory.
But why are the president’s friends and fans making a Banda out of him? The old man can still get all the honour being dashed him later when he is done and is found to have done well with the power he has. Obafemi Awolowo, Murtala Muhammed, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa are some of the examples he can copy. But he is not looking the way of those legends. He has not done well by not stopping all sycophantic drooling around him. He is an elder who ought to know that there are implications and consequences for the wealthy who choose to eat salt according to the size of their wealth. The president’s morsel is in improper dalliance with soup that draws and soils the breast embroidery.
When a democracy grows old and wrong, it becomes an oligarchy. Someone said that in a democracy, the key actors are idolaters; in an oligarchy, they are idols. I know that in vain are all these lines and calls for sanity and moderation. Idolaters must worship their idols. So, I plead that if we all want to survive the courtiers of this president, all of us – journalists, lawyers, judges, lawmakers, law breakers and law enforcers – will perform one last duty. We should join voices and forces, rename our country, rebuild the Presidential Villa and the FCT and make all of them bear the name and logo of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He deserves the honour.
