In recent times, Nigerians have watched haplessly and helplessly, as our collective psyche has been pummelled by the raging controversy over whether the US District Court should or should not release President Tinubu’s drug trafficking related files.
Most well meaning Nigerians are horrified by the approach adopted by Tinubu and his lawyers in their filings, doing everything humanly possible to ensure that those files are not made public! But the more they try to prevent the release of the files at all cost, the more the clamour becomes that the contents of those 399 page files kept by the FBI must be made public. After all, the United States has touted itself all these years as the leader in the fight against the global drugs trade. It would therefore be counterproductive for the same United States justice system to be seen to be shielding the sitting President of the biggest black Nation on earth from facing justice for his shoddy past. The strong conviction is that those files will be ordered to be released when the case comes up again for determination on September 14th, 2026 before the US District Judge, because that is the only sensible thing to do!
It is instructive to note that President Tinubu has not attended the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for four consecutive years since becoming Nigeria’s President on May 29th 2023, apparently because of the huge soakaway baggage of criminality he knows he carries on this and other issues. One of the major duties of a President of any nation is to proudly project the image of their country on the world stage! There can be no bigger world stage than the UNGA, and for Nigeria to be missing in action on that stage because its President is in hiding due to accumulated moral baggage, is, to say the least, disheartening… Nothing makes a country assume a pariah status faster than this..
Recently, the former British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, resigned from his exalted position, barely two years after leading his Labour Party to a resounding victory at the general elections in the United Kingdom, for the simple reason that he was perceived to have lost his moral authority to govern. This is in spite of the fact that his tenure should have been five years, and the country still had a clear three years before the next general elections. In his place, the Labour Party elected Andy Burham who just got into the House of Commons, as Leader of the Labour Party and consequently, the British Prime Minister!
That could never happen in Nigeria, where, in a far graver crisis of confidence, President Tinubu insists on continuing in office for a second term of four years, even when he knows that he has lost every moral authority to govern. When a sitting President so totally and completely loses the moral authority to govern, as is currently the case in Nigeria, governance collapses on all fronts because the President’s instructions and orders do not have any force, only eliciting tongue in the cheek reactions from the citizenry!
President Tinubu must save Nigeria from further descent to perfidy by immediately resigning his appointment, to enable him go to the United States of America to answer his baggage of criminality, in a last minute effort to clear his name, if he has any left. This is the only sensible and honourable pathway left for him. Bravado and clandestine hiding away from the law and the dictates of the justice system will not cut it in the current bizarre circumstances.
Chief Madaki Omadachi Ameh is the convener of the Public Interest Advocacy Network (PIAN)
