When power rewrites memory and silence often masquerades as dignity, we must ask the question no one dares to voice aloud.
President Tinubu renovated the ICC and renamed it after himself. This is wrong because it was originally built by Babangida.How does a president renovate a building and rename it after himself when he didn’t build it in the first place?
A building conceived, funded, and completed during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. It was Babangida’s project, a crown jewel meant to reflect Nigeria’s diplomatic maturity and continental relevance. Tinubu merely renovated it. Yet now, the edifice carries his name, not as a footnote but as a headline. Why?
It is theft. Not of property, but of glory. Not of bricks, but of legacy.
In a nation where history is already a fragile thread, President Tinubu has taken a knife to what little we still remember by boldly renaming it.
This is not mere renovation,this is a symbolic robbery of legacy, a rewriting of credit, and a troubling metaphor for how Nigerian leaders see history, not as a sacred inheritance, but as a blank canvas to redraw in their own image.
We are not a nation unfamiliar with ego. But this move tears something deeper,our very sense of history. We are watching, yet again, as one man uses the machinery of state to elevate himself at the expense of truth. We are watching a leader treat national legacy like personal property, and no one dares to say the obvious.This is wrong. Immorally, institutionally, intellectually wrong.
While President Tinubu may have renovated the ICC, he did not birth it. That honour belongs squarely to General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose regime the landmark was built brick by brick, vision by vision.
But in Nigeria, memory is not a monument, it’s a target.
Is this how we reward legacy by rewriting it in favor of the present occupier?
When Babangida commissioned the ICC, he did so to create a neutral symbol for diplomacy, progress, and pan-African relevance. It was not named after him. That would have been unseemly. But today, a president who came decades later applies new paint and signs his name in bold. This isn’t just arrogance. It’s vandalism of the national story.
Nigeria has become a place where leaders do not build, they inherit and rename. They do not plant, they harvest and claim. And we, the people, conditioned by years of spectacle and sycophancy, cheer on as if this is normal. But it is not normal. It is theft disguised as achievement.
If Tinubu had constructed a brand-new conference centre from scratch, poured the foundation, carved out the vision, birthed a new structure then yes, let him name it what he will. But to take a public building built by another man, funded by public wealth, intended for all, and then slap your name on it? That’s not legacy. That’s graffiti.
What is more disturbing is the silence. The passivity. The intellectuals, the lawmakers, the architects of memory all quiet. Is it fear? Fatigue? Or have we simply accepted that in Nigeria, truth must always kneel before power?
Every time this happens, something precious dies. We tell our children lies. We distort the past. We reward audacity over accuracy. And slowly, our national memory begins to rot from the inside. A country that cannot honour its real builders will soon forget how to build at all.
Would Abraham Lincoln rename Mount Vernon because he once swept the lawn?
It is morally and historically wrong to take credit for what one did not build. This undermines the value of merit and hard work values Nigeria desperately needs.Monuments like the ICC are collective achievements, not trophies for personal glorification. Renaming them rewrites our story and breaks the continuity of our national soul.
In a democracy, public infrastructure belongs to the people not the president. Tinubu is a steward, not a king. To rename without consent is to act like an emperor, not a servant of the people.
This isn’t just about Babangida. It’s about principle. If it were Abacha, or Obasanjo, or Jonathan it wouldn’t matter. The point is, you do not take another man’s work and brand it as yours. That should be the most basic moral code of leadership. But here, even that is up for auction.
Let us not pretend this is an isolated case. Our leaders rename hospitals, airports, roads anything they can hang their egos on without shame or resistance. This is how they live forever, they think. Not through reform, or ideas, or courage, but through bronze plaques and billboards.
But legacy doesn’t work that way. You don’t inherit greatness by signing your name on a renovated wall. True legacy is earned, not etched.
This move should be reversed. It is not too late. Let the ICC retain its original identity. Let it remind us of when Nigeria, for all its flaws, still had a functioning sense of continuity. Let our leaders understand that the presidency is not a branding opportunity, it is a trust.
Tinubu still has the opportunity to prove that his administration can break this cycle. That he can respect the past while shaping the future. That he understands the difference between honour and hubris.
Because if every president walks into history with a can of paint and a chisel, what will be left of us? What happens when the truth has been renamed so many times, no one remembers what it ever was?
We lose more than monuments when this becomes our norm.The true measure of a leader is not how many monuments bear his name, but how many stand because of his vision. By taking what is not his, Tinubu may have built a shrine to himself but in doing so, he bulldozed a temple of truth.
We must demand laws that protect our national monuments from political rebranding. Nigeria is not a blank slate for each new leader to overwrite, it is a living history, and we must guard it jealously.
Tomorrow’s children will walk into the ICC and see Tinubu’s name. But they will never know who dreamed it, who built it, or what it once stood for unless we fight, today, to tell the truth.
Stephanie Sewuese Shaakaa is a university lecturer, public commentator, and advocate for truth in governance.
