There is a peculiar kind of political amnesia that afflicts Nigeria’s elite class. It tends to worsen the moment a leader they once demonized exits the stage and their anointed successor proves incapable of delivering even a fraction, let alone 10 percent, of the good governance record of the very leader whose achievements they so readily dismissed or disparaged.
For the better part of a decade, the airwaves and newspaper columns of Nigeria were filled with thunderous condemnations, righteous, blistering, and relentless, against former President Goodluck Jonathan. Corruption, incompetence, insecurity, and economic mismanagement were the daily chorus. They pecked at him from every direction, ceaselessly, as hawks descending on prey. Yet today, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a staggering silence has descended. The same beaks that once drew blood have gone mute. And the question that every Nigerian should be asking is: “Where are the hawks that pecked Jonathan?”
Let us be clear: no leader is above criticism, and former President Jonathan faced his fair share of justified scrutiny. The $2.1 billion arms procurement scandal, the sluggish response to the Chibok girls’ kidnapping, and the infrastructure decay of the time were legitimate concerns. However, the ferocity of the attacks from certain quarters, especially from northern governors, opposition politicians, and Lagos-based intellectuals, Afro musicians, human rights activists and even highly revered clergies was not merely about accountability. It was political blood sport. At one point, they converged at Ojota in Lagos to ensure that Jonathan was chased out from Aso Rock. Some mischievous ones among them even displayed mock coffin to ridicule him. They called Jonathan weak, directionless, and a “clueless” leader. They claimed he was ruining the economy, destroying the civil service, and turning Nigeria into a laughingstock. Every day brought a new peck, a fresh wound, another headline screaming for his head.
, Fast forward to today. Where are those hawks now? Many of them are either serving in the Tinubu administration or defending it with a devotion that borders on sycophancy. Nigeria is facing its worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. Fuel subsidies were removed overnight, sending transport and food prices into the stratosphere. The naira has floated and crashed, losing over 60% of its value. Inflation hovers above 30%, though they claim it is now below 20% and over 100 million Nigerians are estimated to live below the poverty line. Insecurity has not vanished; it has simply mutated into banditry, kidnappings, and farmer-herder clashes continue unabated in the North-West and North-Central. The student loan scheme, a signature reform, has struggled with implementation. Meanwhile, the president’s frequent medical trips abroad and a cabinet widely described as “super-sized but underperforming” have drawn little more than a shrug from those who once howled at Jonathan’s every misstep. The silence is deafening.
Take, for instance, the case of certain former governors and opposition leaders from the North. Under Jonathan, they routinely accused him of nepotism and incompetence. They staged protests, issued press statements, and even threatened that the North would be “unmanageable” if he remained in power. They pecked at his ethnic heritage, his perceived weakness, and every policy decision he made. Today, many of those same figures either have family members in Tinubu’s government or have forged political alliances that preclude any serious criticism. The silence is so profound that one could mistake the current economic hardship for normalcy. When Jonathan was in power, a spike in tomato prices would have been a national scandal, with the hawks circling and pecking furiously. Now, with food inflation at nearly 40%, these same critics speak of “long-term reforms” and “necessary pain.” Where are the hawks? They have found better things to do, like holding onto power.
This selective outrage reveals a deeper sickness: the instrumentalization of accountability for political gain. For many prominent Nigerians, condemnation was never about principles or the welfare of the masses. It was a weapon. When Jonathan held the presidency, he was an easy target, he was from the minority Ijaw ethnic group, his political structure was weak, and his opponents had a clear ethnic and religious narrative to rally around. He was vulnerable, and so the hawks pecked mercilessly. But Tinubu, for all his current struggles, is a master strategist. He has co-opted or neutralized most of his rivals. He has built a sprawling political machine that dispenses patronage and silences dissent. The opposition is fragmented, and the civil society organizations that once thrived on anti-Jonathan funding have either been bought off or are now afraid of the government’s surveillance apparatus. The hawks have been tamed or bought.
What is most galling is the intellectual dishonesty. Many of these critics now argue that the current situation is “inherited” from the Buhari administration, conveniently forgetting that they spent eight years blaming Jonathan for every problem Buhari inherited. They demand “time” for Tinubu’s reforms to work, yet they gave Jonathan no such grace. Under Jonathan, a delay in addressing a crisis was proof of incompetence. Under Tinubu, the same delay is framed as “strategic patience.” The double standard is not merely frustrating; it is insulting to the intelligence of ordinary Nigerians who are struggling to afford a single meal a day. The hawks who pecked Jonathan for not moving fast enough now applaud Tinubu for moving “deliberately.” The inconsistency would be comical if it were not so tragic.
Consider the security situation. Under Jonathan, Boko Haram’s control of several local governments in Borno was headline news every evening. The Chibok kidnapping became a global cause célèbre, with protests in Abuja and international condemnation. The hawks pecked relentlessly: “Jonathan is weak on terror!” they screamed. Today, the same group, now fractured but still deadly, continues to attack military formations and kidnap IDP camp residents. Bandits operate with impunity across the North-West. Yet there is no sustained campaign, no hashtag, no daily condemnation from the usual hawks. Why? Because the political benefits of criticizing Tinubu are currently lower than the costs. Many of those who would lead such campaigns are now angling for appointments, contracts, or simply trying to avoid being tagged as “disloyal” to the current administration. The hawks have traded their talons for feeding bowls.
This brings us to the role of the media and the commentariat. Several prominent columnists and social media influencers who built their careers on eviscerating Jonathan have suddenly discovered the virtues of restraint. They write lengthy defenses of the fuel subsidy removal, even as transport workers go on strike. They praise the unification of exchange rates, even as small businesses collapse. They find nuanced explanations for why Tinubu’s cabinet is delayed or why he frequently traveled abroad for treatment. But in the Jonathan era, nuance was never allowed. It was all incompetence, all the time, all pecking, all day. Where are those voices now? They have not disappeared. They have simply chosen a different master.
Let us not be naive. I am not arguing that Jonathan was a perfect president, nor that Tinubu is a villain. The point is that accountability must be consistent. If a high cost of living was a reason to scream “clueless” at Jonathan, then it is a reason to ask equally hard questions of Tinubu. If insecurity under Jonathan merited daily condemnations, then the worsening banditry in the North-West, which is seemingly testing the waters in the South-West today deserves no less. The hawks cannot have it both ways. They cannot peck one president to death and then sit silently on the fence while another presides over even greater hardship.
The good news is that Nigerians are noticing. The mounting frustration against these selective hawks is justified. On social media, young citizens are compiling “then vs. now” threads, showing how the same figures have flip-flopped. The #EndSARS movement and the subsequent #EndBadGovernance protests have shown that the old playbook of elite criticism, where outrage is deployed only against political enemies, no longer works. The masses are hungry, angry, and they remember who screamed loudest when Jonathan was in power. The internet is catching fire, even as the hawks remain silent.
So let us ask the question again: *Where are the hawks that pecked Jonathan?* They are in government. They are in boardrooms. They are collecting salaries and allowances. They are signing contracts. They are attending cabinet meetings and shaking hands with the same president they would have eviscerated had he made the slightest error. They have not changed their principles; they have simply changed their address. Their principles were never fixed to anything other than the pursuit of power.
The silence of the hawks is not peace. It is complicity. And complicity, in times of national suffering, is its own kind of crime. The hawks who pecked Jonathan must be called out. They must be asked, publicly and repeatedly: where is your voice now? Why does your conscience only wake up when your opponent is in power? Until we demand consistency from our critics, we will never have genuine accountability. We will only have theater, loud, dramatic, and utterly useless.
So yes, the condemnations against these fair-weather hawks are mounting, and they should. Let them answer. Let them explain why they pecked one president out from the office but cannot muster a tweet against another. And let every Nigerian remember that the measure of a person’s integrity is not how loudly they condemn their enemy, but how consistently they speak truth to power, even, and especially, when their friends are in charge. The hawks may be silent now, but the people are not. And the people have long memories.
