President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Is Nigeria’s Greatest-Ever Leader

The case for judging leadership not by the comfort it preserves, but by the institutions it builds, the difficult choices it confronts and the future it makes possible.

By Princess Zahrah

Mustapha Audu, the Director-General, Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), and the National Publicity Secretary, City Boy Movement
History has an inconvenient habit of making consequential leadership clearer in retrospect than it appears in real time.

Those who live through periods of reform experience disruption, uncertainty and disagreement. Historians, arriving later, see trajectories. They identify the decisions that altered institutions, the political choices that changed the direction of nations and the leaders who possessed the foresight to act before consensus made action easy.
Nigeria is living through such a moment.
It is therefore worth advancing a proposition that deserves to be examined seriously rather than dismissed as political hyperbole: President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is Nigeria’s greatest-ever leader.

Greatness, of course, is not perfection. Nor does it require pretending that reform has been painless or that every policy has produced its intended outcome. The more demanding test of leadership is whether a statesman can recognise the structural problems of his age, confront what others have postponed, build institutions rather than merely occupy them, develop political and administrative capacity, and make decisions whose significance extends beyond the immediate electoral calendar.
Measured against those criteria, Tinubu’s record is exceptional.

A Political Life of Unusual Consequence
The mistake in much contemporary analysis of President Tinubu is to begin his political biography on 29 May 2023. His significance predates the presidency by three decades. He was an elected senator in the Third Republic, became associated with the struggle for democratic restoration during military rule, experienced exile, returned to Nigeria and became Governor of Lagos State in 1999. After eight years as governor, something unusual occurred: President Tinubu left office without leaving political consequence.

He became one of the central organisers of opposition politics, helping construct alliances that eventually contributed to the formation of the All Progressives Congress and the historic democratic transfer of federal power in 2015. That trajectory matters.

Many politicians possess power while occupying office. Far fewer demonstrate the capacity to organise people, institutions and coalitions when the formal machinery of the state is no longer theirs to command.
President Tinubu’s career has therefore been distinguished not simply by longevity, but by institutional and political endurance.
From Lagos to the Philosophy of the Capable State

The intellectual origins of the Tinubu presidency are perhaps most visible in Lagos. When he became governor in 1999, Lagos embodied a central contradiction of the Nigerian condition: extraordinary private dynamism coexisting with inadequate public capacity. The challenge was not merely determining what government should do. It was building a government capable of doing it.

States do not become effective because their leaders possess admirable intentions. They become effective when institutions can mobilise revenue, formulate policy, execute decisions, enforce rules predictably and create the conditions in which private enterprise can flourish. The Lagos experience helped establish a principle that has remained visible throughout Tinubu’s political life: government must possess the capacity to govern. That proposition is now being tested nationally.

Ending the Politics of Postponement
Nigeria’s structural economic difficulties did not begin in 2023. For decades, the country accumulated distortions: an increasingly expensive petrol subsidy, foreign-exchange imbalances, weak public revenues, infrastructure deficits, import dependence and administrative inefficiencies that imposed substantial costs on businesses.

Governments understood many of these problems. What Nigeria frequently lacked was the political willingness to confront them decisively. The country consequently developed what might be described as a political economy of postponement: the political cost of reform was immediate, while the cost of avoiding reform could conveniently be transferred to the future.President Tinubu disrupted that logic.
The removal of the petrol subsidy was consequential precisely because previous administrations understood the problem but struggled to resolve it permanently. The transition has imposed genuine hardship on Nigerians. Any intellectually credible defence of reform must acknowledge this. But hardship does not settle the policy question.

The relevant question is whether the previous arrangement could have been sustained indefinitely — and what the eventual cost of continued postponement would have been. Leadership sometimes requires choosing not between difficulty and comfort, but between the difficulty of adjustment today and the greater danger of structural failure tomorrow.

Making Nigeria Work
Perhaps the less dramatic but potentially more enduring transformation is occurring within government itself. Economic competitiveness is frequently discussed in terms of capital, infrastructure and markets. Yet one of its most important determinants is something less glamorous: the efficiency of the state. A permit is economics, a customs procedure is economics, a company registration is economics, a commercial court is economics, the time required to obtain an approval is economics.

Every unnecessary procedure imposes a cost. Every unpredictable regulation introduces uncertainty. Every hour an entrepreneur spends navigating bureaucracy is an hour unavailable for production, innovation and expansion. This is why the ease-of-doing-business agenda matters. Through PEBEC and the broader business-facilitation framework, the objective is not simply to make bureaucracy more convenient. It is to reduce the institutional cost of being productive in Nigeria. The philosophy underlying these reforms is more significant than any individual procedure:Government should facilitate legitimate enterprise rather than constitute an obstacle to it. Nigeria has never been more efficient and accountable , this is only possible because of President Tinubu’s commitment to building a $1 Trillion Dollar Economy by 2030.
The Burden of Foresight
Reform possesses an inherent political cruelty: its costs are frequently immediate while its benefits take time. Citizens encounter price adjustments today.

Investment responds later. An old system can be dismantled quickly; the productive ecosystem intended to replace it may require years. This is why foresight is rarely popular in the moment. Foresight is not the ability to predict the future perfectly. It is the capacity to recognise that continuing the present is itself a decision about the future. President Tinubu’s political career has been characterised by an unusual willingness to expend political capital rather than simply accumulate it. That distinction matters, Nigeria cannot currently point to any other leader with a comparable record of building leaders and planning diligently for the future.

Why Tinubu’s Record Is Different
Nigeria has produced extraordinary leaders, and acknowledging Tinubu’s significance requires no diminution of their contributions. But the breadth of his political journey is unusual. Senator. Pro-democracy figure. Exile. Two-term governor. Opposition organiser. Coalition builder. Party strategist. Presidential candidate. President. Economic reformer. This is more than longevity; this shows visionary patriotic dedication to purpose. The argument for President Tinubu as Nigeria’s greatest-ever leader therefore does not rest upon a single policy or moment. It rests upon accumulation of political struggle, development of people, institutions and ultimately the accumulation of difficult decisions taken.

Give Him His Flowers — And Record History Properly Nigeria has an unfortunate habit of becoming intellectually generous toward its leaders only after they are gone. The controversial statesman becomes visionary in the obituary. Decisions once condemned become courageous in retrospect. Perspective arrives when recognition can no longer be received. We should not require death to become historically fair.

Giving President Tinubu his flowers does not mean suspending scrutiny. I encourage us to all continue to demand results, demand better leaving conditions, social amenities and infrastructural development. But while making those demands, we should possess sufficient historical intelligence to recognise consequential leadership while it is occurring.

President Tinubu’s work is unfinished. History’s final verdict cannot yet be written. But his place in Nigerian history is already impossible to ignore. Few Nigerian political lives have traversed so much history, shaped so many institutions and remained consequential across so many different political eras. That is why, in my considered view, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is Nigeria’s greatest-ever leader to date.

Not because he has solved every Nigerian problem, not because leadership is synonymous with perfection, but because the deepest measure of statesmanship is ultimately the capacity to see beyond the country one inherits, to confront the problems others postpone, and to organise institutions, people and political power in pursuit of the country that might yet be built. I stand bold to state that posterity will judge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu favorably.

Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu
Director General – Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) & National Publicity Secretary – City Boy Movement.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Is Nigeria’s Greatest-Ever Leader

Scholarship or Trap? Why Northern Nigerian Youth Must Verify Foreign Opportunities

By Alhassan Bala

Hundreds of young Nigerians, including students and graduates from northern Nigeria, have benefited from legitimate scholarships and educational opportunities offered by foreign governments and institutions. Such programmes can open doors to quality education, professional development and international exposure.

However, the growing use of social media to advertise scholarships, jobs and training opportunities abroad also presents serious risks.

Some seemingly attractive offers may be fraudulent, exploitative or even serve as channels for human trafficking and forced recruitment.

This is why young Nigerians must exercise extreme caution before accepting foreign scholarships or employment opportunities promoted online.

Recently, I came across a northern Nigerian professor working outside the country advising Nigerians, particularly young people from the North, to take advantage of a scholarship opportunity reportedly being promoted by educators he knows in Russia.

I have enormous respect for the professor, as I do for many academics who genuinely want to help young Nigerians access opportunities abroad.

Nevertheless, his recommendation reminded me of the disturbing experience surrounding the Alabuga recruitment programme in Russia and the need for prospective applicants to verify such offers independently before travelling.

The Alabuga warning,
For those unfamiliar with the Alabuga controversy, the programme began attracting young Africans through online advertisements offering employment, vocational training and what was presented in some cases as educational opportunities in Russia.

Investigations by international and Nigerian media later raised serious concerns about the programme.

Young Africans, including Nigerians, were recruited through social media and other online channels and taken to Russia.

Reports indicated that some participants who expected education or employment opportunities ended up working in facilities associated with the production of drones used by Russia in its war against Ukraine.

The Nigerian Ministry of Education subsequently said its website had been compromised and that advertisements for the controversial Alabuga Start programme had been posted without official authorisation.

Officials also stressed that the programme was not part of Nigeria’s approved bilateral scholarship arrangements with Russia.

The episode should have taught Nigerians an important lesson: the appearance of government endorsement, the involvement of a university professor or the presence of an attractive scholarship advertisement on social media does not, by itself, establish that an opportunity is genuine or safe.

From scholarships to the battlefield.

There is an even more disturbing dimension to the growing concern over recruitment of Africans to Russia.

In recent years, reports have emerged of Africans travelling to Russia after being promised civilian employment, only to find themselves recruited into the Russian military and deployed to the war in Ukraine.

In February 2026, the Russian ambassador to Nigeria, Andrey Podyelyshev, denied that Moscow operated any government-supported programme to recruit Nigerians to fight in Ukraine.

He said that if illegal individuals or organisations were recruiting Nigerians unlawfully, such activities were not connected to the Russian state.

Despite the denial, investigations and reports have documented cases involving Nigerians and other Africans who allegedly travelled to Russia believing they were taking up civilian jobs before being sent to the battlefield. In one widely reported Nigerian case, Adam Anas and other Nigerians were recruited under the guise of security employment and subsequently deployed to fight in Ukraine.

The cases are not limited to Nigeria. In March 2026, the Association of Nigerien Students in Russia announced the death of Abdoulaye Issaka Ismael, a Nigerien master’s student who, according to the student organisation, had been recruited into Russian combat forces and deployed to the frontline in Ukraine.

Ghana has also reported serious losses. Its Foreign Minister disclosed in February 2026 that 55 Ghanaians had died after being lured into fighting in the Ukraine war, while hundreds more were believed to have joined the Russian military.

These cases demonstrate that the danger is not merely theoretical.

The lesson for young Nigerians, especially those desperately seeking educational or employment opportunities abroad, is straightforward: verify before you travel.

Anyone offered a scholarship in Russia or any other foreign country should first establish whether the programme is officially recognised by the Nigerian government and the government of the destination country.

Applicants should independently contact the Federal Ministry of Education, the Federal Scholarship Board, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the relevant embassy or high commission before committing money, submitting sensitive documents or travelling.

They should also verify the name of the university, its accreditation, the exact course of study, the physical location of the institution, the identity of the sponsoring organisation and the legal status of whoever is recruiting them.

Most importantly, prospective applicants should be suspicious of opportunities that are promoted exclusively through WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, TikTok or other social media platforms, particularly when recruiters pressure applicants to travel quickly or discourage them from contacting government authorities.

A genuine scholarship should withstand scrutiny.

Northern Nigeria has millions of young people searching for education, employment and opportunities to improve their lives.

That makes the region particularly vulnerable to individuals who exploit unemployment and economic hardship with promises of quick opportunities abroad.

Professors, academics, journalists, community leaders and other influential Nigerians therefore have a special responsibility when sharing foreign opportunities.

Before recommending a scholarship or job to young people, they should verify it through official channels and make the evidence available to prospective applicants.

A recommendation from a respected professor can give an opportunity credibility that it may not deserve. If the opportunity later turns out to be fraudulent, the consequences may be devastating.

The Nigerian government also needs to do more.
Government agencies responsible for education, foreign affairs, Nigeria Immigration Service, labour and youth development should maintain accessible, regularly updated databases of approved foreign scholarships and legitimate overseas recruitment programmes.

They should also promptly alert Nigerians whenever questionable opportunities emerge online.

The Alabuga experience showed how easily a dubious programme could acquire an appearance of legitimacy when its advertisements appeared on an official government website.

The subsequent reports about Africans being deceived into military service demonstrate the potentially fatal consequences of inadequate verification and oversight.

Young Nigerians deserve opportunities, but they also deserve protection.

A scholarship should lead to a classroom, laboratory or recognised institution not a factory where they are exploited, and certainly not a battlefield.

For young Nigerians seeking opportunities abroad, the safest rule is simple: do not trust an opportunity because it looks attractive; verify it because your life may depend on it.

Alhassan Bala, wrote this piece from Abuja

Scholarship or Trap? Why Northern Nigerian Youth Must Verify Foreign Opportunities

When Official Directives Become More Powerful Than the Law

By: Ibrahim Welye

There is a dangerous habit gradually becoming normal in Nigeria’s public institutions: the assumption that once an instruction comes from a sufficiently powerful office, somebody somewhere must have the authority to carry it out.
A letter arrives from a senior official. A ministry acts on it. Another agency processes the request. A bank opens an account. A department prepares a budget. A committee gives its approval. Before long, what began simply as an instruction has acquired all the appearance of legality.
But there is a question we too often forget to ask:
Where is the law that gives you the power to do this?
That question should come before the letterhead, before the signature and certainly before the status of the person issuing the instruction.
In a constitutional democracy, authority does not flow from importance. It flows from law.
A minister is powerful because the law gives the office certain powers. A governor exercises authority within powers conferred by the Constitution and legislation. The President, despite occupying the highest executive office in the country, does not possess unlimited authority merely because he is President.
Public office does not create its own powers.
Yet increasingly, our institutions appear willing to confuse political authority with legal authority. And that is where the danger begins.
A Government Letter Is Not the Law
There is a strange reverence for official correspondence in our public system.
Once a letter carries the right crest, the right signature or the name of the right office, institutions sometimes behave as though the legal question has already been settled.
It has not.
A completely genuine letter can contain an unlawful instruction. A properly constituted office can act outside its powers. An official can have authority over one matter and absolutely no authority over another.
This distinction is fundamental.
The first responsibility of any ministry, department, agency or public institution receiving an instruction should therefore not merely be: Who sent this?
It should be: Under what law are we being asked to act?
That simple question could prevent an extraordinary amount of institutional misconduct.
Instead, what often happens is an administrative chain reaction.
One institution assumes another institution has done the legal checks. The next institution assumes the first would not have approved the matter without authority. A third sees two government approvals and concludes that the issue must be legitimate.
Eventually, an act for which nobody can clearly identify a legal foundation has accumulated enough stamps, minutes, signatures and approvals to look perfectly official.
We could call this the administrative laundering of illegality.
Something questionable enters the system at one end and emerges at the other wearing the full uniform of government.
The number of institutions involved does not make it lawful.
Ten government agencies cannot collectively manufacture a power that the law gave to none of them.
The Problem With ‘Oga Said’
Many Nigerians will recognise the culture behind this problem.
‘Oga said.’
‘The Honourable Minister directed.’
‘The Governor has approved.’
‘The Presidency wants it done.’
These statements may explain why somebody wants an action taken. They do not necessarily explain why government has the legal authority to take it.
There is a difference.
And a country gradually loses its institutional foundations when its civil servants become more afraid of questioning an instruction than of violating the law.
The public officer who asks for the statutory basis of an instruction is not being difficult.
The legal adviser who says, ‘We do not have the power to do this,’ is not obstructing government.
The permanent secretary who insists that proper procedure be followed is not necessarily resisting political leadership.
Sometimes, these are the very people protecting the government from itself.
Political appointees will eventually leave office. Directors will retire. Administrations will change.
The files will remain.
The signatures will remain.
The payment records will remain.
And when questions are eventually asked, ‘I was instructed’ may explain what happened, but it does not automatically make what happened lawful.
The Precedent You Celebrate Today May Be Used Against You Tomorrow
Perhaps the most troubling part of Nigeria’s relationship with institutional illegality is our tendency to judge it according to who benefits.
When an administration we support stretches the rules, we suddenly discover the virtues of pragmatism.
We say government must be allowed to work.
We say procedure should not frustrate development.
We say critics are being political.
Then power changes hands.
The same institutional shortcuts are used by people we dislike, and suddenly we rediscover the Constitution.
This is how countries weaken themselves.
The danger of tolerating unlawful power is not simply what the present government will do with it. The greater danger is that the power survives the government that created the precedent.
Those benefiting from weakened safeguards today should remember that they will not remain in office forever.
Every shortcut created for your convenience becomes available to your successor.
Every institution taught to obey personalities rather than law will simply transfer that obedience to the next personality.
If an agency learns today that a powerful political instruction is enough to bypass its rules, why should anyone expect that same agency to suddenly become courageous when a future administration gives an instruction against today’s beneficiaries?
Institutions do not remember who first corrupted their standards.
They simply remember the new standard.
That is why defending the rule of law only when one is in opposition is not a commitment to democracy. It is merely political convenience.
The Real Victim Is the Ordinary Nigerian
Institutional illegality may sound abstract until we consider who ultimately pays for it.
The ordinary Nigerian is expected to obey the rules.
Bring this document.
Complete this form.
Obtain this approval.
Wait for this process.
Pay this statutory fee.
Meet this deadline.
Then another person arrives carrying a letter from an influential office and suddenly the same institution discovers flexibility.
That is how citizens begin to realise that Nigeria has two administrative systems: one governed by procedure and another governed by access.
Once political connection becomes more useful than legal compliance, people stop believing that institutions are neutral.
Businesses become uncertain about whether today’s approvals will survive tomorrow’s administration. Public resources can be directed towards structures whose legal foundations are questionable. Appointments can be created outside established frameworks. Government institutions spend money, time and credibility implementing decisions they may never have had the authority to make.
The cost is eventually paid by citizens through weaker services, wasted resources, arbitrary government decisions and declining trust in the state.
We Should Stop Treating Legal Scrutiny as Disloyalty
One cultural change is particularly necessary.
Public officials must be allowed to say no.
Not a political no.
Not an ideological no.
A professional no.
‘No, Minister, the law does not give this institution that power.’
‘No, Director-General, this procedure has not been completed.’
‘No, Chairman, we need legal advice before proceeding.’
‘No, there is no statutory basis for what we are being asked to do.’
That kind of resistance should be valued, not punished.
A leader surrounded entirely by people who say yes eventually becomes dangerously uninformed about the limits of his own authority.
The best civil servants are not necessarily those who implement every instruction fastest. Sometimes, the most valuable officer in the room is the person courageous enough to prevent everyone else from making a mistake.
Oversight Must Ask a Different Question
Our accountability institutions also need to widen the way they think about misconduct.
We often wait until money disappears before asking questions.
But sometimes the first failure happened long before the money moved.
Before asking whether funds were stolen, an auditor or legislature should sometimes ask: Did this institution have the authority to create this programme in the first place?
Was the entity receiving public resources lawfully established?
Who authorised it?
Under what legislation?
Was a lawful delegation made?
Which institution first accepted the arrangement as legitimate?
What legal advice was obtained?
Those questions matter because government can waste enormous resources implementing something that should never have entered the administrative system at all.
Accountability should follow the entire chain.
And every institution involved should explain its own decision.
‘We acted because another agency approved it’ cannot become the standard defence of public institutions.
Citizens Must Also Be Consistent
There is another uncomfortable truth.
Politicians are not alone in encouraging this culture.
Citizens often excuse illegality when the outcome favours their party, region, religion, ethnic group or preferred leader.
That is a mistake.
A constitutional safeguard surrendered because it inconveniences your opponent will not magically reappear when you need it.
We cannot demand strict legality from governments we dislike and invent excuses for governments we support.
The rule of law cannot be a weapon we bring out against our opponents and put back in the cupboard when our friends are in power.

Either the law restrains everybody or, eventually, it restrains nobody.
Nigeria’s challenge is therefore bigger than any single questionable directive, appointment, agency or programme.
It is about the kind of state we are building.
Do we want institutions whose first instinct is to ask, ‘What does the law permit?’
Or institutions whose first instinct is to ask, ‘Who gave the instruction?’
The difference between those two questions is the difference between an institution and an entourage.
Governments will come and go. Today’s powerful officeholder will eventually become yesterday’s officeholder. Political beneficiaries will change. Parties will rise and fall.

The institutions will remain.
We should therefore be extremely careful about what we teach those institutions to obey.
Public power is borrowed, not owned.
An official directive can begin an administrative process, but it cannot create powers that the Constitution or legislation does not provide. A dozen official signatures cannot transform an unlawful act into a lawful one.
And whenever government is about to act, one question should remain stubbornly at the front of the file:
Where is the legal authority to do this?
Nigeria will be safer when asking that question becomes an act of professionalism rather than an act of courage.
— Ibrahim Welye

When Official Directives Become More Powerful Than the Law