Let’s take a trip down the memory lane. An agonizing nostalgia! A bewildering irony…The date was January 25, 2015. That was the day Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu was in the United States of America with the creme of the opposition leaders. The purpose was simple: A total strip down of President Goodluck Jonathan in the eyes of the world. In fact, the then main opposition party, All Progressive Congress (APC) had hired an American lobbying firm, AKPD, as part of a larger, deliberate strategy to build ties in Washington. The objective was to prosecute Jonathan and present him as untrustworthy and clueless. The immediate effect was America under President Barack Obama virtually cutting ties with Jonathan and consequently withholding certain essential military support in the war against Boko Haram. Insecurity in the Northeast Nigeria worsened and Jonathan never recovered. In short, the presidential election of that year was won and lost on that trip; period.
Fast forward to the 2027 election cycle. Tinubu is at it again, but this time as the president, a president by far worse than Jonathan.
Now, consider that President Donald Trump of the United States has become a huge factor in the 2027 elections. Also consider that the Nigerian sovereignty under Tinubu has been severely compromised as America now appears to dictate the content and the carriage of Nigeria’s national security. Then think…Like or hate him, any measure of passion notwithstanding, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a shrewd politician or rather an evil genius of sort. Fake certificate or no certificate, this man can count 1-2-3. And he knows where it counts most. Thus, he has taken his campaign to America not only to defend his administration, despite indefensible failures, but also to obliterate the opposition. Besides signing a $9 million contract with U.S. lobbying firm DCI Group for image laundering, Tinubu is sending his associates, including the First Lady, to America. The goal is to mask mounting domestic failures and project the opposition as a dangerous alternative.
But at play is plain reverse psychology. This is a logic failure, pure paradox—a perplexing paradox of power that must be exposed, resisted, and defeated. The good news is that unlike in 2015 when he was a sagacious opposition leader with no records to defend, the Tinubu of today has glaring limitations. Physically, he is now more or less an invalid, very feeble—who can hardly grant an interview, let alone sustaining a rigorous campaign outing. Politically, his policies are unpopular with the people, home and abroad. Socially, he cannot travel to America to do the bidding by himself; Mr. Tinubu knows the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration doesn’t play.
The opposition must unite and capitalize. Its leaders must leverage an existing international pressure to echo the strategy adopted by the APC in 2015 against the Jonathan administration. By taking the fight to America, the current opposition ought to use the same mechanisms—legal discovery, diplomatic lobbying, and media scrutiny—to puncture Tinubu’s balloon of invisibility and then place him squarely where he belongs.
The most potent opening item is to take on Tinubu on the very matter that caught the American attention in the first place. Begin with a shameless history of political paradox of power, where he is now denying the very allegations he once used to criticize a previous government. That is, highlight the stark contradictions in Tinubu’s stance on the security crisis. Hold him on political opportunism regarding the alleged targeting of Christians. Drum how he ridiculed President Donald Trump, suggesting Trump was a liar when he brought the issue of Christian genocide to the world attention. Yet, as then-opposition leader, the same Tinubu had in 2014 strongly condemned the “slaughtering of Christian worshippers” under President Goodluck Jonathan, calling it a failure in leadership. Today, despite the fact that the pattern of insecurity has worsened under his watch, he was quick to dismiss Trump’s admonition as “unfounded,” “harmful,” and a “lie from the pit of hell.”
The topic of Christian persecution is a slippery slope, politically. So the opposition must stay on the contradictions, and nothing more. Notice the style Tinubu’s wife adopted by attempting to deflect the notion of Christian genocide yet praising Trump for his intervention, bombing Muslim strong holds of Northwest Nigeria. It may also be necessary to curry favor by re-igniting the insensitivity of Muslim-Muslim ticket in a diverse country like Nigeria.
The opposition leaders must dare not fail to accuse Tinubu’s regime of blatant complicity in the rising insecurity, a matter that is a common knowledge in Nigeria. Hit the Nigerian president real hard on how he shields the members of the ruling party but targets opposition elements as scapegoats on the security crisis. Finally nail Tinubu on how he suggested that any serious attempt by his administration to fight insecurity is to step on big toes.
Thereafter, call the attention of President Trump to the consequences of Tinubu’s plot to turn Nigeria into one party state. Highlight the dilemma of how a president who turned Nigeria to “a disgraced country” is coercing the opposition members into the ruling APC. Combine that with the recent signing into law of a contentious 2026 electoral bill that allows for a porous manual result transmission, which is a deliberate attempt to rig the 2027 and keep Tinubu in power by all means. Emphasize that this aggressive consolidation of power by an unpopular leader and the deliberate weakening of democratic competition portend an existential threat to democracy in Africa’s most populous nation. This is an abject invitation to massive instability in the entire region. Nigerian has not seen it bad in a democratic setting. Cite the recent instance where poor turnout in the council elections of February 21, 2026 at the nation’s capital shows total loss of faith in the system in addition to the manipulation of the results by the ruling party. Bring to the forefront warning signs like the attempted coup of 2025 against the Tinubu regime. Charge Mr. Trump that he should not allow the total collapse of the Nigerian democracy under his reign as the leader of the free world.
At this point, go real deep into Tinubu’s well-known corrupt background. Challenge his personal integrity and legitimacy. Enumerate the various controversies surrounding his very being, from birth, age, state of origin, education and, of course, the source of his billions. Point Trump to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) of December 2024 which shamed President Tinubu as a finalist for its annual “Person of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption” award.
Tag along the above deep-rooted corrupt motive to introduce Tinubu’s drug case in America, where court documents show that he forfeited $460,000 to the U.S. government in 1993, which the court identified as proceeds of narcotics trafficking. Use this drug case as a circumstantial evidence for Tinubu’s apparent sympathy with drug dealers. Back it up with the fact that the Nigerian president had in October of 2025 approved a presidential pardon and clemency for 175 individuals, of which about 30% were drug offenders before reversing the decision for many of them following public outcry. Pinch Trump’s nerves by drawing similarities of Tinubu to the former president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, who is currently cooling off in a U.S. jail.
The Nigerian opposition leaders must not miss this opportunity. The Nigerians in America, who have remained steadfast in countering the Tinubu lobbying machine, are anxious to welcome the opposition leaders as the horse’s mouth.
SKC Ogbonnia, a former APC Presidential Aspirant, writes from Houston, Texas, U.S. A.
