By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There are presidents who fail because they are weak. There are presidents who fail because they are unlucky. And then there is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a president who has not failed at all, because failure implies he was trying to govern. The record now before Nigerians, certified this week by the International Monetary Fund itself, suggests something far darker: a presidency that succeeded brilliantly at the only project it ever truly pursued, the conversion of the Nigerian state into a private estate, managed in the dark, for the benefit of its landlord.
On 1 July 2026, the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, stood before business leaders in Lagos and delivered, in the dry dialect of multilateral finance, the most damning verdict ever passed on a sitting Nigerian government by an international institution. Public spending equivalent to about two per cent of GDP, roughly ₦8.8 trillion of a ₦441.5 trillion economy, was never recorded in Nigeria’s official budgets. It was spent on large government projects executed outside the budget. It made the fiscal deficit look smaller than the borrowing that actually financed it. And, in the Fund’s carefully chosen words, it raises concerns about procurement processes and oversight.
Strip away the diplomacy and hear what was actually said: the Government of Nigeria has been spending trillions of naira that appear in no budget, passed through no appropriation, faced no Auditor General, and answered to no one.
No coup plotter ever seized the treasury so completely. No military decree ever suspended the constitution’s money clauses so thoroughly. Sections 80 and 81 of the 1999 Constitution, the provisions that make every kobo of public spending the business of the people’s representatives, have not been amended. They have simply been ignored, at a scale of ₦8.8 trillion, and the man who swore an oath to defend that constitution is the principal beneficiary of its suspension.
This is why the title fits and must be said plainly. Not underperforming. Not controversial. The worst president Nigeria has ever had, because every previous failure, civilian or military, at least left the books intact enough to be judged. Tinubu abolished the books.
The verdict writes itself. The worst president Nigeria has ever had is asking for a renewal of tenancy over a house he has been emptying in the dark.
Refuse him. On 16 January 2027, vote out the shadow treasury and everyone who fed from it. Vote for the restoration of the books, the budget and the republic. Vote Atiku Abubakar and the African Democratic Congress, and let the light back into the nation’s accounts.
They hid ₦8.8 trillion from you. Do not hide your vote from them.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
