By Alabi Williams
The last week of July was a public relations blunder for the Tinubu Presidency. As Nigeria gets closer to the 2027 elections, there are chances that all sides will get more desperate to market their ambitions. The Presidency will continue to host all manner of groups, including traditional rulers, women and youth groups as well as ad hoc NGOS.
Many will plead to meet with the president just to beg to endorse him. They will grin at the camera. Many don’t have anything to offer constituencies they purport to represent. They only represent their stomach.
There are a handful of those who desire to convey the true picture of things outside the Villa to the president, but the aura and manipulative audacity could dampen their conviction. It is said that the Nigerian presidency is among the most powerful. The opulence and grandeur inside tell a different story from the reality in town.
Visitors get mesmerised, having become dizzy in the orchestrated razzmatazz. They momentarily feel privileged to be so close to power. They lose capacity to speak truth. Whatever the president manages to construct becomes the whole truth. That is what they take to town.
But the visit of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), to President Tinubu on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, was different. The Catholic Bishops, from reports went to tell the president how bad things are with the people. In his response, the president told his guests that things are not that bad. In fact, the country is doing well.
He told them how the government had rescued the economy from the brink of collapse, where the last administration left it. He said the economic reforms were yielding result and the pains had subsided and there are now positive gains. He added that the government is committed to reducing poverty, through targeted interventions, including NELFUND loans to students, which reduces burden on parents. The academic calendar is now swifter, he maintained, through improved welfare for university teachers. No more ASUU strikes.
On the electoral system, the president insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is neutral and will deliver free and fair elections come 2027. He said: “INEC has remained neutral. The opportunities are equal for everyone. They have not intimidated anybody. If some political opponents are crying wolf, perhaps they are afraid of their own shadows and the uncertainty within their own camps, not me.”
The president also announced that his administration had embarked on restructuring of the country’s security architecture through improved intelligence, expansion of the Armed Forces and purchase of more military equipment, and enhanced welfare for the personnel.
After the meeting, Nigerians did not immediately get to hear what the Catholic Bishops told the president. Instead, the president’s media team selected highlights where they felt the president made high-sounding remarks and played the tapes across channels, most visibly on social media.
Between Tuesday, August 28 and Thursday, August 30. It was a good media outing for President Tinubu, but it made the Catholic Bishops look like spectators before the president. That got Nigerians thinking whether the Catholic Bishops had gone to receive tutorials, and had nothing to report on what took them to the Villa.
Someone must have got curious and invited John Cardinal Onaiyekan to review the meeting and give his impressions. The Cardinal said they went to the Presidency to discuss the hardship faced by ordinary Nigerians. He said they knew the president was not ready to hear the truth, but they had to present it.
And the president was not happy. He said: “You asked me how I saw the face of the president. I was not surprised that he was not looking very happy, and neither were his colleagues. We knew this was different from the kind of reports the president usually receives”
Cardinal Onaiyekan said they were worried that the president surrounds himself with people who give him stories that are not connected to citizens’ daily realities. He said: “We left that hall knowing that we said what we needed to say, and he said what he needed to say. When the nation is bleeding, you can’t expect a polite meeting with the head of state. We needed to let him know, and his reply was that the nation is not bleeding. We told him our economy is not helping poor people. He told us the economy is doing fine. He made it clear that he did not agree with us. We were not surprised. We didn’t him expect to agree with us. We had done our duty by delivering our message, and we hope that somehow, he will reflect on what we said.”
Perhaps, the matter would not have gained traction if the Cardinal had not updated Nigerians with details of the meeting. The Presidency got angry that the Cardinal aired what was supposed to be a closed-door dialogue, referring to it as abuse of “Clerical Privilege.”
The Presidency statement opened with this: “There is something fundamentally inappropriate about Cardinal John Onaiyekan granting a television interview to offer his own account and interpretation of what transpired during the private meeting between the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria and President Bola Tinubu.” The author, Temitope Ajayi said, “it is in my view, an abuse of clerical privilege.”
The Presidency did not state that it embargoed the publication of the interview prior to the meeting. If it was embargoed, it was the Presidency that aired excerpts of the interview. If it was not inappropriate for the government to do so, why blame the Cardinal? Besides, the Cardinal has for decades stated his opinion on the economy and politics. When President Tinubu was the leader of the opposition, he likely benefited from the Cardinal’s advocacy for good governance during Goodluck Jonathan’s era. So, there is nothing inappropriate in the Cardinal’s television interview, because it is in the public interest.
Nigerians deserve to know what goes on in the Presidency. It is not a privilege for the Cardinal and bishops to meet with the president. It should be a routine conversation for a Presidency that is humble and willing to feel the pulse of citizens. Indeed, it is a privilege for the Presidency to have the company of the Catholic Bishops who are willing to tell truth to power.
The Church has always intervened in the affairs of governments. Views of responsible clerics, being critical members of the civil society might be useful to government, if such views are offered patriotically. Nothing suggests that Cardinal Onaiyekan has shifted from his usual position of telling truth and saying it fearlessly. What has shifted is that we have a Presidency that is full of itself and is unwilling to countenance views that are contrary to its conceited position.
As a contestant in the 2027 elections, for instance, it is not the place of the president to pontificate on INEC. If INEC is neutral, it is the voters and observers that would say so. So far, the opposition has repeated that INEC is not neutral. Many have not forgotten Prof. Joash Amupitan’s past social media commentaries, where he allegedly expressed support for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Maybe that was not too significant. But the recurring debate is that the president as the sole appointer of the INEC chairman and other significant electoral officers, with some being card-carrying members of political parties, does not make INEC neutral.
If the Catholic Bishops raised concerns around this, the president as a confessed democrat ought not to get angry. It is only a reminder that the democratic journey can be better if INEC is properly democratised. Right now, INEC could become a willing tool in the hand of a desperate president. There are signs of desperation all over the place and Nigerians are worried.
The statement by the president that “all is fair in politics,” apparently got the Catholic Bishops more worried. A forum with bishops is not the place to exhibit political any-how-ness. All cannot be fair in politics, when Abuja deploys maximum force to snatch a fait accompli in, for instance, Osun, where the Tinubu administration is working round the clock to achieve electoral success in the forthcoming governorship election.
The Federal Government is using every means to oppress the minority government in Osun, including violence. After confiscating Osun council allocation for months, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) went to Osogbo, last week, to rattle the government. President Tinubu however waded in by directing the EFCC to immediately return to court to vacate an order freezing the Osun State Government’s bank accounts.
With regard to his remarks on the opposition, the President knows too well as a former leader of opposition that the opportunities are not equal between the ruling party and others. President Tinubu knows the schemes he has outlined since May 29, 2023, to cut the opposition to size. He knows what Nyesom Wike, and his appointment as FCT Minister, has caused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
President Tinubu knows what it has profited him to cajole the opposition governors into his camp, even though he makes it sound and feel like willing buyer and willing seller. Clear-thinking Nigerians know it is not. Perhaps, that’s what he means by all is fair. But he should remember that the difference between military rule and democracy is the presence of opposition. When the ruling parties became larger than life as was in the First and Second Republics, democracy paid the price. That’s not what Nigerians want. The ruling party can still win fairly without applying jungle justice and feeling no guilt.
The economy is not doing well. We do not need the Catholic Bishops to amplify that. It is commendable that macro numbers are doing fairly well for government. But the strain on the micro is where the real data is. More Nigerians are converting into poverty under Tinubu because his government is more concerned with a robust Foreign Exchange and other manipulated numbers.
It is unpresidential to bluster before the Catholic Bishops and in the face of Nigerians, that poverty and hunger have existed before Tinubu was born. Why does Tinubu promise prosperity if he is comfortable that poverty and hunger are older than him?
Nigeria deserves a Presidency that is not tone-deaf; one that defers to elders, particularly a Cardinal that has seen many decades serving God and man. This democracy deserves civil conversation!
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