By Suyi Ayodele
PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that the timing of the freezing of the Osun State Government Statutory Allocation account by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) “deeply embarrassed” him.
That is a loaded statement. It is also an interesting statement coming from a man who, as governor of Lagos State, watched President Olusegun Obasanjo deploy federal power against political opponents and, at one point, experienced that power personally.
What the President is saying is that if the EFCC’s action had taken place earlier, he would have applauded it. This is not interpretative. But we would not delve into the academic exercise of subjecting the President’s statement to its semantic implicatures. Suffice it to say that the timing of the action — 10 days to the Osun governorship election — was the problem for the President. This is why he did not hesitate in throwing the Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, under a moving bus.
Olukoyede deserves the treatment. He deserves even worse treatment. Every servant must be wise enough to read the body language of his master correctly. It is not every time overzealousness pays. The most unfortunate thing is that the EFCC boss comes from Ekiti State. Ekiti State again?
Yes, Ekiti! All Ekiti Kete must be ashamed of the news from the Fountain of Knowledge these days. Haba! Just a few days ago, a former governor of the state, Ayodele Fayose, listed the factors responsible for high population in Nigeria. I was ‘deeply embarrassed’ a la President Tinubu!
So, if ex-Governor Fayose had been asked in a Social Studies examination to ‘list factors responsible for high birth rate in Nigeria’, he would have written: ‘One of the factors responsible for high birth rate in Nigeria is NEPA taking light at night!’ And to think he was in the saddle in Ekiti State for eight years!
Honestly speaking, Fayose’s allusion to darkness and baby-making has got me thinking about my folks back home who have six or seven children. Now I know; each time electricity supply goes off at night, like the ingestion of zinc into the system, the testosterone level in the blood increases and the next thing is the American Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am benevolence between husband and wife! Fayose should not forget to register this patent right — the Baby Boom Theory according to pseudo-Professor Fayose!
And if you add this new ‘demography discovery’ to the ex-governor’s earlier projection that having ‘paid his dues’ by serving two terms as a governor, he should be properly taken care of by the state government, one will understand, perfectly, why the base dregs of humanity permeate the nation’s entire political landscape and power structures.
May God save us from our leaders — past, present and future. But folks, today’s piece is not about Fayose and his procreation permutations. We return to President Tinubu — and to the political school in which some of the methods now being witnessed were taught.
In a statement issued by the Presidency over the Osun matter, President Tinubu said: “It has come to my notice that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) obtained a court order on August 5, 2026, freezing the accounts of the Osun State Government. I must state that I feel deeply embarrassed not by the EFCC’s exercise of its mandate backed by a court order, but by the timing of the agency’s action.”
Tagged as State House Press Statement, the President’s media handlers went to town to announce that Tinubu ‘personally’ signed the statement. Phew!
Whoever scripted the above statement for Tinubu last Thursday must be a very poor student of foregrounding, the stylistic textual device of using words to generate a new emotional response to the user’s stance on an issue.
If the aim was to get Nigerians to clap for the President for being ‘embarrassed’ by the uncouth decision of the EFCC in the matter, the concluding paragraphs of the ‘personally signed’ statement did collateral damage to the not-too-decent public perception of the President and his claim to being a democrat.
After the usual rigmarole, Tinubu added: “Based on the foregoing premise, I am duty-bound to issue a directive on this issue in consonance with the overriding public interest in preserving public confidence and the integrity, credibility, and fairness of our democratic process. Accordingly, I have directed the EFCC to immediately proceed to the court to vacate the order and discontinue whatever action it has instituted against the Osun State Government in this regard.”
To show how “deeply embarrassed” he was, the President was said to have put a call across to Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State. The details of the telephone conversation were not made public but one can hazard some guesses here.
Did Tinubu tell Adeleke not to worry as the account would be released? Did he tell the governor that as a President, who is also desperate for a second term, the August 15, 2026 election in Osun would be free and fair? Did the President tell Governor Adeleke that just as he had directed the EFCC to undo what it did, he would also instruct the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to allow the will of Osun people to stand?
Many things are not just adding up for me here. In the first instance, not a few Nigerians were embarrassed that President Tinubu feigned ignorance and embarrassment over the action of the EFCC in Osun State. If the President thinks that Nigerians believe his stance on the wrong timing of the anti-graft action, then something is wrong somewhere.
How on earth would President Tinubu be “deeply embarrassed by the timing of the agency’s action” if the constant harassment of Osun State officials by the police and other security agencies is never an ‘embarrassment’ to him? Or is the President also not aware that the police, in particular, have made the arrest of commissioners and other top government functionaries their pastime in Osun?
Again, which power enables the President to order an ‘independent’ agency like the EFCC to unfreeze the account in question? Which “court order” was the President referring to when the EFCC itself never mentioned any court order nor presented any before it acted the way it did?
How come President Tinubu, like the proverbial would-be beneficiary of a public reward, claims to know the lost Oso’s mother more than Oso himself? For real: the President truly believes that Nigerians see him as a fair-minded individual who would just be satisfied by whatever is the outcome of the coming governorship election?
I think that it is, in the words of Tinubu, “in consonance with the overriding public interest”, good for Nigerians to know that democracy died temporarily in Osun State last Wednesday, when the EFCC, like the attack dog of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that it is, unilaterally froze the Statutory Allocation account of Osun State Government, 10 days to the gubernatorial election in the state. But there is something familiar about the scene. Nigeria has watched this film before. Only the actors and beneficiaries have changed.
When the news of the unfortunate incident flittered into town, my mind raced to Nigeria’s self-imposed moral compass, General Olusegun Obasanjo (Rtd), who created the EFCC in 2002 and used it to harass his political opponents within his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and those in the opposition then. Tinubu, then governor of Lagos State, was watching from the other side of the political divide.
When the elders are enjoined not to sow tares, the counsel is usually given because of the successors that will inherit the elders’ bad habit. Like the people of my place are wont to say, the third generation of the greedy will be a burglar (ìpele keta òkánjúwà, ilé ló máa kó). Obasanjo sowed some particularly wild tares in Nigeria’s democratic field. His successors inherited the field — and the seeds.
Tinubu was governor of Lagos State when Obasanjo, as President, turned the EFCC into an instrument of intimidation and harassment. Every child copies and modifies the habits of his father. What the EFCC did in Osun State last week was a fallout of Tinubu understudying Obasanjo when the Owu chief turned the agency from its noble role of chasing after thieves to pursuing opposition into rat holes. But then, doesn’t the age-old dictum say he who is taught evil and implements it already has wickedness ingrained in his DNA? If Obasanjo was the teacher of this school of federal might, Tinubu has proved himself a brilliant student.
Nigerians cannot forget how the EFCC ‘arrested’ some members of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly in November 2005, took them to Abuja, detained them and got 17 out of the 24 of them to sign the impeachment notice of the self-styled Governor-General of Izon Nation, late Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.
That done, the legislators were flown back to Port Harcourt, escorted by heavily armed agents to Yenagoa, where on December 9, 2005, they ‘impeached’ Alamieyeseigha on allegations of “gross misconduct, maintaining foreign bank accounts contrary to the constitution, and jumping bail.”
Choreographed by Obasanjo and the EFCC, the people of Ekiti State woke up on October 16, 2006, having Ayodele Fayose as their governor. By noon or thereabout, Fayose’s deputy, Biodun Olujimi, ‘announced’ herself as the governor. Later in the evening, the then Speaker of the House of Assembly, Friday Aderemi, also announced himself as Acting Governor.
What followed by 7.00 p.m. was a state of emergency declared by Obasanjo and his fellow Ogun State man, the late Brigadier-General Adetunji Olurin (Rtd), was appointed sole administrator. So, in a day, Ekiti State had four governors because our today’s sanctimonious ex-President, Obasanjo, turned a state agency into a personal attack dog!
Like in Bayelsa State, the EFCC, under Obasanjo, accused Fayose of corruption and got the legislators to impeach him even when the original panel set up by the assembly exonerated Fayose. That political malfeasance was not corrected until eight years later, when the Supreme Court, in 2014, declared the impeachment as illegal.
Barely a month after the Ekiti State shenanigan, the EFCC moved to Plateau State. About six legislators in the state ‘signed’ the impeachment notice of Governor Joshua Dariye. He was impeached on November 13, 2006, over allegations of corruption and money laundering. Thankfully, the Supreme Court again rose to the occasion and nullified the impeachment.
While those actions were being perpetrated, Tinubu was in his Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos office, observing the events as they unfolded, taking notes and bookmarking pages. He was also a victim of Obasanjo’s withholding of the statutory allocations to all the local government areas of Lagos State. Tinubu fought Obasanjo up to the Supreme Court and won. That should ordinarily have taught the victim never to become the practitioner.
Apparently, other lessons were learnt.
Today, under the Presidency of Tinubu, allocations to Osun State local government areas have been withheld since March 2025 — that was some 19 months ago! Maybe, Tinubu is also not aware of that and Nigerians are merely ‘crediting’ the illegality to the President as they are wont to do “because every action taken by an institution of State, especially at the Federal level is always credited to me, as the President, even when I may not have had any prior knowledge of the action.” Bad! The irony could hardly be richer: the Lagos governor who went to court against Obasanjo over withheld council funds is today President while Osun councils suffer a strikingly familiar fate.
Tinubu should extend his ‘innocence’ further by telling us that he was not aware that the EFCC, under his watch, in 2024, just two weeks to the September 2024 governorship election in Edo State, ‘invited’ and ‘detained’ the Accountant-General of the state on spurious allegations.
The then Godwin Obaseki-led administration had no access to the state accounts as the Accountant-General was locked up somewhere. The aftermath of the election produced the incumbent Governor Monday Okpebholo, who, last week, was also in Osun to deride Governor Adeleke, whom he accused of ‘dancing for four years.’
Interestingly, since after the 2024 Edo gubernatorial election, all the allegations against the state Accountant-General have disappeared! The student may insist that he never attended the class, but the handwriting on the examination paper looks remarkably familiar.
So, for whatever joy it would serve, President Tinubu can continue to delight his hangers-on that he is a neutral President as far as the Osun governorship election is concerned. For the majority of us, we have adopted the multi-syllabic name of the ancient diviner: Ifábonmíèminábonràmi (Ifa-bon-mi-emi-na-bon’ra-mi) — the oracle does not deceive me and I do not deceive myself too.
Saturday, August 15, 2026, is around the corner. We wait to confirm the much-touted impartiality of Mr. President — and whether, when the final examination comes, Obasanjo’s brilliant student will resist the temptation to reproduce his teacher’s answers.
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Tuesday, August 11, 2026)
