Watching President Bola Tinubu on the international stage has become one of the more painful experiences of being an educated Nigerian. His recent three-nation tour — France, Kenya, Rwanda — culminating at the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi and the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, was supposed to showcase Nigeria’s leadership on the continent. Instead, it showcased the yawning gap between the Nigeria we know is possible and the Nigeria this man represents.
He was among serious company. Emmanuel Macron. William Ruto. Paul Kagame. The IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva. These are people who speak with precision and authority. Tinubu gave us what he always gives us: confused jargon, Yoruba-inflected proverbs awkwardly stretched into English, half-formed thoughts in search of a conclusion. Viewers watching the clips circulating on social media were not asking what he meant. They were asking how this man leads Africa’s largest economy.
His handlers dressed it up beautifully, as they always do. The presidential spokespersons issued polished press releases about Nigeria’s “blue economy potential,” its “Deep Blue Project maritime intelligence infrastructure,” its “banking recapitalisation exceeding $45.5 billion.” The words read competently on paper precisely because they were written by people who are competent. The problem is the man who had to speak them.
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This is not about accent. It is not about tribe. Those who raise that deflection know exactly what they are doing. This is about basic executive competence — the capacity to absorb, synthesise, and articulate complex policy in real time. Tinubu cannot do it. He never could. And no number of diplomatic tours, coordinated photo opportunities with Macron, or State House press releases will change that underlying reality.
Nigeria has no shortage of minds capable of representing her with distinction. We have world-class economists, diplomats, technocrats, and statesmen who could walk into any room on earth and command respect. Yet we send this man — a figure who could not pass the most elementary test of intellectual coherence — to speak for 220 million people at the continent’s premier business and leadership forums.
The damage is real. Investors do not only read policy documents. They watch the man. They assess whether he understands what his own government is doing, whether he commands the room, whether the confidence his spokespeople project on his behalf is matched by anything behind the eyes. In Nairobi and Kigali, they got their answer.
Nigeria is not a poor country. She is a looted, mismanaged, and embarrassed one. That embarrassment has a name and a face.
Tinubu must go.
Kio Amachree
