By Adamu Lawal Toro
“You will excuse me from going everywhere with you.” With those words, President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday inaugurated his re-election campaign council and then excused himself from the campaign. He told party leaders at the State House that governance would not take a back seat. “We have bills to pay,” he said. He promised to “make time to speak directly with Nigerians,” but the states, the rallies and the dusty campaign grounds would be left to his surrogates.
It sounds like dedication to duty. Nigerians have heard this kind of language before, and they know what it has sometimes concealed.
In late 2009, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was flown to Saudi Arabia. For months the country was told he was recovering and would soon return. Ministers swore they had seen him. The Federal Executive Council insisted he was fit. It took the National Assembly’s “doctrine of necessity” to break the deadlock. He died in May 2010.
In 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari spent 104 days in London on medical leave. Before that, his aides dismissed every question about his health as mischief by the opposition. They said he was resting. They said he was working from abroad. Only later did Buhari himself admit he had never been so sick in his life.
That is why Nigerians cannot simply take Wednesday’s statement at face value.
Consider the record. By Daily Trust’s count, President Tinubu has spent about 261 days outside Nigeria since May 2023, across more than 50 foreign trips. He spent roughly 22 days abroad in January this year alone. A man with time for Paris, London and Dubai now says he has no time for Kano, Maiduguri or Enugu?
What exactly keeps him away? Is it the workload? Is it security? Or is it something the presidency would rather we did not ask about?
The opposition has already noticed. In August, the Obi camp accused him of avoiding national events and campaigning by proxy. The President skipped a presidential town hall. Now he is skipping much of his own campaign.
This is not a question of gossip. It is a question of fitness for office. A campaign is the one season when a leader must stand before the people who will decide his fate. If the demands of a rally are too much, Nigerians are entitled to ask how he will carry the far heavier demands of another four years.
The presidency can settle this easily. It can tell Nigerians, plainly and with evidence, why the President will not be on the campaign trail. If the reason is governance, let it show us the governance. If the reason is health, the constitution already provides a dignified path.
What Nigerians will not accept is another season of silence followed by a crisis.
A voter in Bauchi who will queue under the sun in January deserves to see the man asking for his vote. If the President cannot come to him, perhaps it is time to make way for someone who can.
Toro is a journalist based in Bauchi.
