Before #EndSARS or the 2023 presidential election, many Nigerians remember Tinubu as a man who fought against military rule in the 1990s during his defiance of General Sani Abacha’s oppressive regime. But now, in 2025, Nigerians are asking, Did Tinubu fight dictators only to become one himself?
Tinubu was forced to leave Nigeria for safety after General Sani Abacha’s military takeover of power resulted in a string of arrests, detentions, harassment, and threats against his life. Undeterred, he went as far as joining NADECO abroad in exile in 1994 to continue fighting for democratic governance and the restoration of rule in the country and returned in 1998 after Abacha’s death.
Throughout his career, Tinubu positioned himself as a protector of democracy—so it seems. As governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007, he clashed with then-President Olusegun Obasanjo over constitutional breaches in 2004, opposing Obasanjo’s imposition of a state of emergency in Plateau State on May 18.
The declaration by Obasanjo came after months of violent interfaith conflicts between the Muslim and Christian populations in Jos, the state capital, and the surrounding areas, which resulted in the displacement of thousands of people and the deaths of over 2,000. Chris Alli, a retired major general, was named the sole administrator for six months after Obasanjo suspended the state assembly and Plateau governor at the time, Joshua Dariye.
Tinubu denounced the action as an attack on Nigeria’s federal system, claiming that Plateau’s democratic rights were taken away without pursuing state-level remedies or dialogue.
“It is unfortunate and illegal; this has to be discouraged. It is a bad precedent. What the president of the country has done, I pray it doesn’t stand,” Tinubu was quoted as saying in 2004.
Again, in 2013, he criticised President Goodluck Jonathan for declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, arguing that the decision was an “unpardonable mediocrity” that bypassed constitutional checks, warning that it risked turning the northeast into a militarised zone under federal control.
He claimed that Jonathan had “emasculated and intimidated” the governors with the declaration and that the action had sabotaged the elected officials’ and governors’ constitutional duties in the three states.
“Let all those who love this country genuinely advise the federal government not to tinker with the mandates of these governors under any guise. It is a potentially destructive path to take,” he wrote at the time.
“Hiding under some nebulous claims that border on the intractability of the security challenges posed by Boko Haram or some acclaimed traditionalists who have killed some policemen to render ineffective the constitutional powers vested in elected governors and other representatives of the people, perceived as not amenable to manipulation for the 2015 project, amounts to reducing serious issues bordering on the survival of the country to partisan politics.”
But now, as President of Nigeria, Tinubu, who ran on the promise of renewed hope, finds himself accused of the very authoritarian tendencies he once opposed.
His recent declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State, suspending an elected governor, his deputy, and all members of the state assembly, leaves many Nigerians asking what went wrong and slamming him as “Tinubu is an Abacha in Agbada.”
During Nadeco days he wasn’t on ground, he escaped on exile.
MKO Abiola, Abraham Adesnaya, Anthony Enaharo, Fayemi, Dele Aleke, Dele Momodu, Femi Falana and others.
Tinubu is an Abacha in Agbada.
— OTUNBA (@ManLikeIcey) March 18, 2025
(Guardian)
