By Vitus Ozoke
There are two ways to interpret Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s stumble and fall on the blue carpet in Ankara, Turkey.
The first is the spin-doctor’s view: turn national embarrassment into political theater. Reframe frailty as a strategy. Recast a public fall – uncut, uncensored, and globally televised – as performance art. If politics were cinema, this would be method acting worthy of an Oscar. What better way to dramatize Nigeria’s insecurity than watching its chief security officer collapse before the world? What more convincing plea for “security assistance” than a commander-in-chief who cannot steady himself?
The optics worked. President Erdogan stepped in, lifted Tinubu, held him, steadied him, and walked him through the rest of the ceremony. Within minutes, the internet did what it does best: AI-generated memes of Erdogan carrying Tinubu piggyback, pushing him in a wheelbarrow across the blue carpet finish line. Satire wrote itself. The message landed. The stunt – intentional or not – paid off.
And the Oscar goes to….
That is one way to see it. The other way – the only way that truly matters – is far more disturbing. Tinubu’s fall was not just his fall. It was Nigeria falling. It was us falling.
As I watched him stumble, I did not see merely an aging man losing his balance. I saw the unbearable weight of 240 million Nigerians resting on a single, visibly frail body. I saw a nation whose fate has been entrusted to a man whose age is disputed, whose health is opaque, and whose physical decline is no longer deniable.
If this were Tinubu’s first fall, we might excuse it as an accident. But it wasn’t. He has fallen before – on uncarpeted surfaces, on red carpets, into an open service truck. The Ankara incident was not an anomaly; it was a pattern. And pointing this out is not cruelty. It is not insensitivity. It is honesty. Because these are not Tinubu’s falls. They are our falls.
Nigeria’s first and most consequential fall did not happen in Ankara. It happened when we – cowardly, collusively, and corruptly – allowed a morally and ethically compromised man to appropriate the power to decide the destiny of 240 million people. That was the original collapse. That was the original sin that led to the fall and falls. Every stumble since then is merely an echo of that original collapse heard across the world.
Tinubu does not fall alone. He falls on our behalf. Each time he loses his footing, he reminds us of the moment we collectively surrendered ours – despite the scandals, despite the warnings, despite the documented questions about character, capacity, and credibility at home and abroad. God, it seems, has a brutal sense of irony. Tinubu’s repeated falls are a divine replay button, forcing us to rewatch our own.
Let us be clear: Tinubu will continue to fall. That is what old men do. Age, real age – not the manufactured kind – comes with gravity. Bones weaken. Reflexes slow. Balance disappears, especially when one insists on performing the role of a “young blood” while living a lie about one’s years.
Tinubu has earned the right to fall as many times as he wants. What he has not earned is the right to drag Nigeria down with him. And yet, that is precisely what is happening. Nigeria is falling everywhere.
We are falling into an economy where inflation eats wages and hunger stalks homes. We are falling into a cost-of-living crisis, where survival has become a daily negotiation with despair. We are falling in security, where bandits, kidnappers, and terrorists roam with impunity. We are falling in governance, where state resources are looted without shame. We are falling in integrity, where forged tax records and official lies are treated as footnotes.
Red carpets.
Blue carpets.
Forged documents.
Broken institutions.
Different stages.
Same fall.
This is why the next election is not routine. It is existential. Nigerians will face a choice: fall again – cowardly, collusively, corruptly – or rise from our last electoral collapse. We can continue to outsource our dignity to memes and mockery, or we can reclaim it through courage. Bola Tinubu’s fall should not amuse us. It should alarm us. Because nations, like men, can fall so often that one day, they no longer get back up.
By the way, the ridicule of Tinubu’s oversized coat misses a deeper absurdity. People have demanded the heads of aides and wardrobe managers for failing to get the fit right. But how do you tailor a coat for a man whose age – and therefore body – exists in a state of official uncertainty? You guess. And guesswork is a fifty–fifty gamble. On any given day, you are dressing either a septuagenarian or an octogenarian, depending on which version of history is in circulation. Truth is that the coat did not fail Tinubu; ambiguity did. When truth is elastic, tailoring becomes a game of chance.
