By Andy Ezeani
Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States of America, was in the twilight of his presidency when Alzheimer’s disease started ravaging him.
There was nothing the charismatic great communicator could do about his fate. Such is life. Human beings, no matter how strong, how powerful, or how ambitious, can only go as far as nature permits.
Sadly, the winter of life is not followed by the spring. It inevitably leads to the exit door. When decline sets in, man may strive to hold on, but nature ultimately takes its course.
Reagan became president at 70 years of age. He remained charming for much of his presidency, but his final years were tedious. Americans knew about his health challenge.
Joe Biden, America’s 46th president, was not as lucky as Reagan. Nature apprehended him early in his bid for re-election. He desired so much to go for a second term, but nature ordained it differently.
It took one early presidential debate outing for Biden to unravel before Americans. The view was pathetic. Biden left the presidential debate stage and slipped into the winter of his life. Americans knew he could not continue in office. He had to go home to manage his condition.
It is an entirely different storyline in Africa. Here, prime political office holders never declare their health status. Worse still, they never go away except in an ambulance. Usually, there is a motely crowd of sycophants and hangers on always available to egg on the big man even as an invalid. Selfishness.
Democracy has always had a peculiar interpretation in Africa. There is virtually no difference between a democratic president in the continent and a traditional ruler.
Africa’s presidents are virtual deities. They speak, most often, like the gods they approximate. They can be heard loudly, but they do not have to be seen.
The African president, purportedly elected, hardly owes those who elected him any obligations in transparency. From expenditure of public funds to such vital information as his health condition, the African president is accountable to no one but himself. It does not matter that he and his usually luxuriating family are fully maintained by the state.
It is deemed enough for the citizens of an African state to hear that the President said…. That carries the full weight of his stool. That, of course, is how it is with traditional rulers, the earthly representatives of the gods. African presidents are of no less transcendental aura.
In Cameroon, Paul Biya, 93 years of age, and a veritable souvenir of democracy in Cameroon, remains a potent deity.
Cameroonians do not necessarily see him, seeing as he lives in Switzerland, anyway. But they regularly hear; the president said….
Over in Uganda, the deity is called Yoweri Museveni, 81 years of age. He appears to be hanging on to hand over to his son. Over there too, Ugandans have become used to, “the president said….”
Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, at 84, is the dean. After 47 years at the helm of affairs of his country, how dare anybody demand to see the god? It is enough that “the president said….”
Now, enter Nigeria. President Bola Tinubu appears determined to take the country to an unchartered course, the land of “the president said….”
Tinubu is a spring chicken, compared to his brother African presidents in reference. That’s what the record says.
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar asserts that Tinubu is nearer to 90 years than the 74 years in his record. That, however, remains short in asseveration. Until Atiku formally proves the fact, as he threatened to do, the Nigerian president remains how old he says he is.
There is no official information available to Nigerians that Tinubu, their president, has any incapacitating health condition. That being so, what then accounts for the growing recession of the president from public activities across the country he is governing?
The awkwardness of African democracies and the disdain for the citizenry by the potentate-presidents is well known. Even for that, the phenomenon of a democratic president who is officially healthy, but does not venture out of the precinct of the presidential estate, except when he is being ferried abroad, is, at best, suspect.
Tinubu’s voice continues to be heard, but through his lieutenants. Hearing a president through third parties is not part of the manual for any democracy that is alive. The president has to lead from the front column if he is up to it.
There is a world of difference between being the president in Aso Rock and being the president of Aso Rock. President Tinubu has, to a great extent, become the president of Aso Rock.
Confining himself and all his activities to the presidential villa, especially when Nigerians have not been informed that he has a health challenge creates the impression that either the president holds those he governs in disdain, or that there is something he has not told Nigerians.
For the records, President Tinubu collected the nomination form to context for a second term from the Continental Hotel, Abuja, secretariat of the All-Progressive Congress (APC) by proxy.
He returned the filled form to the same party secretariat by proxy. His posse made a spectacle of retuning the president’s form for him.
A few weeks ago, the Abdulsalam Abubakar-led Peace Committee organized the signing of peace accord event for presidential candidates for the 2027 election. The event has become, perhaps, the most symbolic pre-election expression of commitment by candidates to the ideals of democracy. President Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling party for the 2027 election, was represented.
At no event held outside the Presidential villa has President Tinubu physically showed up in the past many months. Yet, every day, Nigerians are inundated with “the President said…”
On August 19,2026, the electioneering campaign season for the presidential election formally commenced, in line with the schedule of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Meanwhile, Nigerians have continued to be kidnapped in their hundreds across the country every week. When it is not worshippers, it is National Youth Service Corps members or citizens of all hues and categories. For kidnappers, all ordinary Nigerians are game.
Now, President Tinubu has taken off for what is called a three-week holiday. He headed to Europe, the preferred home of Africa’s potentate-presidents. Whether he transmitted power to vice president Kashim Shettima is not known for now.
The prospects of Tinubu executing his electioneering campaign for a second term by proxy may seem remote to many. In Tinubu’s Nigeria, however, laws, mores, conventions, and practices that once prevailed in society have all been dismantled. So, who says his election campaign can not be executed by proxy?
In any case, the Chairman of the forum of APC governors, Governor Hope Uzodimma, has said publicly that President Tinubu asked the 31 APC governors to go home and deliver their states (to him).
Clearly then, with or without the president, his campaign will proceed apace. Why not? After all, Paul Biya did not even know that he had been re-elected the last time. He was simply brought in to Cameroon from Europe and sworn in.
