There are moments in Nigerian political discourse when a statement lands with such exquisite self-awareness that one almost wants to stand and applaud. Almost. Then the applause dies, the silence stretches, and you realise the man has just confessed to running a country the way a distracted uncle runs a family compound: “I inherited the leaking roof, I’ve been managing it, prosperity is coming (trust me), and if the children are hungry, well… that’s why we have churches.”
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently delivered a masterclass in presidential fatalism. In his own words:
“…ability of my predecessor, I inherited it and I have been running with it. But this government has stabilized, and there’s prosperity on the horizon. The quality of life is improving.
Yes, before I was born, there was hunger in this country and I have no control of the population development of Nigeria—trajectory.
And that is why you have membership in your various faiths and churches, to give hope to people and give commitment to humanity, in the true sense of it.”
Let us unpack this with the reverence it deserves.
First, the inheritance clause. Every Nigerian president arrives at Aso Rock carrying the sacred briefcase of “I met it like that.” It is the national equivalent of a landlord saying the generator has never worked, the borehole has always been dry, and the tenants should stop complaining because the previous landlord was worse. Stabilisation is claimed. Prosperity is “on the horizon.” The quality of life is “improving.” One is left wondering whose life, exactly. Perhaps the horizon has better data than the market woman whose pepper now costs more than her children’s school fees.
Then comes the demographic shrug. “I have no control of the population development of Nigeria—trajectory.” Note the careful choice of words. Not “I have no control over policy that might influence fertility, education, economic opportunity, or women’s agency.” No. The population simply has a trajectory, like a runaway train that no one in government is authorised to notice. Hunger, we are informed, predates the President’s birth. This is historically accurate and politically useless. Cholera also predates most of us. We still prefer leaders who try to stop people dying from it rather than philosophers who remind us that diarrhoea is ancient.
And yet, the same man who insists the national population is a force beyond his reach somehow managed, in the privacy of his own household, to exercise perfect control. Five surviving children. Not a trajectory. Not an act of God. A deliberate, personal decision. The President who cannot influence the fertility of 220 million Nigerians apparently had no difficulty influencing his own. Selective helplessness is a rare political talent. When the numbers belong to the nation, they are uncontrollable. When they belong to the family, they are curated.
And then the pièce de résistance: the outsourcing of hope. Since the state cannot (or will not) address grinding poverty, religious organisations are invited to step into the breach. Churches and mosques, already busy with their own modest portfolios of miracles, fundraising, and the occasional private jet, are now officially designated as the social safety net. The government stabilises; the clergy consoles. The state manages the macroeconomy; the pulpit manages the empty stomachs. It is a division of labour so elegant it almost looks deliberate.
This is not governance. This is a spiritual franchise model. The presidency has effectively told the poor: “We have stabilised the numbers that matter to us. Your membership in various faiths will handle the rest. Please find hope and commitment to humanity somewhere between the offertory and the altar call.”
The lack of empathy is not subtle. The lack of self-awareness is Olympic-grade. A man who occupies the highest office in the land, with the full machinery of the state at his disposal, announces that poverty is an inheritance older than himself and that population is a force of nature beyond presidential influence—while quietly demonstrating, through his own five children, that personal agency over family size is perfectly possible when the family is his. He then hands the moral and practical burden of consolation to the very institutions that have, for decades, been asked to mop up the consequences of elite failure.
One almost admires the candour. Most leaders pretend they have a plan. This one has outsourced the plan to Providence and the collection plate, while keeping the family planning firmly under private management.
Prosperity remains on the horizon. The quality of life continues its mysterious improvement somewhere beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. And if the hunger persists, as it has since before the President was born, the faithful are reminded that their churches exist for a reason.
In the true sense of it.
Nigeria, it seems, has perfected a new form of statecraft: stabilise the macro, spiritualise the micro, declare the national trajectory beyond control, and quietly curate your own. The churches will give hope. The mosques will give commitment. The government will give speeches.
And the people? They will continue to pray. Because, as the President has helpfully clarified, that is precisely what they are for.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 