Just yesterday, the 27th day of July 2026, gunmen stormed Naridon village in Kaduna State. They shot people and burned houses, and by the time they were done, at least 30 were dead, eight of them children. Don’t forget that this same village was attacked around this same time last year.
When I saw the report this morning, I decided to pen a few words, for the umpteenth time, to whom it may concern.
Years ago, a Lagos opposition chieftain by the name of Bola Ahmed Tinubu looked at a Nigeria under siege from Boko Haram and could not hold his peace. At exactly 9:41AM GMT, on the 29th of January, 2014, he tweeted:
“The slaughtering of Christian worshippers is strongly condemnable. It calls into question the competence of Jonathan to protect Nigerians.”
By April of the same year, with insecurity worsening, and in the aftermath of the Nyanya bombing in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, Nigeria, he again tweeted:
“My heart bleeds for our people and the country over the deaths in Nyanya. A government unable to protect its citizens deserves to be queried”.
That same year, with parts of the country effectively occupied, Tinubu had arrived at the only place his own logic could take him. He took to his twitter account yet again at exactly 8:13AM on the 9th of September saying:
“The festering Boko Haram attacks on the North East and massacre of innocent citizens is concrete proof that Nigeria has no government.”
At this point, Tinubu had rejected the legitimacy the government. His logic had gradually progressed from questioning the capacity of the then incumbent government to rejecting it altogether. On the 6th of November 2014, at exactly 8:52AM he wrote:
“Why would any part of this country be under occupation? In any civilized country, Jonathan should resign.”
Tinubu was right to have called for Jonathan’s resignation at the time. In truth, a government that allows parallel governments of insugents has no business being in power.
A priest classmate of mine working in Niger State attests to these realities. In many rural communities of the North today, several armed Fulani militias are the government. They take taxes from people, and determine what happens in those regions.
Amnesty International’s May 2025 investigation report categorically states that 10,217 persons were killed by gunmen in just the first two years of the present administration across seven states.
Benue State alone buried close to 6,900 persons. Plateau lost over 2,600, and watched 65,000 more run for their lives; some twice, some three times, after the very camps sheltering them were attacked too. These were the official numbers. Many of the victims allege the numbers to be significantly higher.
In May 2026, over ninety Nigerian civil society groups, including Global Rights, BudgIT, CISLAC, CLEEN, etc., marked Tinubu’s third year in office with a joint statement, noting that at least 19,980 had been killed and 12,362 abducted since 29 May 2023.
Add about 1,486 security personnel who died trying to hold a line their commanders could not hold and we have a tally of nearly twenty thousand graves in three years, from official sources alone. What about the many cases that are not reported or under reported? Why should we continue to have a President superintending over death and kidnappings?
Intersociety’s mid-year report, which was released on the 2nd of July, says that 3,610 were killed, while 3,960 were abducted from January to June 2026. In just six months, roughly 300 churches were destroyed, about 800 women and children were abducted and forced to convert to Islam.
I will not pretend to be a neutral party here. I am a Catholic priest after all. Some of those who have been kidnapped and killed were Catholic priests and religious. Some others were Imams. These are deaths that could have been avoided.
So I ask, what standard should we hold Tinubu to now, if not his own? Citizens should be able to farm, worship, and sleep anywhere in Nigeria without dying for it. By that measure, this government has failed exactly as badly as the ones it replaced. Going by the numbers, it has failed much more.
When Tinubu took to Twitter in 2014, the DSS was not used to shut him up. His right to public expression was not tamed. He was not accused of heating up the polity. But what’s the case today?
In an earlier article, “Nigeria’s Vanishing Civic Space“, I traced The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism’s 2026 report, which documented 245 verified incidents of civic space violations across Nigeria in 2025 alone, drawn from 570 media reports published by 54 organisations. Violations that were carried out by none other than state actors themselves.
There are those who argue that the situation under previous administrations is not the same as the present. They say that the circumstances are not comparable. They argue that the enemy has changed shape; that no government fully tames a hydra headed banditry like the one we have today.
But those were not the terms Tinubu offered Jonathan in 2014. He did not ask for context. He asked for a resignation. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Nigerians do not need a new standard to judge this presidency in 2027.
The old one will do just fine, the one Tinubu handed us himself. Anyone who could not protect Nigerians from 2023 to 2026 has no business asking to lead them again.
A word is enough for the wise!
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