On Tuesday, July 28, Cardinal John Onaiyekan sat across from President Tinubu at the presidential villa and told him what many Nigerians have been saying for a while now: The country’s economy is hurting people, and the insecurity is getting worse.
Tinubu responded with disagreement and a face, Onaiyekan later said, clearly wasn’t pleased. That single meeting has since spiralled into a series of clapbacks between the presidency and other religious leaders.
Besties forever
If there was ever such a thing as a groupie award, someone should hand it over to Tinubu’s aides, because he can trust that they’ll always be there to defend him.
After the cardinal’s interview, they issued statements of their own, refuting the cardinal’s comments and justifying the Tinubu administration’s reforms.
Temitope Ajayi, the special adviser to the president on media and publicity, called the cardinal’s comments an “abuse of clerical privilege,” saying it was wrong for him to publicly give his account of the closed-door meeting with the President.
Daniel Bwala, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Policy Communications, said politics had clouded the Cardinal’s judgment, alleging that he had openly supported the former Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, during the 2023 general elections.
Sunday Dare, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communications, put out a full statement titled saying that Onaiyekan acted in bad faith when he publicly discussed what happened during the meeting between President Tinubu and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria.
A Catholic priest, Reverend Father John Chinenye Oluoma, popularly known as Fada Oluoma, responded to the comments from Tinubu’s media team, saying they were acting like attack dogs, responding to criticism with insults rather than answers or solutions.
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Right, but at what cost?
Here’s where the story stops being about who hurt whose feelings. That same weekend, gunmen kidnapped at least 52 people, including children, in an overnight raid on Kasuwar Daji village in Zamfara state, after first overrunning a military base and seizing weapons from it. A coordinated raid on a community and the soldiers meant to protect it, and the Presidency was busy drafting statements about clerical privilege.
That’s the reality the aides spent their weekend denying. It’s also the reality behind the growing numbers of insecurity and inflation in the country. About a million people are displaced in the Northwest by banditry, food inflation has been climbing since April as insecurity chokes supply routes, and 34.7 million Nigerians are projected to face food insecurity by this year’s lean season.
Don’t you listen?
At this point, if a pothole criticised Tinubu’s road policy, someone in Aso Rock would accuse it of siding with the opposition. This government has one move for anyone who points out a problem: question their motives, never the problem.
In 2024, when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) protested over unimplemented wage agreements, Tinubu accused the union of playing politics with the country’s hardship and told them to wait for 2027 if they wanted a say. The NLC wasn’t after his job. It just wanted the government to honour an already signed deal.
Months earlier, when thousands of young Nigerians took to the streets nationwide to protest hunger and hardship, the President warned that his government wouldn’t “stand idly by and allow a few with a clear political agenda to tear this nation apart.”
A government that treats criticism as betrayal will keep getting the criticism wrong, and Nigerians will keep paying for that miscalculation in rising insecurity occurrences and increased food prices.
You don’t need a media aide’s permission to say what you’re living through. Say it anyway, to your ward, your local rep, on your social media.
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