President —the same man Sunday Wale Adeniran today elevates as lord and personal saviour—was Nigeria’s undisputed chief wailer while out of power. This is not abuse; it is fact. Tinubu did not discover dissent in Aso Rock. He mastered it in opposition. He complained loudly and persistently about marginalisation, selective prosecution, federal overreach, economic suffocation, and political exclusion. He litigated, protested, mobilised, and refused silence. His most infamous declaration—“Emi lo kan”—was not the song of a satisfied insider but the battle cry of a man convinced the system had worked against him.
This is where the rebuttal begins.
Sunday Wale Adeniran’s attempt to gag with sermons on “statesmanship” collapses instantly when placed beside Tinubu’s own political record. If dissent was legitimate when Tinubu complained, it remains legitimate when others do. You cannot canonise protest in one man and criminalise it in another without exposing rank hypocrisy.
That hypocrisy deepens when Adeniran weaponises history as arithmetic. Counting rulers by region and religion is not analysis; it is evasion. Nigeria did not enjoy 49 years of northern development because northerners held power. Much of that era was military dictatorship, not democratic governance. Power sat in barracks and cabals, not in the hands of the northern poor now trapped by poverty, illiteracy, and insecurity. Power held by elites is not development delivered to people. Confusing the two is either ignorance or deliberate deception.
Adeniran’s infrastructure whataboutism follows the same pattern. He cites the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway and waves the Sokoto–Badagry road as if they are equivalent. They are not. One is newly prioritised and aggressively funded; the other is a decades-old slogan repeatedly announced and abandoned. Presenting them as equals is not balance—it is misrepresentation.
On Niger Republic, the half-truth is glaring. Borders were eventually reopened, yes—but after months of economic strangulation that devastated northern traders and border communities. Harm inflicted and later paused does not become benevolence. Timing matters. Adeniran buries it.
The anti-corruption sermon fares even worse under scrutiny. We are told there is no witch-hunt, only a hunt for thieves. Yet the pattern of selective urgency persists. was suspended—but not tried. was invited—and then silence followed. was implicated in the very contract scandals for which Betta Edu was suspended; on national television, he acknowledged that his company executed some of the inflated contracts—yet there has been no investigation, no trial, no consequence. If corruption is the target, why does accountability stop at convenience?
Adeniran’s insistence that religion does not matter collapses further when set against the politics of appointments and removals he celebrates or excuses. Tinubu removed the APC chairman and replaced him with Nentanwe. He removed the INEC chairman Prof. Mahmud and replaced him with Joash Amiputan. He removed Badaru as defence minister and replaced him with . Now, reports swirl that he is contemplating dropping to replace him with a northern Christian. People like Sunday Wale Adeniran call this “rebalancing”—yet pretend religion does not matter. That is not nuance; it is hypocrisy.
The contradiction is complete: religion is dismissed in theory and deployed in practice. Silence is demanded from opponents while protest is celebrated in the biography of the man now in power. Selective prosecution is denied while selective outcomes stare the public in the face.
Finally, Adeniran’s moral blackmail—warning against “tension”—is the oldest trick in the authoritarian handbook. Criticism becomes tension. Dissent becomes ambition. Silence becomes patriotism. Nigeria did not advance because citizens kept quiet; it advanced—whenever it did—because people spoke, opposed, and insisted.
This rejoinder states it plainly: history is not an alibi, arithmetic is not justice, and statesmanship is not silence. The same tools Tinubu used to reach power cannot be confiscated from others now that he has arrived. Sunday Wale Adeniran’s open letter is not counsel; it is a brief for convenience. And that, exposed to daylight, does not survive scrutiny.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached at [email protected]