Concerns about Tinubu’s health – Council on Foreign Relations

Two different conversations about the country’s highest political office are currently ongoing in Nigeria. One—arguably the less important of the two—concerns a matter of basic protocol that flared up after an Independence Day address during which Atiku Abubakar, former vice president and currently standard-bearer of the African Democratic Congress in the January 2027 presidential election, repeatedly referred to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as simply “Bola.” Whether or not Mr. Abubakar intended to put a former political associate who he can correctly boast of having brought into politics in his place, political commentators did not take kindly to the perceived insult to the office. Akin Osuntokun, director general of Peter Obi’s presidential campaign during the 2023 election and someone who can scarcely be described as an ally of President Tinubu, decried Mr. Abubakar’s action as “objectionable” and “needlessly disrespectful” of Nigeria’s highest office. In the same vein, popular journalist and social commentator Simon Kolawole adjudged it “contemptuous” and “ungentlemanly.”

If Nigerian politicians and commentators, regardless of party affiliation, agree about the importance of preserving the aura of the country’s highest office no matter its occupant, they are less sure about the physical fitness of the incumbent whose health has been the subject of animated discussions since he left the country on August 30 for what his handlers had described at the time as a “working vacation.” Although President Tinubu is now back in the country (he returned to Lagos on September 29 after spending four weeks in the UK and France, more on which shortly), it has not been enough to douse the controversy.

While Tinubu was away, much of the criticism by the opposition centered on speculation that he failed to transmit a written declaration to the Senate President and Speaker of House of Representatives, as required by law. Chapter 6, part 1, section 145 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria states: “Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President.”

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