Editorial: Tinubu, EFCC and Freezing of Osun Accounts (2)

The emasculation of Osun’s elected government is not an isolated misjudgment. It is part of a wider and deeply troubling pattern in which partisan fiat appears increasingly comfortable replacing constitutional restraint. For over a year, local councils in Osun have been illegally occupied by unelected loyalists of the ruling party, according to the account underlying this editorial. Security agencies whose mandate should be to protect democratic order have too often appeared partisan or selectively blind. Political violence and intimidation have continued to stain the environment. Then came the freezing of public funds.

Taken individually, these developments might be dismissed as administrative disputes, political disagreements or unfortunate coincidences. Taken together, they paint a much darker picture.
They suggest the creeping substitution of partisan power for constitutional authority. And this is why Tinubu’s sudden intervention should not distract from the central issue. The question is not whether the President eventually told the EFCC to withdraw. The question is why Nigerians had to wait for the President to intervene before an action so politically explosive; and potentially so destructive to governance, was reversed.

If the President truly believes that strong institutions must operate within the confines of the law, then the law must apply before an abuse, not merely after public outrage. If he believes in federalism, then states must not be financially strangled because they are politically inconvenient. If he believes in democratic competition, then federal agencies must not deliberately or inadvertently become instruments of electoral intimidation. And if he believes in the rule of law, then his administration must demonstrate that legality is a principle, not a public-relations device deployed whenever the political consequences of government action become embarrassing.

The attempt to portray the episode as merely an unfortunate matter of timing is therefore inadequate.
It is an insult to Nigerians’ intelligence. The public does not need the President to tell it that the timing was bad. Nigerians need to know whether the action itself was justified, whether it was lawful, who authorized it, what evidence supported it, why public funds were targeted, and what safeguards exist to ensure that no federal agency can again plunge an entire state’s administration into uncertainty in the middle of an election season. And above all, Nigerians deserve an answer to a simpler question: Why should President Tinubu receive credit for ordering the EFCC to vacate an order that should never have been used to freeze Osun’s public funds in the first place? There is something profoundly perverse about the politics of this episode. A government creates or permits a dangerous situation, public outrage follows, the President intervenes to reverse the situation, and the intervention is then presented as evidence of the President’s commitment to democracy. That is not statesmanship; it is damage control.

The ruling APC may imagine that pressure on Osun will weaken its opponents ahead of the election. Perhaps political strategists in Abuja have convinced themselves that every lever of state power is fair game in the pursuit of electoral advantage. But the cost of such thinking is far greater than one election.
The cost is the integrity of the federation. The cost is the credibility of democratic institutions. The cost is public confidence in the neutrality of law-enforcement agencies. And the ultimate cost is the slow transformation of Nigeria from a constitutional republic into a centralized patronage system in which states are rewarded for political obedience and punished for dissent.

Public institutions do not belong to the party occupying Aso Rock. The EFCC does not belong to the APC. The treasury does not belong to the President. Security agencies do not exist to settle political scores. And the resources of Osun State do not become federal property simply because Abuja has political disagreements with those governing the state. The Nigerian people own these institutions. They also own the democracy. That is why Tinubu should resist the temptation to present himself as the hero who rescued Osun from the EFCC. The President did not perform some extraordinary act of democratic benevolence. He did what should have been done when the danger became impossible to ignore: he ordered the reversal of an action whose timing, purpose and implications had become deeply troubling.

If the administration wants credit, let it earn it the harder way. Let it guarantee that federal institutions will never again be deployed; or perceived to be deployed to punish a politically inconvenient state.
Let it respect elected governments. Let it stop treating opposition as insubordination. Let it ensure that public funds remain public funds, not political weapons. Let it demonstrate that the rule of law binds the government even when the government finds the law inconvenient. And let the President understand that Nigerians are not so gullible as to applaud a man for removing a boot from someone’s neck after his government was responsible for putting it there. The Osun account should never have been frozen if the action lacked lawful justification. And if it was unlawful, the proper response is not presidential self-congratulation for ordering its reversal. It is accountability for how the abuse happened in the first place. This rascality must stop. Not because Osun is special, but because Nigeria is fragile.

A federation cannot function when the center behaves like a bully. A democracy cannot survive when the rules are treated as optional. A republic cannot endure when political opponents are treated as enemy combatants and public institutions are converted into partisan cudgels. Tinubu should understand this plainly: Nigeria does not need a President who merely intervenes after institutions go rogue. Nigeria needs a President under whose watch institutions have no reason, or political incentive to go rogue in the first place. The country deserves better than political brigandage masquerading as governance. It deserves institutions that serve the public, not partisan interests. It deserves a political class that understands the difference between competition and conquest. And it deserves a President who understands that power, properly exercised, is not the ability to inflict punishment and later reverse it. Power properly exercised is restraint.