Editorial: Tinubu, EFCC and Freezing of Osun Accounts (1)

Nigeria has never lacked for strongmen. What it lacks chronically, tragically, is strong institutions. And so the country finds itself once again in familiar territory: a federal government behaving not as custodian of a constitutional order but as a conquering army laying siege to a province. The freezing of Osun State’s local government and government accounts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), coming just days before the state’s gubernatorial election, is an appalling episode in the long-running saga of federal overreach. It raises the gravest questions about the weaponization of state institutions, the independence of law-enforcement agencies, and the willingness of the federal government to respect the constitutional rights of a federating unit. And now President Bola Tinubu wants Nigerians to take note of his intervention. No. Nigerians should take note; but not in the way the President apparently hopes.

Tinubu’s directive to the EFCC to return to court and vacate the order freezing the Osun government account is not an act deserving of applause. It is the bare minimum expected of a president confronted with an action that should never have occurred in the first place. One does not deserve a medal for extinguishing a fire in a house after allowing; or failing to prevent the arsonist from setting it ablaze.
Indeed, the President’s attempt to distance himself from the EFCC’s action while simultaneously claiming credit for ordering its reversal is breathtakingly convenient. Tinubu says he was “deeply embarrassed” not by the EFCC’s exercise of its mandate, but by the timing of the action. That formulation is itself revealing. The problem, apparently, is not that a state government’s funds were frozen; the problem is that the freezing happened too close to an election and therefore created an ugly impression of federal interference.

But what if the same action had occurred six months before the election? Would it suddenly have become lawful? Would freezing funds belonging to a federating unit become constitutionally acceptable simply because there was no imminent ballot to make the political implications embarrassing? Would the suffering of civil servants, teachers, healthcare workers and ordinary citizens somehow become less objectionable because the electoral calendar was more convenient? Of course not. Timing may magnify an abuse. It does not determine whether the abuse is an abuse. That is precisely why the President’s explanation rings hollow. Tinubu says he has consistently maintained that anti-corruption and law-enforcement agencies should operate independently and without political interference. He says he deliberately refrains from directing the operational activities of the EFCC because strong democratic institutions must operate within the law.

Yet, when the consequences of the EFCC’s action become politically explosive, the President suddenly issues a directive ordering the agency to go back to court and undo it. Which is it? Are these institutions independent, or are they independent until the President decides that their actions have become politically inconvenient? Does the President refrain from interference, or does he intervene when the political temperature rises? The contradiction is glaring. And it becomes even more disturbing when one considers what was actually at stake: public money belonging to a state government and ultimately intended for the welfare of citizens. The funds of a federating unit are not the President’s political property. They are not a favor dispensed by Abuja. They are not a weapon to be seized when a state falls out of political alignment with the federal establishment. Local government allocations and public revenues exist to provide services, pay workers, sustain healthcare, maintain infrastructure and keep government functioning. To freeze such funds without compelling lawful justification is not merely an administrative inconvenience. It is an attack on governance itself.

The African Democratic Congress described the broader treatment of Osun as “political terrorism.” The phrase may sound incendiary, but the underlying concern cannot be dismissed as rhetoric. When federal institutions are perceived to be deployed against a politically inconvenient state, when elected local councils are displaced by unelected loyalists, when opposition figures face aggressive security attention while armed political thugs appear to enjoy remarkable latitude, and when public resources suddenly become instruments of political pressure, Nigerians have every reason to be alarmed. This is not how a federation is supposed to function.

A federation is not a military command structure. The President is not a military governor of the states. Governors are not provincial commanders awaiting permission from Aso Rock to administer their jurisdictions. States are constitutional components of the federation, not conquered territories.
Yet the pattern in Osun has increasingly suggested a federal center that is prepared to treat political disagreement as insubordination. That is dangerous. It is even more dangerous when the President now seeks political credit for correcting a crisis created by the very institutions over which his administration ultimately bears constitutional responsibility.

Tinubu cannot have it both ways. He cannot tell Nigerians that the EFCC is an independent institution whose actions he does not interfere with, then rush into the controversy to order the institution to undo its action, and expect Nigerians to interpret the episode as evidence of exemplary democratic restraint.
Nor should he expect Nigerians to congratulate him for stopping an action that, by the logic of constitutional government, should never have been permitted to become a political instrument in the first place. If the freezing of Osun’s accounts was legally and constitutionally indefensible, then the President’s responsibility is not merely to vacate the order. It is to explain why such an action was allowed to happen at all; and who should answer for it.

That is the question Tinubu’s carefully worded statement conspicuously avoids. He speaks of embarrassment over the timing. Nigerians should be embarrassed by something much more fundamental: the ease with which the coercive machinery of the federal government can become entangled in a state-level political contest. The President says nothing should be done to create the impression that the EFCC or another federal agency is being used to interfere with the Osun election.
But the issue is not merely the “impression.” The issue is whether the federal government has created circumstances in which ordinary Nigerians could reasonably conclude that its institutions are being used to influence the political fortunes of a state.