“When a man is cursed by the gods, they strip him of peace, deny him sleep, and turn him into a midnight town crier shouting at his own reflection.” – African Proverb.
This proverb captures, in full, the strange and unfortunate spectacle Nigerians witnessed in the late hours of Christmas Day (11:34pm to be precise). At a season when the nation was largely at peace with itself, families travelling freely without fuel scarcity, markets bustling, parents shopping for their children, homes filled with laughter, food, prayers, goodwill, and the spirit of love, one former unfortunate governor, named Nasir El-Rufai
@elrufai
, chose to spend the season consumed by bitterness. Instead of joining millions of Nigerians in celebrating a rare festive period without panic buying or endless petrol queues, he sat awake in what can only be described as political discomfort, amplifying an opinion piece attacking President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. The coward lacked the courage to write the piece himself, too timid to put his name to the bile. Instead, he outsourced his bitterness to a hired hand and then, in a fit of nocturnal anxiety, rushed to post it on social media at midnight on Christmas night, a timing that exposes restlessness, suppressed rage, and a profound inability to accept a political reality he no longer controls, one that has permanently confined him to the graveyard of irrelevance.
This rejoinder is not written to trade insults, but to restore facts, logic, and perspective, and to do so in clear, simple language that most will understand. Context matters deeply here. The opinion article titled “Is Tinubu relocating Nigeria’s capital to Lagos, piece by piece?” was not written by disgruntled El-Rufai. He merely amplified it. Men with conviction write their arguments openly, attach their names to them, and defend them publicly. Men unsure of themselves hire others, hide behind borrowed words, and then distribute those words quietly in the dead of night. If El-Rufai truly believed in the substance of the claims, he would have written them himself, signed them boldly, and stood by them. Instead, he outsourced the task and chose the most symbolic night of goodwill and peace to push division. That choice alone speaks volumes about motive.
The national atmosphere at the time makes this even more revealing. Nigerians are, for once, enjoying a festive season without the familiar stress of fuel scarcity. Petrol stations are open and orderly. Transportation is moving. Food prices are trending downward in many markets compared to previous months. Traders are smiling, buyers are bargaining, and families are travelling to villages and cities alike. Terrorists and bandits are being decisively neutralised, sent to their final reckoning under sustained and precise aerial bombardment. Children are home from school, parents are present, and people are sharing meals and laughter. Churches and mosques are preaching love, forgiveness, and hope. In sharp contrast, El-Rufai appears locked in a personal war with reality, obsessively fixated on President Tinubu’s success, unable to rest or celebrate, and seemingly determined to poison a season of peace with bitterness. The contrast is not accidental; it is instructive.
At the heart of the opinion piece is the claim that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is quietly relocating Nigeria’s capital from Abuja to Lagos. This claim is not just wrong; it is fundamentally dishonest. Nigeria’s capital remains Abuja in law, in practice, and in reality. The President lives and works in Abuja. The Presidency is in Abuja. The National Assembly conducts its business in Abuja. The Supreme Court sits in Abuja. All foreign embassies remain in Abuja. No bill has been proposed to change the capital. No constitutional amendment has been debated. No referendum has been contemplated. In simple, everyday terms, nothing about Nigeria’s capital has moved. The article deliberately confuses administrative efficiency with constitutional relocation, hoping readers will not notice the difference.
Lagos has always been Nigeria’s commercial and economic nerve centre. This is not a Tinubu-era development. It was so under military rule. It was so under Obasanjo. It was so under Yar’Adua. It was so under Jonathan. It was so under Buhari. Businesses, banks, ports, airlines, manufacturers, investors, and markets are heavily concentrated in Lagos and its surrounding corridors. That reality did not suddenly appear in 2023. Federal agencies operating actively from Lagos are responding to economic gravity, not political favouritism.
Take FAAN, for instance. Lagos airports handle the overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s passenger and cargo traffic. This is a statistical fact that predates the Tinubu presidency by decades. Keeping operational decisions closer to where most flights, passengers, and revenue are generated is common sense. It reduces delays, improves coordination, and saves costs. Nobody described this as “relocating the capital” when similar operational dominance existed under previous administrations.
The same applies to the Central Bank of Nigeria. Financial regulation, banking supervision, payments systems, and consumer protection naturally gravitate towards where financial institutions operate. Nigeria’s banking industry is concentrated in Lagos. This is how global finance works. New York is home to Wall Street, yet Washington remains the capital of the United States. No serious analyst claims those countries secretly relocated their capitals. To suggest otherwise in Nigeria’s case is either ignorance of global norms or deliberate misrepresentation.
The Bank of Industry exists to support industrial growth, manufacturing, and private sector development. Industries, factories, investors, and supply chains are clustered heavily around Lagos and the South-West industrial corridor. Locating operational headquarters closer to industry is a governance decision rooted in practicality. It does not strip Abuja of its status, nor does it transform Lagos into a capital city. These agencies remain federal in mandate, funding, and reach. The idea of “institutional drift” is a narrative invention, not a factual development.
The most glaring intellectual failure in the opinion piece is the attack on the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway. One must ask plainly and without apology: was El-Rufai expecting a coastal road in the North? The project is called a coastal road because it follows Nigeria’s coastline. Coastal literally means along the coast of a sea or ocean. The North, by geography, does not have a coastline. Geography is not discrimination. Nature is not biased. You cannot accuse a shoreline project of regional favouritism simply because the shoreline exists in one part of the country. That argument collapses the moment it is spoken.
The coastal highway is designed to protect Nigeria’s fragile shoreline from erosion, connect coastal states, unlock tourism potential, facilitate maritime trade, and open up new investment corridors across the South-South and South-West. It serves national economic interests, not regional sentiment. At the same time, substantial infrastructure investments are ongoing in the North, including roads, rail expansion, agriculture, power projects, and massive security spending concentrated in northern theatres due to ongoing insecurity. These realities are ignored because they do not serve the narrative of grievance. Bitterness has a way of narrowing vision.
The misuse of budget figures in the article is another example of deliberate distortion. Comparing the cost of a multi-year, multi-state federal infrastructure project to the annual budgets of individual states is dishonest, if not criminal. Federal projects are designed to last decades, serve millions of people across state boundaries, and are financed through layered funding mechanisms. State budgets, on the other hand, primarily fund salaries, pensions, healthcare, education, and basic services. They are not meant to deliver national-scale infrastructure. By the logic of the article, no country should ever build highways, bridges, railways, or dams, because such projects always cost more than provincial budgets can afford. That is not economic reasoning; it is propaganda aimed at stirring resentment.
The article also expresses sudden concern about poverty, insecurity, displacement, and low literacy rates in the North. These problems did not emerge overnight, and they certainly did not begin under President Tinubu. The obvious and uncomfortable question is: who governed Nigeria over the last forty years or more, who shaped national security policy, and who sat at the centre of power during that time? Rapscallion El-Rufai was not an outsider either. He was a key participant in recent history, hobnobbing and sneaking from one bedroom to another, backstabbing his fellow executives, according to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, alongside his catastrophic, inglorious, poverty-generating tenure in Kaduna. To speak as if he has just discovered northern suffering is political amnesia. You cannot preside over decline, contribute to policy failure, and then rebrand yourself as a shocked commentator when the consequences become undeniable.
The most dangerous aspect of the opinion piece is not its poor logic, but its intention. It seeks to reduce governance to ethnic arithmetic and development to regional rivalry. It attempts to pit North against South, Lagos against the rest of Nigeria, and geography against national unity. This is not statesmanship; it is mischief. It is the politics of division deployed by those who can no longer shape outcomes constructively.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is governing pragmatically. He is placing institutions where they function best, investing based on geography and economic logic, stabilising the economy, and confronting inherited challenges with realism. That approach is producing visible results, including relative fuel stability, improved market confidence, enhanced security, and renewed economic activity. That success is the nightmare that leaves our Man Friday frozen in envy, suffering acute erectile dysfunction, and the vertically, intellectually, and politically stunted El-Rufai completely unhinged.
Nigeria’s capital is not being relocated. Nigeria is being rebuilt. And that, more than anything else, explains the anger. El-Rufai is not fighting for federalism. He is fighting irrelevance. When a man loses power, he fights geography. When he loses arguments, he hires writers. When he loses peace, he posts at midnight on Christmas Day. Meanwhile, Nigerians are moving forward, shopping, travelling, celebrating, reconnecting with family, spreading love, and finding Renewed Hope. And that reality is the loudest rebuttal of all.
Hon Victor Okebunmi,
Senior Special Assistant (Publicity),
Renewed Hope Global.
