Editorial: A Security Battalion for Prince Seyi Tinubu

Nigeria is short of policemen, short of patience and short of trust. What it is not short of, it turns out, is armed escorts for the President’s son. When Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s tireless moral witness stepped out of a Lagos hotel to find a small infantry unit bristling with rifles, he assumed he had wandered onto a film set. He had not. The formation was guarding the president’s son, Seyi Tinubu, a private citizen, entrepreneur and accidental beneficiary of the Nigerian state’s most lavish welfare scheme: proximity to power. Soyinka’s mordant quip that this “battalion” might as well be dispatched to put down the coup in neighboring Benin, landed because it was true in spirit. Nigerians laughed because they recognized the punchline. The joke, as ever, is on them.

 

Nigeria is a country where words are plentiful and consequences scarce. Yet even by this elastic standard, President Bola Tinubu’s posture on security has collapsed into farce. Barely weeks after solemnly ordering the withdrawal of police officers from VIPs so that “more boots can hit the ground” against bandits and terrorists, his own household has been caught parading a private army through Lagos. The contradiction is not subtle. It is volcanic. Mr. president, Nigeria’s security crisis is not abstract;

practice what you preach!

 

The image is now burned into the public imagination: Seyi Tinubu, a private citizen with no constitutional role, cocooned by a battalion of heavily armed state agents; rifles slung, vests strapped, impunity assured. Wole Soyinka’s mordant joke that this force might have been better deployed to foil the attempted coup in Benin Republic landed because it was true. Nigerians laughed because they recognized the obscenity. This is not protection; it is provocation. 

 

The president’s directive of November 24 was couched in the language of national emergency. Kidnapping, banditry and terrorism had stretched the security services thin, he said. Officers attached to politicians and VIPs would be withdrawn. The logic was impeccable. The credibility, alas, evaporated the moment the president’s son rolled past with a convoy long enough to shame a state governor. Hypocrisy is not merely a personal failing in a democracy; it is a policy failure. When the commander-in-chief exempts his own family from rules imposed on everyone else, he puts his family above the law. Nigerians are not fools. They understand the message being sent: sacrifice is for the many; privilege is for the few; especially those who share a surname with power.

 

This is not merely hypocrisy; it is a masterclass in double standards, and the obscenity is sharpened by the timing. While Seyi Tinubu glides through the country wrapped in taxpayer-funded steel, a brigadier-general, Musa Uba, was ambushed, abducted and executed by ISWAP with little more than a skeletal escort. Hundreds of schoolchildren were dragged from their dormitories in Niger State; many remain in captivity. Worshippers are kidnapped mid-prayer. Villages are razed. Farmers pay “harvest tax” to bandits. In parts of Katsina and Zamfara, dozens of communities are notionally protected by a handful of officers sharing a few rifles. Against this backdrop, a battalion guarding one man’s son is not just tasteless; it is morally grotesque.

 

Against this backdrop, the President’s family appears to live in a parallel republic; one where power is hereditary in practice, if not in law, and where state resources follow bloodlines with obedient enthusiasm. This is not an isolated lapse. In 2023, Seyi Tinubu wandered into the Federal Executive Council chamber as though it were a family living room, prompting a rare public rebuke from his father. In 2024, a viral video showed him inspecting an armed formation that looked suspiciously like a guard of honor; the army hastily denied ownership of the men. Nigerians were left to ponder an awkward question: if these armed men were neither soldiers nor police, then whose uniform were they wearing in service of a private citizen? 

 

The sense of entitlement appears contagious. The president’s wife recently found it appropriate to publicly silence the elected governor of Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, at a function in Ile-Ife; threatening to switch off his microphone like an errant pupil. Seyi’s sister, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, the self-styled Iyaloja-General of Nigeria, tried earlier this year to transplant her controversial market leadership title to Edo State, only to be firmly reminded by the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, that the imposition “alien to Benin culture and tradition,” and that Nigeria is not a family estate to be rearranged at will. These episodes share a theme: an inability or unwillingness to distinguish between public authority and private prerogative.

 

Defenders of the president mutter about “exceptional exposure” and unnamed threats. This will not do. Nigeria is a republic, not a hereditary monarchy with divine security entitlements. If Seyi Tinubu feels unsafe, he is free, like other wealthy Nigerians, to hire private security at his own private expense. The police and military are not domestic staff for politically connected families. Every officer shielding a president’s son is one fewer officer protecting a school, a farm, a highway. The fiscal insult compounds the moral one. VIP protection gulps billions of naira annually in a country where many communities lack a single police post. Senators now complain, with bitter irony, that their lone orderlies have been withdrawn while untouchables retain full detachments. One asked whether some Nigerians are “more equal than others.” The answer, delivered nightly by flashing sirens and gun barrels, appears to be yes.

 

In countries where the rule of law is more than a slogan, presidential offspring are not crowned with impunity. Other democracies have settled this question. In 2001, when Jenna and Barbara Bush, the 19-year-old twin daughters of then-President George W. Bush, were caught using fake IDs to buy alcohol in the United States, they were arrested, charged, fined, and ordered to perform community service. No agent intervened. No battalions were assembled to spare them embarrassment. The law worked precisely because it was indifferent to lineage. That is what seriousness looks like. Mr. President, your words have outrun your actions. You cannot demand sacrifice from the country while indulging excess at home. You cannot preach equity while practising exemption. If your directive is to be anything more than public relations, it must begin where credibility is won or lost: in your own household. 

 

Order the immediate withdrawal of all police and military personnel attached to your son and other unofficial family members. Redeploy them to the communities bleeding for lack of protection. Enforce your directive without fear or favor. Do so not as a favor to critics, but as a duty to the republic.

History is already taking notes. Wole Soyinka has spoken, as he always does, with clarity and courage. The question now is whether Mr. President will listen; or whether this episode will stand as another exhibit in the long case against a governing culture that confuses power with entitlement and authority with indulgence. Charity begins at home, Mr. President. So does hypocrisy.