I have described President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s economic policies as Tinubunomics. That is, an economic system based on resource extraction from the citizenry to the state, but without corresponding public investment. I have said much on this, and there is a lot more to be said.
But for the moment, how should we conceptualize or describe the President’s politics? I don’t have a single word like Tinubunomics for describing his politics, but I think Tinubu is regionalizing the Nigerian federation. He is moving Nigeria back to some version of the early 1960s, towards greater consolidation of the “regions” in relation to the federal government.
Because Tinubu speaks with actions rather than words, we can discern a clear regional logic to his presidency. Let’s call this logic regional federalism, by which I mean a progressive attempt to regionalize federal power and ultimately strengthen the regions against the federal centre. Tinubu’s approach is not new, and is deeply rooted in the dominant political tradition of the South-west.
The political behaviour of the South-west within the Nigerian federation has always mirrored that position of consolidating the regions in relation to the federal state at the centre. Regardless of the increasing number of states, the South-west was always like one region belonging to one dominant political party: AG, UPN, AD, AC, ACN, and so on. But even now, within a ruling party at the centre, the tendency is to govern alone as a regional unit, as much as is practicable, rather than as part of a broader national coalition.
The historical connection for Tinubu’s regional federalism is therefore clear, and neither the creation of states by the military from 1967 to 1996 nor participation in the federal centre has dimmed that understanding. Instead, federal power is being used to enact and strengthen it. Moreover, Tinubu’s entire political career amply demonstrates this region-centric approach to Nigerian federalism.
First, this regional disposition was the underlying logic of the political and judicial battles between Tinubu, then Governor of Lagos, and President Obasanjo during 1999–2007, who then and now always saw himself as a nationalist.
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