“The machine can be dismantled. It has been done before — in 1999, when a military establishment was forced to return power to civilians”.
BY KIO AMACHREE
Nigeria is not a country anymore. It is a personal enterprise — and the man running it is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a self-styled “godfather” whose methods of holding power bear no resemblance to constitutional governance. With 2027 fast approaching, the question 230 million Nigerians must ask themselves — loudly, defiantly, and internationally — is this: How long will we allow one man’s hunger for power to consume an entire nation?
Enough is enough. It is time to name the machine, expose its parts, and dismantle it piece by piece.
The Machine: The Henchmen And Enforcers
No godfather rules alone. Tinubu’s power rests on a carefully assembled network of loyalists, financiers, and political operators.
Kabir Ibrahim Masari is the quiet spider at the centre of the web. As Senior Special Assistant to the President on Political Matters, Masari has built an expansive network of allies across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, serving as political stabiliser, faction manager, and coalition-builder. His portfolio is simple: keep the northern governors in line, manage internal dissent within the APC, and lay the groundwork for Tinubu’s 2027 re-election. He is the invisible hand that moves the pieces.
Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and perhaps the most combustible figure in contemporary Nigerian politics, has become Tinubu’s enforcer in the South. With full federal backing, Wike spearheaded a relentless campaign to bring Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara to his knees — from orchestrated legislative threats to judicial manoeuvres and threats of impeachment. Sources describe the Fubara siege plainly: “The President wanted Rivers State under control by any means necessary. The fear of 2027 is real.” Wike is not a minister. He is a weapon.
Gilbert Chagoury, the octogenarian Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire, represents the financial architecture of Tinubu’s power. Their relationship stretches back nearly three decades. In 2007, while Tinubu was governor of Lagos State, the Chagoury Group secured government approval to reclaim 10 million square metres of coastal land from the Atlantic Ocean for the Eko Atlantic City project, where a plot of land now sells for at least N2 billion. Public contracts, private wealth, mutual protection — this is the currency of the relationship.
Seyi Tinubu, the president’s son, has steadily expanded his political footprint since his father’s election, launching nationwide philanthropic activities through the Noella Foundation — the soft-power arm of an emerging political dynasty. Nigeria is being prepared for a succession, not served by a statesman.
Bayo Onanuga, the presidential spokesperson, rounds out the inner circle as the regime’s chief apologist — the man tasked with giving official cover to the indefensible.
The Crime That Will Not Go Away: Chicago, 1993
Let us speak plainly about what the world already knows but Nigerian institutions refuse to confront.
Court documents from a Chicago case claim that in the early 1990s, Tinubu was linked to bank accounts allegedly used to launder money for a heroin ring. In 1993, he reportedly forfeited $460,000 to the U.S. government after authorities linked the funds to narcotics trafficking. The named co-conspirators in the DEA and IRS investigation were Abiodun Agbele, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Lee Andrew Edwards — a Chicago heroin network with West African roots.
This is not rumour. This is U.S. federal court record. And the story grew even more extraordinary in April 2025, when a U.S. federal judge ordered the FBI and DEA to release investigative records, ruling that their refusal to confirm or deny such records was “neither logical nor plausible,” and that the public interest in understanding the records outweighed the privacy interests claimed by the President.
Most remarkably of all, the CIA, FBI, and DEA jointly filed a statement opposing the release of unredacted files on Tinubu’s background, citing national security concerns — and referenced Tinubu’s possible status as a CIA asset.
Let that sink in. The sitting President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria may be a protected intelligence asset of a foreign government. And the Nigerian state — its courts, its INEC, its National Assembly — has looked away. This is not governance. This is the institutionalisation of impunity.
The Rivers State Template: Democracy As A Personal Toy
The destruction of democratic governance in Rivers State is not a local crisis. It is a preview — a stress test of what Tinubu is prepared to do nationally in 2027.
On March 18, 2025, President Tinubu invoked Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution to declare a state of emergency in Rivers State, citing a breakdown of law and order. He also suspended Governor Fubara and his deputy from office. But the evidence from inside the Presidency tells a different story entirely. Multiple sources describe the pressure mounted on Governor Fubara as “unprecedented and deeply troubling” in Nigeria’s democratic history — using every state apparatus, from the judiciary and security agencies to the National Assembly, to launch a coordinated offensive.
Political activists accused Tinubu of handing Rivers State’s political structure to Wike, pointing to the appointment of Wike loyalists as sole administrators of local governments during the emergency — even as the Supreme Court had ruled against such appointments.
This is not crisis management. This is the manufacture of crisis in service of 2027 consolidation. A president who will suspend a democratically elected governor, install a sole administrator, and suppress 8 million Rivers citizens to satisfy a political ally’s vendetta has told us exactly who he is and exactly what a second term would look like.
The Yoruba Card: Tribalism As Statecraft
There is a tribal dimension to Tinubu’s power that must be named without hesitation or apology. The Yoruba political machine — built over thirty years from Lagos through the Alliance for Democracy, the Action Congress, and ultimately the APC — has been weaponised as an instrument of national dominance.
In the South-West, Tinubu is celebrated as a visionary who elevated Yoruba political relevance. In the South-East and South-South, feelings of exclusion persist, with many citizens yearning for genuine inclusion and equity.
Tribalism as statecraft is not pride in one’s heritage — it is the subordination of national interest to ethnic patronage. When federal appointments are filtered through a Lagos lens, when ministers serve as ethnic gatekeepers, when a man from Rivers State is told to accept his political godfather’s overlordship as a condition of governance, Nigeria is not being led. Nigeria is being colonised from within.
How To Dismantle The Machine: A Blueprint
The opposition to Tinubu is real, and growing. A new alliance of adversaries — including Atiku Abubakar’s camp and Peter Obi’s supporters — is working to make Tinubu a one-term president. Combined, the runner-up and third-place candidates in the 2023 election captured 54 percent of the vote against Tinubu’s 37 percent.
The mathematics of defeat are already there. What is needed is the architecture of accountability. Here is the blueprint:
Internationally: The DEA and FBI files now under court-ordered release must be elevated to the UN Human Rights Council, the AU Commission, and the U.S. State Department. Nigeria’s diaspora — particularly in the United States and United Kingdom — must press their elected representatives to apply targeted sanctions on named members of Tinubu’s inner circle under the Global Magnitsky Act framework.
Legally: The Rivers State emergency rule, the fraudulent alteration of the Tax Administration Act, and the use of federal security agencies against opposition governors are impeachable offences. Legal scholars have noted that the numerous alterations in the Tax Law are weighty enough to warrant criminal prosecution of those responsible. Civil society must now file formal complaints before the ECOWAS Court of Justice and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Electorally: The wildcard in the 2027 race is former Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, who played a pivotal role in Tinubu’s 2023 emergence, but was subsequently betrayed when the president reneged on agreed appointments. El-Rufai’s northern networks, combined with an Atiku-Obi coalition, could produce a unified challenger capable of crossing the constitutional threshold. The enemy of my enemy is, at minimum, a tactical ally.
On the streets: The lesson of #EndSARS has not been forgotten. Nigeria’s youth — over 60 percent of the population under 25, connected, outspoken, and impatient with old political games — are the ultimate veto power in this republic. They must be organised, protected, and listened to. Not mobilised and then abandoned, as happened in October 2020.
The Verdict Of History
Nigeria does not need another godfather. It does not need another Lagos governor masquerading as a national president. It does not need a second term for a man whose relationship with the truth — about his name, his certificates, his drug forfeiture, his age, his ambitions — has never once been adequately explained to the 230 million people he purports to serve.
The machine can be dismantled. It has been done before — in 1999, when a military establishment was forced to return power to civilians. It can be done again — through courts, coalitions, civic courage, and the relentless, documented exposure of every lie, every deal, every enforcer, every dollar.
History is not written by godfathers. It is written by the people they underestimated.
…Kio Amachree is a Stockholm-based diaspora activist, political commentator, and writer. He is the son of Chief Godfrey Kio Jaja Amachree QC, Nigeria’s first Solicitor-General and Acting Attorney-General, and UN Under-Secretary-General.
