PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu was in Jos, the Plateau State capital, on Thursday last week to condole with the people of the state over Palm Sunday’s terror attack at Angwan Rukuba, Jos North Local Government Area by unknown gunmen that left 28 people dead and several others injured.
The condolence visit, which was more like a brief stopover, began and ended at the Jos Airport, and has left many Nigerians wondering why the President embarked on the visit at all if he could not spend time with those hurting after losing their loved ones.
In a not-too-distant past in Nigeria, former Presidents and Commanders-in-chief, on several occasions, embarked on state visits to different parts of the country to commission projects and interact with the locals. We have had Presidents and Heads of State during both civilian and military era that spent up to four days in a state on what was termed ‘state visit’.
That was why most State Governors built Presidential lodges where the Commander-in-chief and other top government officials are usually accommodated on such visits. However, these state visits, usually done at the beginning of a new administration, has become a thing of the past. Expectedly, it has led to a disconnect between leaders and the led. Now, the state visits are usually done when a State Governor invites the President and Commander-In-Chief to his state to commission projects.
Tinubu’s visit to Jos however, is more than symbolic. It was to condole with the government and people after armed group murdered 28 people in cold blood. But when Mr. President spent less than an hour in the state, it raised the concern of Nigerians as to whether their President has any feelings for the grieving families.
The Presidential aircraft that took President Tinubu to Jos touched down at 4.45pm, and he was on the tarmac at 5pm. The distance by road between the Airport and Angwan Rukuba, location of the massacre, is approximately 40 – 50 kilometers, typically taking about one hour to 1 hour 30 minutes, depending on traffic through Jos city centre. But with a presidential convoy and the now familiar road closure whenever the Presidential motorcade is on the road, the journey could have been made within 40 minutes. But the President chose to meet the bereaved families at the airport. In actual fact, the grieving families who had just lost their loved ones were all taken to the airport to meet the President.
Politicians, stakeholders, and traditional rulers were also on hand at the airport to receive the President. While condoling the victims on their loss, President Tinubu told those he came to condole that he had only 10 minutes to spare as the Jos Airport, now renamed the Yakubu Gowon Airport has no light. By the way, the airport had no lighting system that would allow for night time operation of an aircraft.
This is another public relations disaster that could have been avoided. Why go to Jos in the first place, when you could not spend time with the bereaved families? Why travel at night, when you knew that the airport does not have the needed facilities for night operations? Why not spend the night in Jos and continue your journey the following day? So many questions, but no real answers.
A President should be a father to all. He should rejoice with us in successful moments and empathize with us during of our times of grief or needs. Twenty-eight families are tragically bereaved. Amongst them, wives who has lost their husbands, children who have been rendered fatherless, loving mothers who have lost their sons, and 22 others in the hospitals, receiving treatment, but the best that our President could do was have them arranged for photo ops at the Jos Airport.
We must commend him for postponing his earlier scheduled trip to Ogun State to visit Jos to commiserate with the victims of the deadly attacks in Plateau, but his ‘10-minute show’ at the Jos Airport is a disaster and shows his lack of empathy for his own people when it matters the most.
President Tinubu would have connected better with the families of the bereaved if he had visited one or two of the victims in their homes and some of the injured in the hospitals. That would have given him an idea of the typical home of the average Nigerian and how we perpetually live in fear of terror attacks. At the hospitals, he should have shared in their pains and offered words of comfort, and even some compensation, even if it is just for the cameras. But we all know that the average Nigerian politician is far too disconnected from the reality of the ordinary man on the streets.
Being victims in our own country aside, that the Jos Airport does not have a functioning lighting system is another testament to how underdeveloped we are as a nation despite our huge resources. It is also an indictment on our leaders, including Mr. President, his aviation minister, and other past leaders. This is an airport that commenced operations in 1972. That was 54 years ago. Yet, no attempt has been made to provide the necessary infrastructure that would allow both day and night operations. Since its establishment, has there been any move to upgrade its facilities?
We now have leaders who speak at us and not to us. Leaders who are disconnected from the everyday struggles of their people. They are so rich and powerful that they now talk down on the rest of us. I cringed when I heard the President say during his 10-minutes ‘condolence visit’: “You have no light at the airport, and I have to fly back within the next 10 minutes.’’ Really?
With that statement alone, Tinubu opened his flanks and allowed the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to roast him. Hear him: “It is both shocking and deeply insensitive that several days after the gruesome killings of innocent citizens, the President’s so-called “on-the-spot assessment” was reduced to a brief stop at the foot of his aircraft, never extending beyond the airport, never reaching the grieving communities, and never touching the pain of the victims.
Even more troubling is the impression that this fleeting visit was hurriedly curtailed to allow the President proceed to Lagos for the Easter holidays, a decision that reflects a deeply troubling prioritisation in the face of national grief. While families continue to mourn those slaughtered on Palm Sunday, the President chose to convert what ought to have been a solemn visit into a political spectacle, meeting party loyalists in Jos under the thin guise of official engagement.
This is not leadership; it is indifference dressed as protocol. This approach mirrors his earlier conduct in Benue State in June 2025, when a condolence visits over a deadly attack conspicuously avoided the epicentre in Yelwata, only to devolve into a political rally. The repetition of this pattern is no longer accidental; it is now a consistent and troubling habit.’’
Indeed, President Tinubu was in Benue State last year to condole with the people of Yelwata, the epicentre of another mindless bloodletting that led to the death of over 100 people. Although he was in Benue State, Mr. President could not reach Yelwata due to rain, flooding, and bad roads.
The disaster that the Jos visit has become for Tinubu’s image, is actually not limited to him. Twenty-four hours after the deadly attack, Caleb Mutfwang, the Governor of the state visited the scene of the attack in an armoured personnel carrier. Is the security situation in Jos so bad that the Governor could no longer move freely among his own people?
When he began to address the people while still inside the armoured personnel carrier, the people were not ready to listen to him until he was forced to come out of the vehicle. So, is Mutfwang afraid of his shadow? Who are those likely to attack him during the condolence visit? If there is enough security presence in Jos and in other parts of the state, why should he be in need of an armoured personnel carrier to move from one part of the state to another?
The Jos killings and other killings in different parts of the country have revealed the mindset of most of our leaders, many of whom are lily-livered in the tact of real or imagined threats and who are only after their own comfort and what they would get out of the system. The repeated killings across the country brings to the fore, the fragile security architecture in place, which the government appear to be clueless about fixing, or lack the political will to. It is now so easy to get killed even in the comfort of your home in Nigeria.
This trend has persisted for too long with little or nothing being done to stop it. In our usual style of medicine after death, President Tinubu has directed the installation of 5,000 AI-enabled security cameras around Jos and its metropolis while the Inspector General of Police and the Army have also deployed more personnel. But Nigerians are weary. We know that in just a matter of time, another round of killing will still happen either in Plateau or another neighbouring state.
In solving the daily carnage in the country, we need to identify the root causes. One is that we pay scant attention to education in the North, which now boasts of more than 10 million out-of-school children. It is those children that we refused to educate that are now serving as easy recruit for criminal elements in our midst. Again, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening daily. Majority of Nigerians are wallowing in abject poverty, while a tiny minority are living in affluence. We need no Prophet to remind us that when the poor are unable to sleep due to hunger, the rich cannot afford to close their eyes.
We need to go back to the basics. Tackle the root causes of insecurity in our land before we can begin the conversation around resolving the persistent crisis. President Tinubu has vowed that the Jos killings won’t repeat itself. I, and many well-meaning Nigerians pray so, but we are not optimistic that it won’t. In the next few months, Tinubu should be back in Jos to campaign for votes in his re-election bid. By then, it is certain that he would have enough time to interact with the people of Jos. May God save us from ourselves.
See you next week.
- Akintunde is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Glittersonline newspaper. His syndicated column, Monday Discourse, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.