When Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka stepped out of a high-profile hotel in Lagos last week, he was greeted by an outlandish sight. Lined up like a presidential guard were no fewer than 15 heavily-armed police officers and other security agents, complete with rifles, bulletproof vests, and the unmistakable swagger of state agents protecting an untouchable principal.
They were guarding not a head of state, not a warlord, but Seyi Tinubu, the 39-year-old son of President Bola Tinubu.
This is a provocative habit of VIPs in Nigeria. This security force should be disbanded.
Seyi is a private citizen, a businessman with no elected office or public mandate, yet flanked by a convoy that could overrun a small insurgency.
Soyinka wittingly quipped that this “battalion” should have been dispatched to quash the recent attempted coup in the Benin Republic, sparing Nigeria the need to send its Air Force and troops across the border.
“Why send the military?” he mocked at the 20th Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism Awards. “Next time there’s an uprising, just call Seyi and say, ‘Go and put down those stupid people there.’”
The jest exposes the rot at the core of Nigeria’s security crisis.
The hall erupted in bitter laughter. Every Nigerian knows the joke is on them.
This is not comedy. It is a national tragedy.
Only weeks earlier, on November 24, Tinubu himself had issued a directive ordering the immediate withdrawal of police officers attached to VIPs and politicians so that “more boots can hit the ground” against bandits, kidnappers and terrorists who have turned large swathes of the country into killing fields.
The President spoke with the gravity the moment demanded: “We need all the forces we can utilise on the streets.”
Yet, not long after, his own son paraded a private army that would make a divisional police officer in Zamfara weep with envy.
The hypocrisy is so blatant it stinks.
While Seyi cruises around in his expansive convoy, poorly protected senior military officers are paying with their lives.
In November, Musa Uba, a brigadier-general, was ambushed by ISWAP terrorists in Borno, taken alive, and later executed on video like a sacrificial ram. All he had for escort was a handful of soldiers. No air cover, no rapid-response team.
The horror statistics are stark, especially in the North. Over 300 schoolchildren were abducted from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger State in November; 165 are still in captivity.
Thirty-eight worshippers were kidnapped from a church in Eruku, Kwara, during an evening service, and two were shot dead for resisting.
A recent report by Amnesty International states that between May 2023 and May 2025, no fewer than 672 villages were sacked by armed non-state actors across several North-West states, including Katsina and Zamfara.
As of mid-2025, according to the International Organisation for Migration and UNICEF, there were over 718,000 internally displaced persons in the North-West.
Farmers abandon farmland because they cannot farm without paying “harvest tax” to bandits or risking death.
A governor once publicly lamented that 100 villages in Katsina State were being “protected” by just 30 police officers who shared only 10 rifles between them.
And in the middle of this horror, Seyi moves with the security details of a head of state. This is not protection; it is provocation.
In 2023, he was spotted lounging in the Federal Executive Council chamber until his father publicly rebuked him, saying, “That is not acceptable.”
In 2024, a viral video showed him inspecting what looked suspiciously like a guard of honour mounted by men in uniform, some openly carrying arms. The Nigerian Army quickly distanced itself, claiming the men were “not soldiers.”
Nigerians were left to wonder: if they were not soldiers, and not police, then who exactly were these armed men saluting a private citizen?
Seyi’s sister, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, the self-styled Iyaloja-General of Nigeria, tried earlier this year to export her controversial market leadership title to Edo State. The move was firmly rebuffed by the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, who declared the imposition “alien to Benin culture and tradition.”
Then, just last weekend, the President’s wife, Oluremi Tinubu, heavily escorted as always, publicly humiliated the elected governor of Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, at a function in Ile-Ife. As the governor paid tribute to the Ooni, Mrs Tinubu interrupted him: “Stop singing, or I will switch off your microphone… You have five minutes to round up.”
The hall froze. A sitting governor, elected by Osun citizens, was reduced to a schoolboy by an unelected spouse. The video went viral within minutes, and the outrage was nationwide.
The Tinubu family is not merely enjoying the perks of proximity to power; it seems intoxicated by it, and the country is paying the price, literally.
The budget for “VIP protection” runs into billions of naira annually, yet many local communities cannot boast of a single police post.
Senators now openly complain on the floor of the National Assembly that their “single” police orderly has been withdrawn, while some privileged Nigerians retain full detachments.
One senator asked, in anguish: “Are some animals more equal than others?”
In other climes, no one is above the law. Not even the children of presidents.
In 2001, 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 Secret Service agent shielded them from the courts. No presidential directive withdrew the police who arrested them. The law applied because the law must apply to everyone, or it applies to no one.
Nigeria cannot continue to pretend that the Presidency is a traditional monarchy where the children of the king inherit divine protection paid for by starving peasants.
If Seyi feels unsafe, let him hire private security at his own expense. The police and army are not his domestic staff.
Tinubu has an opportunity to redeem his own directive and salvage what remains of public trust. He should order the complete withdrawal of all police and military personnel attached to his son and every other unofficial member of his family.
The President should ensure his directive on the withdrawal of police and military personnel from VIPs and politicians is carried out, and that the withdrawn officers are redeployed to the areas where they are desperately needed.
Anything short of this will confirm what many already suspect: that the November 24 directive was mere public relations, never meant to apply to the President’s own household.
Soyinka has done his duty. History will record that, at 91, he still found the strength to speak truth to power.
Where are the other elders? Silence in the face of such blatant abuse is complicity.
Nigerians see the battalion guarding one man’s son while children of lesser compatriots are led into forests by kidnappers.
They see the convoy longer than funeral processions, while generals die for lack of escort. Nigerians see the impunity.
Mr President, charity begins at home. Equity begins at home. The rule of law begins at home. Withdraw Seyi’s battalion today.
