-By Abdul Mahmud
“I couldn’t reach Yelawata in Benue State due to bad roads”, said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This sentence captures the spirit of Tinubu’s presidency. Aloof. Detached. Cold. Inconsiderate. Leadership without compassion. Governance without sacrifice. Authority without empathy. How did Mandela once describe compassion? He said, “Our human compassion binds us the one to the other, not in pity or patronisingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.” In those words lie the moral clarity of leadership: to feel with others, and to act in ways that dignify their pain. But in the hour when the people of Benue cried out beneath the weight of their grief, when blood soaked their soil and hope withered on parched lips, President Tinubu neither spoke with the tenderness the moment demanded nor did he offer comfort. Instead, he stood, quartered only to the state-organised gyre, where falcons heeded the call of the lying falconer while unburdened by the anguish of the listeners, unmoved by the cries circling beneath his silence.
I return to the scene of the crime. Yelawata, in Benue State, is soaked in blood. Again. Victims of another attack. Not the first in the state. Sadly, not likely the last. Men butchered. Women slaughtered. Children silenced by bullets and machetes. Bodies burnt. Farmers buried in shallow graves. A people under siege, paying with their lives for living on ancestral land. And the President? He dilly-dallied like Nero until he was forced out of Aso Rock. When he eventually turned up in Benue State, he didn’t go to Yelawata.
Why? The roads were bad.
That excuse tells us everything. It tells us Tinubu doesn’t see governance as a sacrifice. It tells us he sees power as comfort, not service. That he is more concerned with personal convenience than national grief. That to him, bad roads are a reason not to visit, not a call to action. The road to Yelwata was too rough for his usual long motorcade. But is the road to governance not paved with sacrifice? A president should go where pain is deepest. He should stand with the broken. Weep with the grieving. Reassure the fearful. But Tinubu stayed away. He dispatched men like Sunday Dare and Bayo Onanuga; envoys who, upon arrival, shielded their nostrils with cupped palms, as though the stench of death and despair in Yelawata were too profane for their privileged lungs. They came not to mourn, but to manage optics; not to grieve with the grieving, but to distance themselves from the human wreckage their master could not bear to face. He sent words instead of presence. He chose distance over duty.
What is the worth of a ruler who cannot be troubled by the suffering of his people? Presidents do not have the luxury of comfort. They are servants, not absolute monarchs. They must lead from the front, even through valleys of blood. When George W. Bush visited Ground Zero after 9/11, he climbed the rubble. When Barack Obama went to Newtown after the school shooting, he wept with the parents. When Nelson Mandela walked into the ruins of apartheid violence, he held grieving mothers and swore it would never happen again.
Tinubu avoided Yelawata. Then insulted the people. He claimed the killings were reprisal attacks. Without evidence. Without tact. Without truth. He invariably blamed the victims. He called them the culprits. He rewrote a genocide into justification. And when he finally arrived Makurdi, it was under pressure. Nigerians had cried. Protested. Shamed him into action. So, he adjusted his diary.
That adjustment came too late. In Makurdi, school children were drenched by rain, lined up to wave flags at a president who couldn’t be bothered to dry their tears. In front of the Tor Tiv, the King of the Tiv, Tinubu’s lies crumbled. The monarch told him to his face: “These are not reprisals. They are genocidal. They aim to wipe out our people.” It was a moment of truth. The kind only kings and corpses can speak. Tinubu had no answer. After the Royal smack-down, he chose not to make it to Yelawata. He contrived an excuse: the roads were not motorable. A helicopter couldn’t be arranged. A convoy couldn’t roll. A man who uses presidential jets to vacation in France; and who is billed for luxurious holidays in the sunshine of Saint Lucia couldn’t find a way to reach grieving Nigerians at home.
Now, the question many are eager to ask: What does it cost to show empathy? What does it take to be present in pain? In Tinubu’s case, apparently too much. This presidency has reduced governance to showmanship. It is all optics, no substance. Press releases instead of policies. Travel photographs instead of action. Ceremonies instead of compassion. Tinubu has become a distant figure. A president of Abuja, not of Nigeria. He rules from marble offices, not the muddy fields of the countryside. From Lagos business tables, not farming communities in Benue. He governs through statements, not presence. Through silence, not sympathy. The tragedy of this moment isn’t just the deaths in Yelawata. It is the erosion of leadership. It is about a man who sees the office of president as the crowning of a personal ambition, not a platform for national healing. A man who imagines governance is a reward, not a responsibility. This needs to be put out more plainly: this is not leadership. This is negligence. Tinubu’s refusal to visit the scene of the carnage, his false statements about the cause and his delay in responding to the tragedy that befell our country all points to a leader who doesn’t feel the country’s pain. One who doesn’t carry the emotional weight of his office.
What happened in Benue is part of a pattern.
Tinubu’s second year in office has been marked by detachment. Nigerians groan under inflation. Food is unaffordable. Electricity is a myth. Fuel prices break the backs of ordinary citizens. Unlike the back David Diop so powerfully evoked in his acclaimed poem, Africa, unbent, “that never breaks under the weight of humiliation”. The backs of ordinary citizens stoop beneath the burden of betrayal. Yet the president travels. Dines. Celebrates. Appoints cronies. Signs inflated budgets. Adds more burden to weary citizens. There is no compassion in his policies. No empathy in his speeches. No connection in his actions. A caring ruler would reduce his convoys. Tinubu expanded them. A president with empathy would cut down waste. Tinubu has increased waste. A ruler in tune with citizens would share in their sufferings. Tinubu asks them to “tighten belts” while he loosens his.
To govern a country requires moral courage. Tinubu’s response to national pain is indifference. His answer to cries is silence. His reaction to mass murder is a shrug. Then, where lies the heart of his rulership? Not in Benue. Not in Zamfara. Not in Plateau. Not in the IDP camps. Not in the shanties. Not in the markets. The heart of this government beats only for the rich, the powerful, and his coterie of handlers. For friends in Lagos. For loyalists in government houses. For image-makers. Not for the rest of us.
The presidency should be the conscience of the nation. Under Tinubu, it has become a billboard. A brand. A throne without soul. It is not just his failure to visit Yelawata that is tragic. It is the symbolism of it. It tells the story of a man who doesn’t understand the weight of grief. Who doesn’t see the power of presence. Who thinks governance is about roads, not relationships. Even if the roads were bad, there were other options. Helicopters. Courage. Love. Anything but absence. But he chose to stay away, which speaks volumes. It says, “You are on your own”, O-YO! “You are not worth the trouble.” It says, “Your pain is inconvenient.” It says, “I’ll mourn you from a distance.” A president who cannot brave bad roads for his people cannot lead them through harder paths. But, here is the deeper tragedy: the road to Yelawata isn’t the only one Tinubu refused to travel. He has refused the road of humility. Of compassion. Of moral leadership. He has chosen another path; the road of entitlement, indulgence, and imperial comfort.
Our country is ruled by a man who cannot be disturbed. But, our country is disturbing. It cries out from every state. It begs for presence. For proximity. For a ruler who shows up. In person. Not by proxy. Until that happens, we will continue to drift.
Governance is not about the ease of travel. It is about the urgency of compassion. It is not about what is motorable. It is about what is moral. Tinubu failed this test. In the hour of grief, he was absent. In the moment of truth, he deflected. In the face of pain, he excused. He cannot build our country from behind the presidential walls. He must descend his Olympian height. Step into our blood-soaked earth. Walk with the wounded. Cry with the survivors. Stand with the forgotten.
Or step aside. Our country deserves more. Being the president shouldn’t be taken as a title, with all the pomp to boot. It is a task. It is not the celebration of personal ambition. It is the surrender of comfort for the sake of others. It is not about dodging bad roads. It is about building better ones and still traveling the worst ones when duty calls. Until Tinubu understands this, he will remain a stranger to his office. A visitor in his own country. A ruler, not a leader.
While he pretends that the tragedy in Benue is “an internecine clash of neighbours”, to quote my friend, Josephine Akioyamen, the people of Benue must dig in to defend themselves against the rampaging Fulani conquistadors, Yelawata will remember his indifference. Just as our country remembers. The world will not forget.