Tinubu’s silence on his re-election campaign trail is the loudest testimony to his health, writes ASOKATA EZEANYA

Every democracy asks the same silent question of those who seek its highest office. That question is: can you do the job? American Democrats asked that question when Joe Biden showed signs that he had become too weak to undertake the rigours of a presidential election campaign. Biden answered the question by stepping down. In Nigeria today, that same question is being asked, analysed and answered in every street corner, every eatery, every bar, every garden from Abuja to Lagos, Sokoto to Badagry, Lagos to Calabar, Maiduguri to Yenagoa. It is the question many university students are analysing in their hostels and some classes. The importance of that question arises from the fact that Nigeria’s presidency demands endless travel, relentless decision-making and the stamina to hold a fractured federation together. Therefore, that question is not merely academic but existential. It is about the fate of a nation where, though the president is not expected to be a bricklayer, but is always physically exerted by the demands of office. And this is why the decision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not to embark on campaigns for his own re-election should trouble every Nigerian who cares about the future of the country’s democracy.

A candidate who will not go out to meet the people he is asking for their vote has already answered a question that he has refused to address openly. So, when Aso Villa insists that all is well, the empty podium that may trail the campaign tours says otherwise. This is because though the crowd will be hired for optics, the people would prefer to see their presidential candidate, not the rampant governors and garrulous party leaders, ministers, and other appointees. Those are not contesting to be president. Tinubu is. Retreating from the campaign trail becomes the strongest testimony that the man seeking another four years may be neither physically nor mentally stable. Here, a healthy body should be able to house a healthy mind.

One thing has become obvious. And Tinubu has publicly stated it. A presidential campaign is not a tea party. It is also not a ceremonial parade. It is instead a country’s first and most honest job interview. It is time to assess the physical and mental alertness of the candidates who seek to lead a country. The physical and mental tests are carried out over several months of campaign during which a candidate must set foot in the six geopolitical zones, address crowds in sweltering heat, answer questions from friendly and unfriendly journalists, hold town halls to negotiate with party chieftains and relevant stakeholders, meet traditional and religious rulers, and deliver speeches that should persuade his audience, most times ex tempore.

Those who have won Nigeria’s presidency in the democratic era have, by and large, submitted themselves to this ordeal. They climbed onto platforms in Maiduguri and Port Harcourt, in Kano and Calabar. They did so because the exercise is a public demonstration of vigour, and because voters are entitled to look their prospective president in the eye. A candidate who skips this employment test asks the country to accept him as he is, and is telling his employers that he is entitled to the job and does not need to be interviewed. That is a very expensive undertaking.
Don’t forget that the campaigns officially started on August 28. And it seems that all political parties have waited for the ruling party to hit the podium first. But the main candidate of the ruling party has stylishly withdrawn and handed his mandate to others. These will now go out to tell us that the president is too busy governing to campaign. We will be told that incumbency is its own argument and that surrogates can carry the message. However, none of this survives scrutiny because even when Villa argues that the president can rule from anywhere, it cannot hide the president’s physical and mental state by embarking on a campaign by proxy.

Meanwhile, governing has never excused any previous incumbent from asking for the people’s mandate in person. Presidents before him governed and campaigned in the same season, because that is what the office demands. The real pressures of the presidency do not diminish after a campaign begins; they are the very reason a campaign is a fair measure of whether a candidate can bear them. If the president can manage the burdens of the office but not a campaign schedule, then the campaign schedule is not the problem.

It must be noted also that this decision did not arrive in a jiffy. Over the years, Nigerians have watched a pattern of Tinubu’s prolonged absence abroad, thin public schedules, tightly managed public appearances mostly within the Villa, and a notable reluctance to subject the president to unscripted media engagements. During his first run for office, questions about his health were raised then and were met with dismissal rather than disclosure. Then, as it is today, he was shielded from the media and locked out of media interactions and presidential debates. Afterwards, his public appearances within and around the country faded, and he became a hermit of the Villa. Rather than create a positive perception of his fitness, these helped to create more doubts, which he has now confirmed by campaigning through surrogates.

Well, Nigeria has been here before. The country lived through the long medical absences of a previous president, whose empty seat in Aso Rock left government in the hands of proxies, with rumours multiplying and citizens misinformed about the true state of their leader. The lesson of that episode was that a nation must never again be left guessing about the health of the person who holds its destiny. But here we are, with no verifiable medical disclosure, no independent assessment and an official line that treats the public’s concern as insolence.

Transparency about the health of a country’s leader is not a courtesy that a president may grant or withhold at pleasure. In a country where the presidency concentrates so much authority in one person, it is a civic obligation. This means that a leader who is truly well has every incentive to prove it. He would campaign. He would be seen. He would take questions.

Note that the president is, by official records, in his mid-seventies. Age alone disqualifies no one, and this article does not suggest otherwise. But the presidency of Nigeria is among the most physically and mentally punishing offices on earth, and the question is whether he can meet its demands for another four years. Consider what those years will require: managing an economy under strain, confronting insecurity from the North-East to the South-East, negotiating with governors, legislators and foreign partners, absorbing complex briefings and making decisions whose consequences affect the lives of more than two hundred million people. These are tasks for a mind that is sharp, retentive and consistent, and for a body that can sustain long days under pressure. The campaign season is the opportunity that the electorate gets to examine whether those capacities are present. So, withdrawing from the campaign is publicly presenting the evidence of unfitness.
Beyond physical fitness, mental fitness is the foundation of the presidency, and the public record of lapses, scripted remarks and carefully limited exposure invites reasonable citizens to wonder whether the person making the decisions is the person in the photographs. That wonder is the direct product of the president’s own choices, and only he can end it.

The framers of the 1999 Constitution anticipated that a president might become unable to discharge his duties. Section 144 sets out a process for medical examination and for the declaration of incapacity. It is a safeguard of last resort, but its existence tells us that the Constitution treats presidential fitness as a question of public trust, to be settled openly and by evidence. But that section of the Constitution is observed in breach. However, it leaves the citizens with the opportunity to freely make a diagnosis and reach conclusions. They need only observe that a candidate has declined the most basic public test of capacity, has offered excuses that fail the test of precedent, and has declined to offer any credible alternative proof of his fitness. When a man will neither campaign nor submit to independent verification, the electorate is left with only one honest inference -he is not fit.

Elections are decided by what voters can see. Nigerians cannot see their president on the trail, cannot hear him answer for his record in unscripted settings, and cannot examine any independent evidence that he is up to another term. In the absence of all three, the decision not to campaign is not a strategy but a confession by conduct.

The question before the country is therefore not whether Tinubu has served, or whether his supporters admire him. It is whether a man who cannot, or will not, face the people can be trusted to carry the weight of the nation for four more years. On the evidence the president himself has chosen to present… the answer must be no.
Nigeria deserves a president who can stand before the people, bear the demands of the office, and has nothing to hide about his capacity to serve. If the incumbent will not provide that proof, the voters will be right to look elsewhere. A country this large, this restless and this full of promise cannot afford to entrust its next four years to a candidate whose most eloquent argument for re-election is his absence from the campaign.