Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
“Tó bá pè olè kó wá bá tún ilékùn ilé ṣe, tó bá já ẹ l’ólè, ìwọ ló ní ẹ̀bi.”
When you invite a thief to repair the door of your house, and he steals your belongings, you have no one to blame but yourself.
That is not folklore. It is warning, spoken through the unforgettable Baba Opalaba of Saworoide, and Nigeria is standing at the exact door it describes.
A house. A key. A thief with the key already in his hand.
Nigeria is the house. The presidency is the key. Aso Rock is the room where the nation keeps its wealth, its security, its institutions, its children’s future. Handing that key over is not a small thing. It is not something a people do out of habit, out of loyalty, out of fear of asking questions. And yet that is exactly what Nigeria is being asked to do again in 2027.
So ask the question plainly. Who is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and what has he done with the key already?
THE FILE THAT WILL NOT DIE
Tinubu’s supporters can shout. They can deny. They can insist the past has been exaggerated by his enemies. Let them. Nigerians are not obliged to accept a denial in place of an answer.
Because this is not gossip manufactured on social media. It is a matter of United States federal record. In 1993, American authorities pursued forfeiture proceedings against funds held in accounts bearing Tinubu’s name, and 460,000 dollars was forfeited to the US government. The court filings alleged the funds were connected to narcotics trafficking proceeds and to transactions structured to evade the law.
That happened. It is documented. It is not a rumour Nigerians invented in a beer parlour.
And more than three decades later, the file still will not close. In August 2026, a US federal judge overseeing a Freedom of Information Act suit ordered fresh deadlines for the release of FBI, DEA and Department of Justice records connected to Tinubu. The FBI itself has now asked to argue, in secret, why some of those records must stay hidden, warning that releasing them could “endanger life.” Read that again. Not embarrass a politician. Endanger life.
Tinubu’s lawyers say it was a civil case against money, not a criminal case against a man. Fine. Let that argument be made in the open, not whispered through spokesmen while federal agents ask judges for permission to hide files behind closed doors.
Nigerians did not write this file. Washington did. The only man who owes an explanation is the one whose name is on it.
WHAT THE KEY HAS DONE TO THE HOUSE
But suppose, for argument, that history is forgiven. Suppose Nigerians decide the past does not matter.
Then look at the present. Look at what has happened to the house since the key changed hands.
The government will point to numbers. Nigeria’s economy grew 4.43 per cent year on year in the second quarter of 2026. Foreign reserves are up. Investor confidence, they say, is returning. Moody’s has moved Nigeria’s outlook from stable to positive.
Good. Write it down. None of it is denied here.
Now ask the only question that matters to a mother buying dinner tonight. Can she afford it?
Reuters reported in August 2026 that Nigeria’s cost of living crisis remains severe, macroeconomic headlines notwithstanding. The price of a basic pot of jollof rice has more than doubled since Tinubu took office. Wages have not doubled. Salaries have not doubled. Only suffering has doubled.
Nigeria can grow on a spreadsheet while Nigerians starve at the table. Both things are true at once. Neither cancels the other.
Even Moody’s, while lifting the outlook, kept Nigeria’s sovereign rating stuck at B3, citing fiscal pressure, weak revenue and poor debt capacity. So spare the country the theatre of a victory lap. The rating agency that praised the reforms in one breath admitted the state is still fragile in the next.
A REPUBLIC UNDER SIEGE
And security. What is a growing economy worth to a family that cannot travel the road to their own farm?
In August 2026, Reuters reported a mass abduction in Niger State, roughly 600 people seized, women, children, the elderly among them, about 30 villagers killed, nearly 2,000 people driven to flee toward the Benin Republic border. From their own country. Running toward another nation for safety.
Nationally, the toll is worse than any single headline can carry. Between July 2025 and June 2026, 7,825 Nigerians were kidnapped and at least 1,142 killed, according to SBM Intelligence figures reported by Reuters. Kidnappers are estimated to have collected 5.79 million dollars in ransom in that period alone.
Every one of those numbers was a person. Somebody’s father. Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s breadwinner who left home in the morning and was never seen again.
Even Tinubu has said it himself. On Workers’ Day in May 2026, the President described insecurity and poverty as national emergencies threatening jobs, productivity and the stability of the nation he leads.
Sit with that. The man asking for a second term has already testified, in his own words, that the house is on fire under his own watch.
THE QUESTION TINUBU CANNOT DODGE
Strip away everything else and one question remains standing.
President Tinubu is not merely the subject of an old file. He is now, personally, in a US court asking to block or restrict the release of FBI and DEA records covering 1992 and 1993. His lawyers filed sixteen pages arguing the withholdings should stand.
That is not the posture of an innocent man waiting to be cleared. That is the posture of a man fighting to keep the door shut.
Ask it plainly. If these records contain nothing damaging, why fight this hard to keep them from public view? If they exonerate him, releasing them ends the controversy in a single afternoon. If they contain nothing significant, releasing them costs him nothing at all. If the allegations are false, let the evidence do what true evidence always does. Prove it.
Atiku’s media aide, Paul Ibe, has put the same logic to Tinubu directly and publicly, asking why a president with nothing to hide would move to block records that could clear his name. It is a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer, not a legal team working overtime in Washington to keep it from being asked at all.
This is not about convicting a president in the court of public opinion. It is about a simple democratic entitlement. Nigerians are entitled to see the evidence concerning the man asking, again, for their mandate, and to draw their own conclusions from it.
So the question stands, unavoidable, waiting at his door.
Mr President, what exactly is in those files that Nigerians should not see? What is in them that would cause you irreparable damage? If there is truly nothing to hide, release them, and let the truth, for once, speak for itself.
THE QUESTION NIGERIA MUST NOT DODGE
So strip away the slogans. Strip away the propaganda videos and the paid endorsements. Ask the only question a citizen owes their own conscience.
Am I better off?
If food costs more and pays less. If the road to market is a road you fear. If your salary dies before the month does. If your own president calls poverty and insecurity emergencies while asking for four more years to manage them.
Then the answer is already sitting in your chest, whether you say it out loud or not.
Nigerians are not required to defend Tinubu’s history for him. That work belongs to him and to those who benefit from his return. Nigerians are not required to excuse hunger because a graph in Washington or London looks encouraging. And Nigerians are certainly not required to hand the same key back to a door that has already, once, been forced open by a thief.
Baba Opalaba’s warning was never about a house in a film. It was about every generation that watches the signs, counts the losses, buries its dead, and still, somehow, hands over the key one more time.
“Tó bá pè olè kó wá bá tún ilékùn ilé ṣe, tó bá já ẹ l’ólè, ìwọ ló ní ẹ̀bi.”
Do not wait until the house is bare to ask who was given the key. By then it will be too late to call it a warning.
It will only be an indictment of everyone who heard it, and looked away.
TinubusFBIFiles #TinubusHeroinFiles #TinubusForfeitureFiles
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
1 September 2026
