Professor Wole Soyinka has urged President Bola Tinubu to rethink his approach to regional security, domestic governance and the expanding culture of state protection for the privileged, warning that Nigeria cannot afford to squander scarce security resources on political proximity.
Speaking at the 20th Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism Awards in Lagos on Monday, the Nobel laureate recounted a recent encounter in Ikoyi that left him, in his words, “astonished.” In a now-viral four-minute, 25-second video shared on Tuesday night by #Nigeriastories on X, Soyinka described witnessing what he called an “excessively large security battalion” escorting a young man he initially did not recognise.
The convoy, he said, was “sufficient to take over a small country.” Only later did he learn that the individual was Seyi Tinubu, the president’s son.
Soyinka said the discovery troubled him enough to contact National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu. “Children must understand their place,” he said. “They are not elected leaders, and they must not inherit the architecture of state power simply by proximity.”
At the same event, held in honour of veteran poet Odia Ofeimun among others, he urged President Tinubu to reconsider the scale of security attached to his son, insisting that such deployments are desperately needed in communities facing kidnappings, rural attacks, insurgency, and criminal violence.
With characteristic irony, Soyinka quipped that if a major insurgency were to erupt, perhaps the president should send Seyi to handle it, “given the size of his escort.” But he added pointedly, “Beyond the humour lies a serious matter of priority and fairness.”
Turning to the media, Soyinka praised Nigerian journalists for persistence in difficult conditions but urged stronger editorial discipline amid a rapidly worsening landscape of misinformation. He warned that “the next great conflict may well be triggered by the misuse of social platforms” and called for renewed commitment to truth, verification, and public-minded journalism as one of the country’s strongest defences against instability.
