The return of Regent Tinubu: What next?

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the Regent of France for almost five days! That was an uncommon feat.

At the end of his regency reign in France, Tinubu came home with what history will preserve for generations yet unborn as ‘American Bubble’. This is because by the time the future generation will be reading the ugly incident of how their President was abandoned in Paris by the host President, the three American companies that our President sold the nation’s mineral resources to would have caused Nigeria an unprecedented disaster.

We shall address that presently. But first, let us visit the insults Tinubu acquired on our behalf when President Emmanuel Macron left his guest in Paris and travelled to New York, United States of America, to attend the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Every guest should know when the party is over for him. The elders of Yorubaland among whom President Tinubu numbers, say tí baálé ilé bá ti ńfi àpárí isu han àlejò, òwe ilé tóó lo ni (when the head of a home begins to show the guest the distal end of a  tuber of yam, a wise guest should know that the time to go home has come). How did President Tinubu miss that?

The last time in history that France had a regent was 303 years ago (1715-1723). The absolute monarch then, Louis XIV, died and left a five-year-old great-grandson behind. The Duke of Orléans, Philippe II, was therefore made the acting Prince Regent. Later, the great-grandson became Louis XV.

Unfortunately, that era was not the best for France – economically and politically. Philippe II, in an attempt to do things differently from Louis XIV, introduced a new system of government known as Polysynody – a system which abolished individual ministers and replaced them with multiple councils thus overbloating the cost of running the government.

In addition, Philippe II also handed over France’s economy to a foreign company run by a Scottish economist, John Law, who was appointed Controller General of French finance. He was the one who advised the Regent Prince to collapse France’s Royal Bank to the colonial trading company, Mississippi Company, in what is known in world financial history as the “Mississippi Bubble” (1718-1720). The effect of the economic misadventure was an unmitigated disaster for France.

Stock collapsed and the French currency got devalued almost on a daily basis. With Mississippi Company holding exclusive trading and development rights over French Louisiana and North America as a monopoly, depression set in for many investors. John Law fled France in December 1720, leaving the French citizens to lick their wounds!

The significance of this short voyage is that history has established that no regency era has ever favoured any nation; not even the British Regency Era (1811–1820). Interestingly, Tinubu’s regency in France, brief as it was, holds the same economic disaster of Louis Law’s ‘Mississippi Bubble’ magnitude.

So, the first puzzle for me here is what was on President Tinubu’s mind when Macron announced that he would be travelling to New York to attend the 81st UNGA? Did our President feel insulted? Did he take recourse to his Yoruba ethos? Did he remember the above saying of our elders? Or did he just feel it is normal in the diplomatic world for a host president to abandon his guest and travel out of the country?

Again, while Macron was away, what was our President doing in Paris? How comfortable was he, knowing that his host president had left him behind to attend UNGA and project the potential of his country while he, the guest, was in one corner, waiting patiently for the owner of the house to return?

What happens to our President’s sense of self-worth? What about our national dignity? Would any foreign President have accepted that from Tinubu? Would President Macron have agreed to that demeaning arrangement if the reverse had been the case?

Why do we always export the wrong attitudes to the rest of the world? Why is Nigeria being represented by the dregs of humanity when the nation has demonstrated before the entire world that the best brains reside here? How do we tell our children this story of the President of the most populous Black Nation being treated like an unwanted guest in France without sounding ludicrous to the young folks?

Before Mr President left the shores of Nigeria, and while the preparations for the 81st UNGA session were in top gear, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Jimoh Ibrahim, gleefully told us that Tinubu would be having an unprecedented warm embrace with President Donald Trump of America.

Here him: “…President Tinubu will be sitting very, very close to Donald Trump in the front row of the United Nations General Assembly, that you get from me. Don’t ask me how that was arranged, but he will be sitting. The President of Nigeria will be sitting in the front row. And he’ll be speaking at a time when Nigeria will not be sleeping…”

Shortly thereafter, the narrative changed. We were told that though President Tinubu would be in the UK and other European countries for his ‘annual working vacation’, he would not be attending UNGA again but would be represented.

Just as we were about to ask: As how nao, Ibrahim dropped the most elusive excuse to justify the third consecutive absence of Tinubu at UNGA sessions. According to him, over 60 percent of attendees would be represented by deputies or ministers.

His argument: “If the speaking list is 90 percent President, of course, maybe the President can come. But if the list is 60 percent ministers, I don’t think that the President can come and be where his equivalent is a minister of Foreign Affairs of another country.” Good enough.

In the reasoning of our UN Permanent Representative, it is demeaning for President Tinubu to sit in UNGA with ministers of Foreign Affairs of other countries. But it is befitting for our President to be dumped in Paris while President Macron jetted out to New York to attend the same UNGA session! What an undiplomatic diplomat we have in Ibrahim!

And to think that Ibrahim is occupying that same enviable seat once filled by great minds like Jaja Wachukwu, Chief Simeon Adebo, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, General Joseph Nanven Garba, Professor Agboola Ibrahim Gambari, Professor Joy Ogwu, Tijani Muhammad-Bande, Emeka Anyaoku, and the rest, is sickening!

One begins to wonder what the rest of the world feels about Nigeria. While Macron was busy projecting his country to the rest of the world, Tinubu, who was in France on a ‘working vacation’, was left behind in Paris by his supposed host-President. But our President did not allow the opportunity to go unutilised.

READ ALSO: Tinubu arrives in Lagos after ‘working vacation’ abroad

Just as the President’s media handlers told us that the digital revolution has made it possible for their principal to operate from anywhere, even if admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of any hospital in the world, Tinubu ordered his representatives at the 81st UNGA session to sign a $700bn mineral wealth with three American companies: Vermeer Corporation, Renewvia Energy Corporation and Terra Industries. The three US=based companies would be involved in exploration, and ultimately, the exploitation of our mineral resources such as iron ore, tin, lithium and gold.

That was not all. Being the smart Alec that he is, Macron did not just leave Tinubu in Paris unattended. The young French President ensured that the Nigerian President ordered one of his lapboy governors, Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, whom Tinubu once contemptuously described as eléyìí (this one), to sign a $7 billion deal with Paris-based DP World MEA FZE for the Gateway Deep Sea Port and the 10,000-hectare Ogun State Blue Marine Special Economic Zone.

The simple implication here is that whatever mineral resources the three American companies ‘exploited’ from Nigeria, there will be a getaway route to take them to the United States and France. Sadly for us, these deals were signed at a time smaller African nations are looking inward in the control of their natural resources.

Given that Nigeria had long ago mortgaged its crude oil to China and other countries it borrowed money from, handing over the listed mineral resources to the Americans will surely offer us our own ‘American Bubble’ in the full proportion of France’s ‘Mississippi Bubble’ of yore.

Tinubu’s abandonment in Paris by Macron, however, was not the only diplomatic insult Nigeria suffered while Tinubu’s French Régence lasted. Our President himself imposed on us a regime of regency when, while leaving the shores of the country, he refused to officially hand over to the Vice-President, Dr. Kashim Shettima, in line with the spirit and letters of Section 145 of the Constitution.

The section specifically stipulates that the President, when proceeding on vacation, must transmit a written declaration to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, after which the Vice-President performs the functions of Acting President. And in case both the President and the Vice-President are out of the seat of power, Section 146 (2) gives power to the President of the Senate.

But what did Tinubu do? Rather than obeying the provisions of the Constitution, a mere administrative convenience known as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), we were told, would run the government in the absence of the president. And we did nothing; Nigerians merely grumbled and moved on!

Thankfully, Tinubu ended his French Régence on Tuesday, September 29, 2026. The presidential plane which conveyed him from Paris touched down at the presidential wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, at exactly 6:22 p.m., Nigerian time.

Not a few Nigerians were delighted at the arrival of Mr. President. Governors, ministers, legislators, traditional rulers and cultural troupes were at the airport to welcome him back home. Nigerians know how to appreciate their leaders, especially benevolent ruiners like the present plague of locusts occupying our political ecosystem!

We were grateful to a President, who, while away on his annual vacation, ‘worked’ first, from the UK, and later moved to France, where he did not work while ‘resting’ for Nigeria alone, but acted as the Regent of France for a period of time!

No Nigerian President has been as lucky as President Tinubu. I don’t want to play God here; otherwise, I would have volunteered that no other President would be as lucky as the Jagaban.

From May 29, 2023, when, in a feat of enthusiastic superfluity, he threw the entire nation into crisis with his imperiled ‘subsidy-is-gone’ cliché, Tinubu has gone away with every blue murder he has committed in his three years and four months in the saddle as Nigeria’s benevolent dictator who with reckless abandon, flouts every sacred sections of the very constitution he swore to uphold!

As the nation heaved a sigh of relief at the return of Mr. President, who, like the proverbial Tortoise, said he would not return from a journey until he was thoroughly disgraced, another international insult was hurled at us.

We all woke up to behold our former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, featuring in a Television Commercial (TVC) for an Indian health facility, Krishna Shalby Hospital, Ahmedabad, India, where he had undergone a knee replacement surgery.

Like a typical TVC model in an advertising agency shooting set, Abdulsalami cut a picture of an incipient model struggling to memorise his script. The scriptwriter for the hospital did the most damage when the individual scripted: “When patients travel across borders for specialised care, their trust means everything.” What a shame!

 To worsen the situation, the hospital claimed that Vice President Kashim Shettima visited the facility and met with its management to discuss Abdulsalami’s progress and wellbeing. It then went ahead to announce Shettima’s visit as a “growing trust in India’s healthcare” delivery system!

If you are a Nigerian and you are not scandalised by all the shenanigans, then you are indeed ‘made of sterner stuff.’ Nigerians would recall that the same General Abdulsalami and the late General Muhammadu Buhari shared the same hospital ward in a UK hospital in July 2025. Abdulsalami was discharged from that hospital and ward a few days before Buhari passed on and his corpse was brought back to Nigeria.

We cannot but worry about when we will get out of the woods. Nothing seems to be working here! And most unfortunately, there have been no inspiring words from the President except his airport cliché of “ready to kick, ready to work.” And if tradition permits, one would like to ask a President, who has spent three years and four months of a four-year term, the question of the elders to wit: If a man spends three years to prepare for madness, when exactly will he enter the market naked?

I dare not ask that! But I can, like a Foreign Language (FL) speaker of French that I am, ask: Après la Régence, c’est quoi la suite (After the Regency, what’s next)?