“Those who have triggered political coalitions are political IDPs. Do not pay attention to them because they will remove themselves, not me” – President Tinubu
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Akamha is a contributing analyst to USAfrica
There is a brand of tragic insensitivity that courses through the veins of a society when its leaders begin to trivialize the suffering of its citizens in their quest for political one-upmanship. It is the kind of callousness that eats away at the moral fabric of a nation, rendering the cries of the wounded inaudible beneath the cacophony of political jibes and campaign rhetoric. To make light of the plight of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), fellow Nigerians uprooted from their homes by the ravages of banditry, terrorism, and state failure, is to not only mock their condition but to desecrate the very humanity that binds us.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s remarks in Lafia (Wednesday, 25 June 2025), where he described those coalescing against him ahead of the 2027 elections as “political IDPs,” descend into this abyss of insensitivity, thus marking a new low in political rhetoric in contemporary Nigeria. It was a statement meant to ridicule his opponents, to reduce them to nothing more than political vagrants seeking relevance, but at what cost? In a country where IDP camps litter the landscape like monuments to government failure; where tens of thousands of citizens languish in squalor, stripped of dignity, hope, and basic necessities; where, even as the President spoke, bandits were laying siege to military camps in Niger State, killing no fewer than 20 soldiers, one must ask: is this the time for such reckless political banter?
The irony bites deep and borders on psychological contradiction. It is the height of what psychologists describe as cognitive dissonance, that is, the discomfort that arises when one’s actions, words, or beliefs contradict each other. In the same breath, the President who urges Governor Abdullahi Sule to prioritize agricultural development in line with his Renewed Hope Agenda turns around to weaponize the term IDPs – a depraved phrase soaked in the very hopelessness that his policy slogan claims to redress. Imagine the absurdity: juxtaposing “Renewed Hope” with “IDPs.” One envisions restoration and national revival; the other, a metaphor for state collapse and unending despair. Yet, in Tinubu’s framing, both exist side by side, in one speech!
This semantic contradiction is more than a rhetorical gaffe; it betrays a deeper malaise at the heart of the current leadership, the disconnection from the everyday realities of ordinary Nigerians. While the President was in Nasarawa delivering political jabs, hundreds of displaced families in Yelwata, Benue State, were still mourning their dead, still grappling with hunger, trauma, and neglect. Across the North-Central and North-West, the IDP camps are not mere emergency shelters but permanent fixtures, physical metaphors of broken promises and empty platitudes.
Yet one is compelled to wonder, in the face of such jarring contradictions, whether the man at the helm, so evidently enslaved to base political instincts, is even capable of feeling discomfiture, that visceral unease born of cognitive dissonance. For to feel discomfited is to possess a conscience refined enough to detect the friction between professed ideals and actual conduct. It is the mark of a soul still attuned to the tension between light and darkness, between duty and dereliction. But what happens when that inner compass is dulled, that is, when power deadens perception and drowns out the still small voice of self-awareness?
In such a state, the contradiction between Renewed Hope and the vulgar trivialization of IDPs is no longer felt as hypocrisy but embraced as strategy, a convenient dissonance wrapped in political bravado. The mind that ought to recoil in shame instead revels in its own cleverness, mistaking mockery for mastery. And thus, the President’s flippant remark is not merely a slip of tongue but a symptom of a deeper moral dislocation, where empathy is absent, and contradiction becomes the currency of governance.
The President’s use of “IDPs” to label his opponents not only cheapens the term but also normalizes the grim reality it signifies. When the language of tragedy becomes the language of mockery, we risk becoming a nation that laughs while it bleeds. The citizens deserve more than glib sound-bites and insensitive rhetoric; they deserve leadership that feels, listens, and acts. If Renewed Hope is to mean anything beyond a campaign slogan, it must first purge itself of contradictions that insult the intelligence and dignity of Nigerians. It must begin with a renewed respect for language, and for the people, whose lives are held hostage by the cruel circumstances that phrases like “IDPs” represent.
Naija na cruise, they say in Nigeria. But when the captain of the ship begins to dance while passengers drown, it is no longer a cruise. It is a descent into darkness.
