The Director-General of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu, has described President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Nigeria’s greatest-ever leader, citing his political experience, institutional reforms and willingness to take difficult decisions in the interest of the country’s future.
Audu, who is also the National Publicity Secretary of the City Boy Movement, said Tinubu’s leadership should be assessed not by the comfort it preserves but by the institutions it builds, the difficult challenges it confronts and the future it makes possible.
In an statement titled “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Is Nigeria’s Greatest-Ever Leader,” Audu argued that history often provides a clearer assessment of consequential leadership after the events have passed, noting that reforms are usually accompanied by disruption, uncertainty and disagreement when they are being implemented.
She said Nigeria was currently experiencing such a period, adding that Tinubu’s leadership should be examined beyond political hyperbole and assessed against the structural challenges confronting the country.
According to her, greatness did not mean perfection, nor did it require pretending that reforms had been painless or that every policy had produced its intended outcome.
She said the more demanding test of leadership was whether a statesman could recognise the structural problems of his time, confront issues that others had postponed, build institutions rather than merely occupy them, develop political and administrative capacity and take decisions whose significance extended beyond an immediate electoral calendar.
Audu said Tinubu’s political significance predated his emergence as president in 2023, tracing his career to his election as a senator during the Third Republic, his association with the struggle for democratic restoration during military rule, his exile and subsequent return to Nigeria.
She recalled that Tinubu became governor of Lagos State in 1999 and served for eight years, arguing that his influence continued even after he left office.
“Many politicians possess power while occupying office. Far fewer demonstrate the capacity to organise people, institutions and coalitions when the formal machinery of the state is no longer theirs to command,” she said.
According to Audu, Tinubu’s political career had been distinguished not simply by longevity but by institutional and political endurance.
She said the intellectual origins of the Tinubu presidency could be traced to his experience in Lagos, where, according to her, the challenge was to build a government capable of governing effectively in a state where private economic dynamism existed alongside inadequate public capacity.
Audu said effective states were built when institutions could mobilise revenue, formulate and execute policies, enforce rules predictably and create conditions for private enterprise to flourish.
She argued that the principle that government must possess the capacity to govern had remained visible throughout Tinubu’s political career and was now being tested at the national level.
On the economy, Audu said Nigeria’s structural difficulties did not begin in 2023, noting that the country had accumulated distortions over decades, including the rising cost of petrol subsidy, foreign exchange imbalances, weak public revenues, infrastructure deficits, import dependence and administrative inefficiencies.
She said successive governments understood many of the problems but frequently lacked the political willingness to confront them decisively.
According to her, Nigeria had consequently developed what she described as a “political economy of postponement,” where the political cost of reform was immediate while the cost of avoiding reform was transferred to the future.
“President Tinubu disrupted that logic,” she said.
Audu acknowledged that the removal of the petrol subsidy had imposed genuine hardship on Nigerians but argued that the hardship did not, by itself, settle the policy question.
She said the more important consideration was whether the previous arrangement could have been sustained indefinitely and what the eventual cost of continued postponement would have been.
“Leadership sometimes requires choosing not between difficulty and comfort, but between the difficulty of adjustment today and the greater danger of structural failure tomorrow,” she said.
The PEBEC DG also highlighted reforms aimed at improving the business environment, saying the efficiency of the state was an important determinant of economic competitiveness.
She said permits, customs procedures, company registration, commercial courts and the time required to obtain government approvals all had direct economic consequences.
“Every unnecessary procedure imposes a cost. Every unpredictable regulation introduces uncertainty. Every hour an entrepreneur spends navigating bureaucracy is an hour unavailable for production, innovation and expansion,” she said.
Audu said the work of PEBEC and the broader business-facilitation framework was aimed at reducing the institutional cost of being productive in Nigeria, rather than merely making bureaucracy more convenient.
She said the philosophy behind the reforms was that government should facilitate legitimate enterprise rather than constitute an obstacle to it.
According to her, Nigeria had become more efficient and accountable, which she attributed to Tinubu’s commitment to building a $1 trillion economy by 2030.
Audu further argued that one of the burdens of reform was that its costs were often immediate while its benefits took longer to materialise.
She said citizens could experience price adjustments immediately while investment and the productive ecosystem expected to emerge from reforms might take years.
“Foresight is not the ability to predict the future perfectly. It is the capacity to recognise that continuing the present is itself a decision about the future,” she said.
She said Tinubu’s political career had been characterised by a willingness to expend political capital rather than merely accumulate it, adding that she could not currently point to another Nigerian leader with a comparable record of building leaders and planning for the future.
Audu said Tinubu’s record should also be viewed in the context of the different stages of his political career, describing him as a senator, pro-democracy figure, exile, two-term governor, opposition organiser, coalition builder, party strategist, presidential candidate, president and economic reformer.
“This is more than longevity; this shows visionary patriotic dedication to purpose,” she said.
She added that the argument for Tinubu as Nigeria’s greatest-ever leader did not rest on a single policy or moment but on the accumulation of political struggle, development of people and institutions, and difficult decisions taken over time.
Audu urged Nigerians to recognise consequential leadership while it was taking place rather than waiting until leaders had left office or died before giving them historical recognition.
“Nigeria has an unfortunate habit of becoming intellectually generous toward its leaders only after they are gone,” she said.
She, however, acknowledged that Tinubu’s work was unfinished and that history’s final verdict on his presidency could not yet be written.
Audu also urged Nigerians to continue demanding results, better living conditions, social amenities and infrastructural development, stressing that recognising Tinubu’s achievements should not amount to suspending scrutiny of his administration.
She concluded that Tinubu’s place in Nigerian history was already impossible to ignore, arguing that few Nigerian political careers had traversed as much history, shaped as many institutions and remained consequential across different political eras.
“That is why, in my considered view, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is Nigeria’s greatest-ever leader to date,” she said.
“Not because he has solved every Nigerian problem, not because leadership is synonymous with perfection, but because the deepest measure of statesmanship is ultimately the capacity to see beyond the country one inherits, to confront the problems others postpone, and to organise institutions, people and political power in pursuit of the country that might yet be built.
“I stand bold to state that posterity will judge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu favourably.”
