This may be good for the promoters, but less so for the President. He should stem the trend

Ordinarily, the naming of public institutions is one way in which governments acknowledge and permanently pay tribute to the contributions of outstanding citizens to the process of nation building in different fields. It is a practice that is usually subject to rigorous selection processes to ensure that those honoured with such institutional recognition meet certain criteria in the estimation of the public. More often than not, the individuals that have structures and institutions named after them may have died after a life of meritorious national service. The logic here is to ensure that those so honoured have left indelible footprints to serve as monuments and examples to future generations.

Unfortunately, the current administration of President Bola Tinubu seems to have reversed this convention. At the last count, he has had to commission no fewer than seven public institutions named or renamed after him. Only last week, the recently refurbished International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja was renamed after Tinubu by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike. But the Minister was just following an established pattern. The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) command-and-control centre is now Bola Ahmed Tinubu Technology Innovation Complex (BATTIC). The library and resource centre at the National Assembly has been named after Tinubu. In January, a newly completed military facility in Abuja was named Bola Ahmed Tinubu Barracks. Major roads in Abuja have been named after the president as well. The question on many lips now is: what next will President Tinubu appropriate to his growing trove of personalised public assets?

Many Nigerians are concerned by this new dimension to governance. In only two years, the Tinubu government has named or renamed more institutions than any previous administration in Nigeria. Even if the edifices were constructed by the Tinubu administration, the whole idea of naming them after him would assume that they were done in his private capacity and with personal resources. That is not the case. But what is even more egregious is that most of the facilities being named after Tinubu were constructed by his predecessors in office who were sensible not to have named these public institutions after themselves. It started with Governor Mohammed Umar Bago of Niger State renaming the Minna airport ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Airport’.

Generally regarded as the single biggest figure in Hausa literature, Abubakar Imam (to whom it was named by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari) and the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe were professional contemporaries during the pre-colonial era. That Tinubu saw nothing wrong with the renaming, despite that aviation is on the exclusive list in the 1999 constitution, indicated a presidential endorsement for the illegal decision. Since then, it would appear federal officials are now competing among themselves on who would name more public facilities after the president.

This obsession with the naming of places and institutions after living individuals is a progressive degradation of our public morality. It indicates the elevation of individual vainglory to the status of a norm of public recognition. We have, as it were, become a society of the here and now that worships the totems of the moment for transient political purposes. We have graduated into an enclave ruled by the privatisation of public assets and institutions. Specifically, the presidential appropriation of national institutions and structures for his personal aggrandisement may be an unmistakable slide to a regrettable personality cult and authoritarianism that is still alien to Nigeria’s extant political culture.

Meanwhile, most reasonable Nigerians do not see any altruism in the action of federal government operatives that are naming public institutions after the president. Instead, what they see, at best, is the rearguard action of desperate sycophants bending over backwards to prove to their paymaster that they are ‘loyal’. At worst it looks like an indecent inducement to retain their positions. That is why we call on the president to discourage what is fast earning him opprobrium with many Nigerians. We hope it is not too late for him to halt the ridiculous trend.