_Few spectacles in contemporary Nigerian politics are as painfully comic as Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed attempting to clean up a political mess of his own making._
After provoking national outrage by telling Seun Okinbaloye that neither President Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar nor his former principal, Peter Obi, could fix Nigeria, Datti appeared on SYMFONI TV’s Naija Unfiltered to explain himself. It was an opportunity to clarify his position, acknowledge that he had misspoken or defend his judgment with courage and coherence.
He did none of those things.
Instead, Nigerians were treated to a display of intellectual vanity, political confusion and staggering condescension. Datti did not sound like a thoughtful statesman correcting a misunderstanding. He sounded like a man convinced that every contradiction becomes profound once it comes from his mouth.
For someone who spent the 2023 election campaign presenting himself as a moral authority and uncompromising defender of political integrity, the interview exposed how little substance lies beneath the performance. Nigeria is searching for leaders capable of guiding a distressed, divided and distrustful country through economic hardship, insecurity and institutional decay. Datti’s performance offered no evidence that he possesses the judgment, temperament or political intelligence required for that responsibility.
His explanation for declaring that Peter Obi could not fix Nigeria was particularly embarrassing. Rather than stand by his statement or withdraw it plainly, Datti produced a curious formula for distributing responsibility. He assigned 40 percent of the blame to himself, 30 percent to the interviewer for questioning him too aggressively while the call to Juma’at prayers could be heard, and the remaining 30 percent to Nigerians for supposedly lacking the intellectual sophistication to understand him.
This was not an explanation. It was an evasion wrapped in arithmetic.
The calculation revealed something important about Datti. Even when admitting fault, he could not resist blaming others. He presented himself as only partly responsible for his own words, as though the interviewer had forced them into his mouth and the public had committed an offence by understanding them exactly as they were spoken.
His justification was even more absurd. Datti claimed that he included Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar among those incapable of fixing Nigeria because he wanted to be fair to President Tinubu. Since he had already called on Tinubu to step aside, he reasoned that leaving Obi and Atiku untouched would unfairly disadvantage the All Progressives Congress.
This is political reasoning turned upside down. What serious opposition politician weakens his own movement in order to create a sense of fairness for the government he accuses of ruining the country? Opposition politics is not an academic exercise in symmetrical criticism. It is the disciplined work of identifying failure, presenting a credible alternative and persuading citizens that one’s own political platform deserves their confidence.
Datti instead chose to discredit his former running mate, weaken the movement that gave him national visibility and then describe the resulting confusion as intellectual fairness. That is not sophistication. It is political incompetence dressed in philosophical language.
Even more troubling was the contempt he displayed for ordinary Nigerians. Throughout the interview, Datti repeatedly retreated into an imaginary ivory tower from which he looked down on anyone who questioned him. He referred to lectures at Harvard Business School, invoked regression analysis and wandered into accounts of medieval Islamic history, as though a pile of academic references could rescue an argument that made no political sense.
He lamented that sophisticated ideas were being presented to a country whose thinking had reached “rock bottom.” The implication was unmistakable. Datti was brilliant, but Nigerians were too intellectually deficient to understand him. His contradictions were not contradictions. The real problem, he suggested, was the limited intelligence of the audience.
That attitude should disqualify anyone seeking democratic leadership.
A serious leader does not respond to public disagreement by insulting the public’s intelligence. Leadership requires the ability to explain complex ideas clearly, listen to criticism, admit error and persuade people who do not already agree with you. Politics is not a doctoral defence conducted before admiring professors. It is the demanding work of earning the trust of traders, farmers, professionals, artisans, students, workers and families struggling to survive.
The market woman in Onitsha does not need a lecture on regression analysis to understand that food prices have become unbearable. The artisan in Ibadan does not need a Harvard anecdote to know that electricity, transportation and rent are consuming his income. The farmer in Zaria does not need a lesson in fourteenth-century history to recognize insecurity and government failure.
A politician who cannot speak meaningfully to these realities, and who regards criticism as evidence of inferior intelligence, is not intellectually superior. He is politically useless.
Datti’s comments about the 2023 election were equally revealing. He claimed that the Labour Party’s mandate was stolen but suggested that Peter Obi was too much of a gentleman, banker and trader to pursue what he described as a clinical plan of mass civic confrontation. He invoked the courage associated with the June 12 struggle and mocked Labour Party supporters as keyboard activists who were unwilling to make real sacrifices.
But where was Datti when the sacrifice he now celebrates was supposedly required?
It is easy to preach resistance after the decisive moment has passed. It is even easier to lecture young supporters from the comfort of an elite private university or while preparing to board an international flight. If Datti believed mass civic resistance was necessary, he was not a helpless observer. He was the vice-presidential candidate of the party. He occupied one of the movement’s two highest positions. He had a public platform, political influence and a direct responsibility to provide leadership.
Yet he did not lead the confrontation he now says others lacked the courage to undertake. He neither became the face of sustained resistance nor accepted the risks that genuine civil disobedience would have involved. He now wants to claim the moral stature of the June 12 activists without demonstrating their courage, discipline or willingness to endure personal consequences.
That is not bravery. It is retrospective grandstanding.
Having moved to the political margins under the Peoples Redemption Party, Datti now attacks Peter Obi, belittles the supporters who helped make him nationally relevant and presents his own failure of leadership as evidence of everyone else’s weakness. He wants credit for a revolution he neither organized nor led.
Nigeria’s crisis demands leaders with emotional intelligence, humility, consistency, courage and the capacity to build broad coalitions. It needs people who understand that governing a fractured federation requires more than sounding stern on television. It requires patience, empathy, strategic discipline and respect for citizens.
Datti Baba-Ahmed has shown little evidence of these qualities.
He speaks with the certainty of a prophet but retreats into “I refuse to answer” when confronted with difficult questions. He undermines political allies and then calls it fairness. He insults the public and calls it intellectual sophistication. He lectures others about courage while offering no persuasive account of his own conduct when courage was supposedly required. Whenever his words create trouble, he blames the interviewer, the circumstances and the audience.
This is not the behaviour of a misunderstood intellectual. It is the behaviour of an arrogant and politically undisciplined man who mistakes obscurity for depth and condescension for intelligence.
Datti may be successful in private enterprise. He may be able to administer a university. He may continue to attract attention on television programs where sweeping declarations generate headlines. None of that makes him fit for national leadership.
A country as troubled as Nigeria cannot afford leaders who treat citizens as intellectually inferior students and public accountability as an irritating interruption. It cannot entrust its future to a man whose political compass begins spinning the moment he faces pressure.
Datti Baba-Ahmed has had repeated opportunities to show Nigerians that he is a serious leader. He has instead shown himself to be vain, evasive, contemptuous and politically incoherent. Nigerians should believe the evidence before them and leave him in the seminar room, where grand theories can survive without ever being tested by the difficult realities of leadership.
Garbs
Sept 14, 2026