The National Chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has said President Bola Tinubu has become “a prisoner of his own ego” due to what he described as the concentration of power around the Nigerian leader.
Baba-Ahmed made the remarks during an exclusive interview on Symfoni TV on Saturday, May 23, 2026, where he spoke extensively about governance, power, and leadership under the current administration.
According to the PRP chairman, Tinubu currently wields more political influence than any Nigerian president since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999: “President Tinubu has become a prisoner of his own ego. He is quite possibly the most powerful president we’ve had since 1999. Maybe even in the military days.”
The former presidential adviser stated that the president has accumulated enormous political authority around himself, suggesting that the concentration of power may have been intentional or accidental. “He has amassed so much power around himself. Maybe it makes him feel more secure. Maybe it makes him feel more confident,” he said.
He added, “But whether it was by design or by accident, President Tinubu is the most powerful, quite the most powerful African leader, defined as a president who has all the trappings and the mechanics of power.”
However, Baba-Ahmed argued that possessing extensive political control does not necessarily translate into effective leadership or true strength: “That makes you a prisoner. It doesn’t make you very powerful. It makes you a prisoner of your own thinking. It makes you a prisoner of a very, very tiny cycle of people who have access to you.”
He further warned that excessive concentration of power around a leader could result in isolation from reality and dependence on poor counsel. “It makes you a prisoner of poor advice, which you can’t avoid. And it locks you up. It doesn’t allow you to know what is going on,” Baba-Ahmed added…See More
