Facts Over Fiction: Why Odinkalu Was Wrong About Tinubu Being Absent

By Abubakar M. Kareto

In the volatile arena of Nigerian electoral politics, few manoeuvres are as damaging to genuine democratic engagement as the calculated erasure of physical presence.

To declare that a sitting head of state was absent from his own marquee party gathering strikes at the heart of state legitimacy and governance itself. On the evening of 14 October 2026, Professor Chidi Anselm Odinkalu made precisely such an assertion regarding President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s address at the inauguration of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council. Observing the broadcast from afar, Odinkalu argued that the camera work was overly controlled, the transitions looked unnatural, and the President was absent from the State House Banquet Hall in Abuja. His conclusion was that the presidency had staged a pre-recorded broadcast rather than conducted a live ceremony. It is a dramatic charge, yet once it meets the reality of newsroom standards, physical witnesses, and spontaneous human behavior, the entire theory quickly unravels.

Accepting this claim requires believing that an impossible logistical conspiracy unfolded in broad daylight across partisan divides. Independent news crews from Channels Television, the Voice of Nigeria, and prominent national dailies all tracked the President’s arrival at approximately quarter to three in the afternoon. He was received openly by Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, and other principal officers of the National Assembly. Crucially, the banquet hall was not packed solely with loyal party stalwarts who might toe a choreographed line. Key figures from rival political formations, including Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party and Anambra State Governor Charles Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, were physically inside the room delivering goodwill remarks. Adeleke even entertained the audience with his famous dance steps in real time. For Tinubu to have been a digital illusion, these autonomous opposition figures would have had to actively participate in a fraudulent production stunt on behalf of the ruling party.

Beyond the credibility of the audience, the most undeniable rebuttal comes directly from the cadence of the speech itself. While formally acknowledging the Director-General of the campaign council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, President Tinubu made a momentary slip of the tongue. He told the gathered assembly that the committee had been assembled to bring Governor Bola Tinubu back for a second term, before immediately catching himself, smiling, and correcting the title to President. Anyone familiar with broadcast media knows how edited content is handled. In a pre-recorded delivery intended to project unblemished competence, production teams cut awkward moments, reshoot embarrassing gaffes, and clean the final master tape before transmission. A speaker momentarily regressing to an executive office he held decades ago is a classic reaction to live fatigue and the pressure of the moment. You can fake polished rhetoric in an editing suite, but you do not manufacture an unforced, embarrassing verbal error across simultaneous live national feeds.
Odinkalu’s skepticism seems anchored entirely in aesthetic dissatisfaction with the television production. In an age of deepfakes and manipulated digital media, public vigilance is a virtue, yet genuine critical thinking requires distinguishing poor camera angles from a constitutional cover-up. State House broadcasts often suffer from rigid technical directing, awkward cuts, and conservative camera switching. Mistaking subpar television direction for the physical absence of a head of state reveals a profound disconnect from the practical realities of live event coverage. To sustain the absence thesis, one must discount official photography, accredited press reporting, the presence of the diplomatic community, and the lived testimony of hundreds of guests who shared the room with the commander-in-chief.

This episode reflects a troubling habit that has steadily corrupted Nigeria’s political discourse over successive administrations. From persistent rumors of foreign hospitalizations to absurd fables regarding body doubles in the presidential villa, a segment of the commentariat has developed an addiction to phantom theories. In each cycle, ambiguous visual artifacts are elevated into definitive proof of grand state deception, while multi-source verification is discarded as state propaganda. Extraordinary accusations demand an equal measure of empirical proof. Here, every available piece of evidence points in the opposite direction. The President entered the hall, interacted warmly with political allies and opponents alike, delivered an address marked by spontaneous human imperfection, and carried out the inauguration before the nation.

As Vice President Kashim Shettima noted during the proceedings, a serious nation cannot afford to be permanently held hostage by trivia. Nigeria faces profound, urgent choices concerning the direction of its economic reforms, the modernization of its security architecture, and the alleviation of poverty across its federation. When our finest public intellectuals trade substantive policy interrogation for optical conspiracies, the public loses its compass. A credible political opposition does not challenge an incumbent by pretending he is an apparition. It confronts his record with measurable facts, interrogates his fiscal policies with rigorous analysis, and presents a compelling, workable alternative to the Nigerian electorate.

Public discourse is only as healthy as the integrity of the facts upon which it rests. When prominent commentators raise alarms without basic verification, they weaken their own moral authority and pollute the information ecosystem with needless noise. On this occasion, Professor Odinkalu’s standard of evidence failed to meet the threshold expected of a legal scholar of his standing. President Tinubu was present in the banquet hall, he delivered his remarks live, and his unscripted mistake provided the exact proof of authenticity that no production crew could replicate. In an electoral climate already charged with tension and mistrust, verifiable facts still matter, and they clearly establish that the phantom president claim is nothing more than fiction.

Abubakar M. Kareto is a Public Affairs Analyst and Communications Strategist focusing on governance, policies, economy, and institutional reforms across Nigeria and Africa. He can be reached on X @amkareto and via email at amkareto@gmail.com.