Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), has questioned what Seyi Tinubu has done for Nigeria to deserve a colloquium in his honour. In a post on X, he described the event as evidence of a growing culture of sycophancy and power worship in public life. The criticism comes as the President’s son turned 41 on Monday, with the 2027 general elections drawing closer.
The colloquium was broadcast on major television stations and attended by a number of prominent figures. Sowore asked what public service, intellectual work or national achievement was being celebrated. “Is this about merit, or simply about being the son of a sitting president?” he wrote.
He linked the event to an earlier era in Abuja. In 2008, two daughters of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua married serving governors: Nafisa wed Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda, while Zainab married Kebbi State Governor Usman Saidu Dakingari. Sowore said the political excitement around those unions faded after Yar’Adua died in May 2010. “Today, we are witnessing another manifestation of this culture of power worship,” he said.
The colloquium format carries history within the Tinubu family. The annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium, held on the President’s birthday each March, became a fixture of the political calendar during his years as a party leader, drawing governors, ministers and senior party figures. He cancelled the 2022 edition after the attack on the Abuja to Kaduna train and called off the 2023 edition for prayers as President-elect. Since taking office, he has marked his birthdays mainly with prayer sessions.
Seyi Tinubu has built a public profile of his own in the last three years. He is a lawyer and businessman whose interests include outdoor advertising, and he founded the Noella Foundation, which ran projects to mark his 40th birthday in October 2025, including 40 kiosks for small businesses across the country. He is also founder of the Relax, Tinubu Is Fixing Nigeria group, which met with him in Abuja in March 2026 to plan grassroots mobilisation for his father’s re-election. His supporters credit him with youth outreach, including tours of northern states such as Yobe and Adamawa since 2025.
Sowore’s central complaint, however, was about timing. He argued that the country should be confronting hunger, unemployment and insecurity rather than celebrating the President’s son. “At a time when millions of Nigerians are struggling with hunger, unemployment, insecurity, and economic hardship brought about by his father, we should be having national shaming of the Tinubu regime,” he wrote.
Official and humanitarian data show the scale of the pressures he cited. The Cadre Harmonisé analysis, led by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, had projected that 34.7 million Nigerians would face acute food insecurity during the June to August 2026 lean season. The Food and Agriculture Organization later estimated that about 36.3 million people, roughly 17 per cent of the population covered, actually faced crisis levels of hunger or worse during that period.
Prices remain a heavy burden, even as some indicators improve. The National Bureau of Statistics put headline inflation at 15.39 per cent in August 2026, down from 23.14 per cent a year earlier, while food inflation eased to 19.57 per cent from 25.30 per cent. Petrol, however, now sells for about ₦1,400 per litre, up from roughly ₦830 before crude prices surged in February. The World Bank had earlier estimated that the number of poor Nigerians rose from 89.8 million at the start of 2023 to about 104 million a year later.
The administration has consistently defended its record. President Tinubu said in his October 1 Independence Day broadcast that the economy grew by more than four per cent this year, that inflation had fallen substantially from its peak and that foreign reserves had been rebuilt. His government has also described its 30-day petrol discount at NNPC stations as targeted relief rather than a return to subsidy.
Sowore is no stranger to confrontation with those in power. The founder of the online news platform SaharaReporters was detained by the Department of State Services in 2019 after calling for #RevolutionNow protests. He contested the presidency on the AAC platform in 2019 and 2023, polling 33,953 and 14,608 votes respectively, according to results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Neither Seyi Tinubu nor the Presidency had publicly responded to Sowore’s remarks at the time of writing. Sowore ended his post by calling the occasion a “sad day”.