The first feeler out of the State House on the first day of last week was as unexpected as it was intriguing. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was proceeding on a three-week annual leave in Europe. London was his first stop and, although it was an annual leave, the Presidency carefully inserted two words that would become important in understanding what followed: ‘working vacation’.
The surprise was understandable. Tinubu had not travelled outside the country since the three-nation trip that took him to Kenya, Rwanda and France in early May. More significantly, this was happening just as the political season was warming up for the January 2027 election. Why would a President seeking a second term withdraw from the arena when others are tightening their boots?
There were those who felt there was too much unfinished business at home for the President to contemplate rest. The cost of living remains an issue, purchasing power is still recovering and Nigerians naturally expect the man they handed the mandate to to remain constantly at his desk. Citizens, including those Tinubu may never impress regardless of what his administration achieves, reserve the right to question how he uses the mandate.
But perhaps the error is in interpreting Tinubu’s withdrawal as inactivity. Those who have studied his methods closely would have noticed a pattern: when confronted by problems requiring unusual answers, Tinubu often retreats from the noise. Seclusion, for him, appears less an escape from work than another form of work.
We saw something similar earlier this year when insecurity threatened to assume frightening dimensions. Terrorists and kidnappers were growing daring, with multiple abductions in Oyo State suggesting a dangerous southward expansion. Tinubu did not travel abroad then, but he virtually disappeared from the everyday ceremonial circuit. His engagements narrowed considerably around advisers, generals and heads of security and intelligence organisations.
What emerged afterwards was consequential. The security architecture became more aggressive, rescue operations recorded rapid successes and the Oriire abduction episode became an important turning point. The victories that followed did not mean Nigeria’s security problems had vanished, but the momentum clearly shifted. Something had happened during those quiet days when the President withdrew from public visibility and concentrated on the problem.
That is why this three-week working vacation should perhaps be understood beyond the conventional meaning of leave. Tinubu has entered what, borrowing from Yoruba imagery, one might call his Igbo-Igbale; that sacred forest of contemplation, removed from the marketplace and its noise. It may equally be compared with Moses’ wilderness: a place of withdrawal, communion and preparation before returning to confront the task ahead.
The President needs such a space now perhaps more than at any other period in recent months. Beyond solving Nigeria’s socioeconomic and security questions, another huge assignment is staring him in the face. The campaign for January 2027 is beginning, and Tinubu must take a pause, breathe and give himself to the task putting together the political strategy that will deliver the unassailable victory he seeks to continue nurturing his Renewed Hope reforms to maturity.
Winning an election is not merely about mounting rostrums. For a politician of Tinubu’s experience, the more consequential work often happens before the rallies: reading the field, identifying vulnerabilities, anticipating opponents, rebuilding alliances and deciding which message should meet which constituency. If history is any guide, his current withdrawal may therefore be less about resting from politics than preparing for its most demanding phase.
Dr Sunday Dare, his Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, virtually provided the decoder before the presidential aircraft touched down in London on Sunday. Tinubu, he said, would attend to state matters daily, receiving briefings from ministers, service chiefs and officials handling critical decisions. Dare also supplied another important word: the President needed to ‘refuel’ ahead of four or five months of intense campaigning.
Events during the week proved that the machinery of state did not accompany the President on vacation. Indeed, even as Tinubu was leaving Abuja on Sunday, Vice President Kashim Shettima was thousands of kilometres away in Luanda, Angola, carrying his message to the 21st Extraordinary Session of the African Union Assembly.
That message was significant. Tinubu demanded urgent continental action against recurring xenophobic and Afrophobic attacks on Nigerians and other African nationals in South Africa. While acknowledging South Africa’s sovereign right to enforce immigration laws, he argued that no immigration policy could excuse violence against fellow Africans.
Nigeria consequently pushed the matter towards the agenda of the AU’s 40th Ordinary Session in January 2027. It was a re-echo of the position the President had advanced at the ECOWAS summit in Freetown in July: Africa cannot preach integration while Africans are unsafe in African countries. Through Shettima in Luanda, therefore, the President was absent physically but unmistakably present diplomatically.
By Monday, another intervention came directly from his retreat. The National Bureau of Statistics had reported second-quarter GDP growth of 4.43 per cent, against 4.23 per cent in the corresponding period of 2025. Tinubu seized the figures, not merely to celebrate statistics, but to address perhaps the biggest political and economic question confronting his administration: when will improving macroeconomic numbers become realities ordinary Nigerians can touch?
His answer was that the economy had entered an ‘irreversible path’ of growth, but, importantly, he acknowledged that growth must eventually be felt ‘at the dining table and in their pockets’. He promised cheaper transportation, increased food production and grassroots relief interventions in the coming weeks.
That distinction is critical. GDP growth, stronger reserves, trade surpluses, improved credit ratings and increasing oil production may please economists, but elections are not conducted on spreadsheets. Nigerians will judge economic recovery through food prices, transport fares, employment, incomes and purchasing power. Tinubu apparently understands that the next stage of his reforms must therefore be translation: converting macroeconomic recovery into household experience.
Then came Thursday and another intervention, this time on Africa’s place in the global financial system. Tinubu welcomed the African Union’s October 7 launch of the African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), an institution he had personally canvassed in the Financial Times in February and again at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali in May.
His argument was characteristically nuanced. Africa, he said, is not asking for favourable ratings; it wants fair ratings reflecting its fundamentals and reforms. But he equally warned against turning AfCRA into a continental praise-singing institution. If it must challenge established global rating agencies, it must first earn global capital’s confidence through independence and rigorous work.
There lies the significance of AfCRA. African governments have long complained that exaggerated perceptions of continental risk inflate borrowing costs and deny economies affordable capital for infrastructure and development. An African-owned agency capable of producing credible, evidence-driven assessments could begin correcting that imbalance. But, as Tinubu recognised, ownership without credibility merely replaces one problem with another.
So, from London and wherever else this working vacation eventually takes him, the President remained woven into the week’s affairs: speaking through Shettima in Angola, responding to GDP numbers at home and looking towards a new architecture for Africa’s access to global capital.
Perhaps that is the point missed in the initial surprise over the vacation. The President has withdrawn, but the Presidency has not. Government has not stopped, and neither has politics. Tinubu may actually be doing what his political history suggests he does at consequential moments; leaving the noise temporarily to hear the problem more clearly.
Soon enough, the wilderness will give way to the marketplace. The rallies will begin, opponents will sharpen their messages and January 2027 will rapidly approach. By then, Nigerians may discover what President Tinubu went into his Igbo-Igbale to find. If his previous retreats are anything to go by, the more interesting story may not be that he left for three weeks, but what he returns with.
And there was more to the week than the big-ticket interventions. The ‘working’ in the working vacation kept announcing itself. Through SGF George Akume, Tinubu rallied North-Central stakeholders in Makurdi against insecurity, insisting that guns alone would not manufacture lasting peace. Hours later, he personally celebrated the rescue of 15 NYSC members and six others abducted in Kogi, ordering security forces to hunt down their captors and accomplices.
Tuesday carried a more personal tone as he celebrated Vice President Kashim Shettima at 60, describing his deputy as a trusted ally, patriot and partner in steering the ship of state. On Wednesday, he hailed Zamfara Governor Dauda Lawal’s development efforts and mourned the Emir of Zurmi, Alhaji Bello Sulaiman.
Thursday again mixed policy with solemnity. Tinubu, through Akume at the Daily Times centenary, restated that his reforms are meant to alter Nigeria’s development trajectory, while also mourning the Emir of Gumel, whose nearly 46-year reign he described as remarkable.
By Friday, there were felicitations for Adesola Adeduntan and Kwara APC chieftain Femi Sanni. So, the President may be away, but presidential attention has not travelled out with him. Perhaps that is what ‘working vacation’ really means.