Protocol, precedence and the example those who would lead must set
By Osamhanze Idahosa 
Nigerian politics has never lacked drama, but the latest quarrel is about something that sounds almost trivial: a name. At a recent media briefing, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar repeatedly referred to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by his first name, with no title and no honorific. It was not a slip of the tongue. It was deliberate, repeated, and delivered before cameras.
The reaction was swift. The President’s media handlers accused the former Vice President of not merely belittling the man in Aso Rock but degrading the office he occupies. Atiku’s spokespersons fired back that there was nothing wrong with it, that a name is a name, and that the presidency is not a monarchy. And so another media war was born, with each side insisting the other had lost the plot.
It is tempting to dismiss the whole affair as much ado about nothing. With inflation biting, insecurity persisting and young Nigerians queuing at embassies for a chance to leave, surely there are weightier matters? There are. But this small matter is not as small as it seems. How we speak about our highest office says a great deal about how we regard the republic itself, and about the example we set for those coming behind us.
Let me be clear: the President is not above criticism, and no democrat should wish him to be. His policies can and should be interrogated, his promises measured against results, his appointments questioned. That is the work of the opposition, the press and every citizen.
But there is a difference between criticising a President and stripping the presidency of its dignity. The office is a national symbol, in the same family as the flag, the anthem and the coat of arms. Whoever occupies it carries, for that season, the mandate of the millions who voted and the sovereignty of the millions who did not. When we say “President Tinubu” or “His Excellency,” we are not flattering a man. We are acknowledging an institution and the constitutional order that put him there.
Strip away the title deliberately and publicly, and you are not only making a point about one man. You are sending a message about what the office is worth. That is why the President’s handlers are not wrong to see more than a personal insult in this episode.
Some of Atiku’s defenders point out that he is the older of the two men, and that in our tradition an elder may call a younger person by name. In the family compound, that is true. In public life, it is not the rule. Our protocol tradition, like that of every serious state, rests on the principle that office outranks age.
The order of precedence does not ask who was born first; it asks who holds the mandate. A seventy-year-old commissioner rises when a fifty-year-old governor enters the room, not because the governor is wiser, but because the office demands it.
Nobody knows this better than Atiku Abubakar. For eight years, from 1999 to 2007, he sat second in the nation’s order of precedence. He knows the choreography of state functions, the seating plans and the forms of address. He has received the very courtesies he now withholds. That is precisely why his conduct is troubling: it cannot be excused as ignorance.
There is also a simple matter of consistency. Atiku has sought the presidency several times and is widely expected to try again. A man who aspires to be the number one citizen of Nigeria is, in effect, auditioning for the very title he now refuses to use. Should he succeed, would he accept being called by his first name by an opposition figure at a press conference? Would his own handlers shrug it off as harmless? I doubt it.
Those who seek to lead must model the standards they will one day expect. Protocol is not empty ceremony; it is the grammar of the state. It tells citizens, civil servants, and foreign partners that rules matter more than personal feelings. An aspirant who sets those rules aside for a political jab is telling us something about how he regards them.
We adults love to lament the manners of the younger generation. We complain that young people no longer greet properly, address elders casually on social media, or show the courtesy we were raised with. We call it un-African, and we are right to worry.
But young people do not learn manners from lectures. They learn by watching. If elders in flowing agbada, men who have held some of the highest offices in the land, belittle the presidency on live television, with what moral authority do we scold a twenty-year-old who does the same to his lecturer, his pastor, or his traditional ruler? The young are taking notes. Adults must teach by their mannerisms, not only by their sermons.
Those who aspire to lead the rest of us must be custodians of the nation’s culture and traditions. Courtesy towards those in authority, which is not the same as blind obedience, is part of that heritage. When leaders abandon it for political convenience, they erode the very values they will need when they are the ones in charge.
Politics is a contest, and contests stir emotions: frustration at losing elections, anger at perceived injustice, irritation at a rival’s success. These are human. But leadership is measured precisely by how one manages such feelings. Emotional intelligence is a fundamental measure of leadership capability. A leader who cannot govern his tone at a press briefing will struggle to govern it in a tense diplomatic negotiation, a security crisis, or an ethnic flashpoint.
Those who cannot manage their own emotions should think carefully before seeking to govern more than two hundred million others. The strongest opposition is not the loudest or the most insulting; it is the most persuasive. Facts, figures and credible alternative policies wound a government far more than a dropped title ever could.
The respect we accord our own institutions will determine whether other nations respect them. Foreign governments, investors and international organisations watch how Nigerians treat their presidency, their courts and their legislature. If our own political class treats the highest office with casual contempt, we cannot be surprised when others take it lightly. Dignity begins at home.
None of this is an argument for a silent or timid opposition. Nigeria needs a vigorous opposition, now more than ever. But being in opposition does not mean pulling the rug from under the nation you seek to govern. If every political disagreement licenses us to tear down the symbols of state, we may be arguing for anarchy without knowing it. Today it is a title; tomorrow it may be the flag, the courts, or the very results of elections.
A word, too, for the President’s handlers: the office’s dignity is also protected by restraint. Matching insult with insult, or turning every slight into a week-long war of press releases, does the presidency no favours. The best answer to disrespect is conduct that makes the office self-evidently worthy of respect.
In the end, this is not about one man calling another by his name. It is about the kind of country we are building and the kind of leaders we want to raise. Our institutions are only as strong as the respect we show them. Those who hope to lead Nigeria should be the first to show it.
