Opinion

History and psychoanalysis of El-Rufai’s troubles with Ribadu – Farooq Kperogi

Published

2 months ago

February 28, 2026

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism

Farooq Kperogi

History and psychoanalysis of El-Rufai’s troubles with Ribadu – Farooq Kperogi

Given the depth and intensity of the friendship they cultivated over decades, many people are befuddled by why the personal conflict between former Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai and National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu has burst into the open with such virulence. As I’ll show, it’s inspired by deep-seated envy, ego trip and bruised self-construal.

Both were born in 1960 (with El-Rufai being about nine months older), graduated from ABU in the 1980s (with El-Rufai graduating three years earlier), have a reputation for boldness and outspokenness, and were stars of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

From the outside looking in, it appears to me that although both men had mutual admiration for each other, the scale tilted a little in favor of El-Rufai. I say this for at least two reasons.

One, according to a recent social media post by presidential aide Gimba Kakanda, who appears to be close to both men, Ribadu named his son in honor of El-Rufai. I am not aware that El-Rufai requited Ribadu’s gesture even though he has had boys. If my assumption is wrong, I apologize. If it’s right, that bespeaks a deep, unspoken, but nonetheless significant inequality in admiration.

Second, on page 358 of El-Rufai’s 2013 autobiography titled The Accidental Public Servant, which has made the social media rounds, El-Rufai revealed that when the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua sought Ribadu’s support to be president and said Obasanjo had already endorsed him, Ribadu rebuffed Yar’Adua, saying, “Well, Obasanjo has not told me, and as far as the presidency is concerned, I have my candidate for president, and that is Nasir El-Rufai. I am going to have to speak to Obasanjo about this.”

So, El-Rufai internalized the asymmetry in their admiration for each other. He took for granted that Ribadu thought higher of him than he did of Ribadu. There can be no greater endorsement of this fact than Ribadu’s perception that El-Rufai was the best Nigerian qualified to succeed Obasanjo.

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However, in 2011, when Bola Ahmed Tinubu was shopping for a young northern candidate to fly the flag of the ACN, he commissioned a public opinion poll to determine which northern candidate enjoyed the most national acceptance, according to Akin Osuntokun’s February 20, 2026, Arise News interview.

Osuntokun not only worked with both men during the Obasanjo presidency, he is also friends with them. Plus, I’ve heard this story from several people close to El-Rufai and Ribadu, but this is the first time it’s out in the open.

Osuntokun’s revelation that the national poll showed Nuhu Ribadu with a significantly higher rating (about 45 percent) compared to Nasir El-Rufai (around seven percent) is consistent with what I’ve heard.

Based on that result, Tinubu backed Ribadu’s candidacy within the ACN. It also marked the beginning of Ribadu’s relationship with Tinubu.

El-Rufai’s exaggerated self-construal of his superiority over Ribadu was badly shattered, and he couldn’t take it. But I am not surprised by the outcome of the poll. It occurred at the height of Ribadu’s popularity in the country.

As I pointed out in a past column, my own paternal uncle, a UK-educated health professional, named his son Ribadu, not Nuhu, in honor of Nuhu Ribadu’s exploits at the EFCC. When I told him Ribadu is the name of a town in Adamawa State where Nuhu hails from, he was surprised. We still laugh over it.

El-Rufai’s ego was badly bruised because he had a hard time accepting that Ribadu, who didn’t think of himself as presidential material in 2007 and who instead thought El-Rufai should succeed Obasanjo, should be considered worthier of being president in 2011 by more Nigerians. As a result, the previously impregnable walls of friendship between them began to collapse irretrievably.

By 2015, El-Rufai rode on the coattails of Muhammadu Buhari to become governor of Kaduna State. According to people familiar with the dynamics of their relationship, El-Rufai studiously used his influence in the Buhari government to exclude Ribadu.

But by 2023, when Tinubu became president, Ribadu got his groove back. El-Rufai believes that the rejection of his ministerial nomination by the Senate on “security” grounds was inspired by Ribadu, who was retaliating for El-Rufai’s own underhanded exclusion of Ribadu during the Buhari presidency.

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Most regular people with no hangups would take it in their stride and wait for their “time.” But El-Rufai isn’t a “regular” person. He must be in on the action or everything must be scattered. So, he set out to do at least three things to get at Ribadu: 1. Show that Ribadu is dangerous and vindictive. 2. Show that he is incompetent. 3. Show that he is a craven fellow who can’t return, much less match, El-Rufai’s lethal rhetorical salvos.

These points overlap. If you are vindictive but are afraid of being seen as such, then you’re a coward. If you’re a coward and you control the security of the country, then you’re also incompetent. If you don’t respond to my personal attacks, it’s because you fear that I’ll reveal more damaging information and also lack the rhetorical and intellectual firepower to fight back, which harkens back to your fitness for the job of protecting the country.

Of course, El-Rufai knows that Ribadu is anything but a coward. In The Accidental Public Servant, El-Rufai recounts an incident from their undergraduate days at Ahmadu Bello University to illustrate what he presents as Ribadu’s boldness.

According to El-Rufai, Ribadu was confronted by an armed robber who pointed a gun at him. Instead of complying or retreating, Ribadu slapped the robber and challenged him.

El-Rufai told the anecdote as an example of Ribadu’s fearlessness and impulsive self-confidence during their student years and to sketch Ribadu’s temperament early on, suggesting that Ribadu’s later public persona as an anti-corruption crusader was consistent with traits visible even as an undergraduate.

In his only public reaction to El-Rufai’s constant personal attacks, Ribadu was conciliatory and even-tempered. “Despite the incessant baiting and attacks, I have never spoken ill of Nasir on record anywhere,” he wrote on February 24, 2025. “This is out of respect for our past association and our respective families. I will not start today.”

El-Rufai’s supporters read the statement, whose grace should have disarmed anyone, as evidence of cowardice. But had he attacked El-Rufai back in the fashion that El-Rufai savaged him, the public, which tends to side with the underdog (in this case anyone outside the orbit of the reigning government), would see El-Rufai as the victim and Ribadu as the villain.

This gave El-Rufai the illusion that he was winning the war and led him to dig in even deeper with that self-sabotaging Arise News interview, which overstepped the bounds of reasonableness and landed him in the hot water he is in now.

In spite of people’s natural predilection to sympathize with the underdog, outside of partisan political circles, El-Rufai’s troubles aren’t eliciting the profusion of support, outrage and empathy anyone else would have received. And it’s because he is being given a taste of his own medicine.

For those who want to sympathize with him, which is perfectly legitimate, I leave you with these words he uttered on January 22, 2012, at the Yar’Adua Center, Abuja, at a presentation at the T2T (Transformed To Transform) Nigeria Conference for Youth Corps Members:

“We have no politics of public interest or public good. And you know the politicians proudly tell you that politics is about interest. If they don’t get what they want, they’re ready to collapse the system.

“Every military coup in Nigeria’s history was engineered by civilians. They have lost elections, right or wrongly. If a politician contests for a position and he doesn’t get it, he’ll not support a party member that got the nomination.

“He would rather move to the opposition and ensure that the person that defeated him fair and square loses the election. So, we have a political culture where the primacy of personal interest trumps everything else.

“Now, what is the difference between human beings and animals? So it is with most Nigerian politicians: everyone for himself, no one for the country, no one even for the party. It’s an interesting political culture. And it’s ingrained. Politicians believe that is the way, that is politics, and to change it will take quite an effort. This is a problem.”

History and psychoanalysis of El-Rufai’s troubles with Ribadu – Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Related Topics:El Rufai psychoanalysis Ribadu

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Tinubu must address rising mass massacres now, By Farooq Kperogi

Opinion

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

2 weeks ago

April 4, 2026

Trends Admin

Farooq Kperogi

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

You may resent Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but you can’t deny that he has earned his place in Nigerian political history as one of the, if not the, most consequential opposition figures in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. He constructed a carefully planned political and rhetorical template to oppose central governments effectively and then converted the symbolic capital he gained into a path to the presidency.

By May 29, Tinubu will mark his third year as president. He is beset by the same constraints his predecessors faced and is reacting to opponents almost exactly as they did, perhaps with even more viciousness and guile.

But the opposition seems to be in the wilderness. It is flustered, incoherent, spineless, and in strategic disarray. It would do well to study how an opposition Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have confronted an increasingly tyrannical and devious President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

If Bola Ahmed Tinubu were in opposition today, watching a president preside over widening and deepening oceans of blood and rising insecurity, constrict the space for alternative parties, intensify economic hardship and offer only perfunctory condolence optics amid horrendous mass slaughters, he would launch a sustained, strategic, organized, merciless and unsparing regime of critical engagement using every available medium. We know this because we have a record of him doing precisely that.

My recollection of his key moves as an opposition politician aren’t intended to be exhaustive. They are merely representative.

In March 2013, for instance, in remarks widely reported at the time, Tinubu said that if President Goodluck Jonathan could not guarantee security, he should “honorably resign.” By November 2014, his tone had hardened. According to TheCable, Tinubu said that in any serious country Jonathan would have resigned over the scale of insecurity in the country.

In the same 2014, he accused Jonathan’s government of “failure, lack of capacity, vision and creativity” and of misleading Nigerians about the true state of security.

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That is the vocabulary Tinubu reaches for when he is not in power. He did not treat insecurity as a complicated policy arena deserving of cautious language. He treated it as evidence of unfitness for office.

An aggregation of all his statements about the insecurity that pervaded the country when Jonathan was in government (which has become worse on his watch) amounted to this: insecurity equals loss of legitimacy. That was one of his most potent rhetorical blitzkriegs against Jonathan, which traveled beyond the shores of Nigeria.

The same pattern holds for economic distress. On January 11, 2012, in an article published by PM News, Tinubu attacked Jonathan’s removal of fuel subsidy, dubbing it the “Jonathan tax.” He said the policy breached the social contract between the rulers and the ruled, described it as a punitive imposition on the poor and, crucially, urged Nigerians to resist it.

He wrote that citizens had a duty to “peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition.” That line matters. It shows that Tinubu, in opposition, does not merely diagnose hardship. He authorizes not just rhetorical dissent but physical rebellion against it.

Following his exhortation, there were disabling, convulsive and fatal nationwide protests and strikes. Tinubu aligned himself with that mood. He did not urge patience. He gave moral and political cover to resistance. Some even said he funded the protests, called “Occupy Nigeria,” in which at least 12 people died. It ultimately forced Jonathan to reverse the withdrawal of subsidies, which Tinubu is now implementing with more soullessness than Jonathan ever did.

He also does not leave resistance unorganized. On February 6, 2013, opposition parties merged into what became the All Progressives Congress. Tinubu was one of the principal architects of that coalition. The merger’s stated aim was to end corruption, insecurity and economic stagnation. It was a calculated attempt to convert grievance into power. Tinubu did not wait for electoral cycles to do their work. He engineered an alternative.

When he believed the Jonathan administration was using institutions against the opposition, he said so without equivocation. In January 2014, during the Rivers State political crisis, Tinubu described the disruption of opposition activity as “a frontal assault against democracy” and even a “coup against democracy.” In November 2014, after the chaos at the National Assembly, he again held Jonathan responsible. He saw pattern, not accident, and he said it plainly.

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He went further. In October 2014, when Jonathan sought legislative approval for a $1 billion loan to fight Boko Haram, Tinubu opposed it. He argued that the funds could be used for political purposes rather than security. In other words, he was willing to recast even security spending as partisan maneuvering. That instinct has not been erased by time.

Now bring this record forward.

On April 2, 2026, President Tinubu met victims of the Plateau killings at the airport rather than visiting affected communities, with the presidency citing time and logistical constraints. Strip away the explanations and look at it from the vantage point of opposition Tinubu. This is the sort of image he historically converts into a political weapon. He would not defend it. He would amplify it as proof of cold detachment and deadly incompetence.

In fact, the seemingly intractable and worsening sanguinary communal upheavals that are spreading all over the country and the rising mass abductions for ransom that seem to be unabating would have constituted more than sufficient grounds for opposition Tinubu to delegitimize the presidency of President Tinubu.

There is also the matter of political space. Tinubu’s own rise was made possible by the constellation of opposition forces. The 2013 merger was a deliberate construction of an alternative to an incumbent he portrayed as incompetent and anti-democratic. If he were outside power today and perceived any effort, real or imagined, to frustrate the emergence of rival parties, such as we are seeing with the ADC, he would not respond with restraint. His record from 2013 to 2015 shows a readiness to build countervailing structures and to accuse incumbents of undermining democracy.

In early 2013 when there were credible fears that INEC might block or frustrate the registration of the new opposition merger that became the APC, including the controversy over a rival party using the same acronym, Tinubu framed any attempt to deny registration as authoritarian sabotage of democracy by the president.

Tinubu’s stance as opposition was confrontational and absolutist. When he was outside power, he interpreted procedural or institutional resistance in maximalist terms as existential threats to democracy, not routine political or legal friction.

And he routinely blamed it on the sneaky wiles of the president, not the institutions that were responsible for the actions he railed against. Opposition Tinubu would have put the blame for INEC’s withdrawal of recognition of the David Mark-led leadership of the ADC squarely on President Tinubu’s desk and would have called it Tinubu’s fascist, cowardly, fear-inspired strangulation of a rival, oppositional political space.

What emerges from this is not a series of isolated reactions but a coherent oppositional method. Tinubu indicts insecurity as presidential failure, frames economic pain as betrayal, promotes and legitimizes physical public resistance, works to consolidate opposition power and heaps all blames for the misfortunes of the opposition on the president. He combined rhetoric with organization. He did not do half measures.

Tinubu in opposition would not recognize the defenses now offered on behalf of Tinubu in power. He would reject them, loudly and repeatedly, and he would mobilize against them.

Criticism of Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the grounds that his NADECO-era allies or Southwest loyalists no longer protest policies they had consistently condemned misses a basic truth about power. People rarely mobilize against themselves, their benefactors or the networks that sustain them. Expecting otherwise is naïve.

The more useful lesson is not to lament their silence but to study Tinubu’s own playbook when he stood outside power. He exemplified disciplined opposition, coalition building, strategic messaging and relentless pursuit of institutional leverage. Those outside the orbit of power should stop waiting for insiders to revolt and instead organize to displace them. Power is not donated; it is taken. Tinubu has proved that.

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Opinion

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Published

2 weeks ago

April 3, 2026

Trends Admin

Azu Ishiekwene

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Azu Ishiekwene

In many parts of the country, the rains poured down earlier in the week, bringing much physical and psychological relief from the searing heat.

The absence of electricity from public supply channels made it worse. Average daytime temperatures throughout March ranged from 33 degrees to 38 degrees centigrade in Lagos and Abuja, respectively.

Nigeria’s public electricity grid must rank among the most intractable problems any developing country could face. There is hardly anything more constant than the announcement of grid collapse, which leaves businesses and homes seeking alternatives and incurring unplanned expenses while paying for electricity not supplied.

What Candidate Tinubu promised

During his 2023 campaign, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that if he didn’t fix the problem, he shouldn’t be voted in for a second term. He must be regretting that statement now. Since the beginning of his administration in May 2023, there have been multiple grid collapses, with the highest number recorded in 2024 at 12. Even when incidents were fewer, sporadic outages have continued. The failure, on face value, is attributed to a mix of technical, structural and administrative weaknesses in the system. But there is more to it in the sense in which it is said: “The more you see, the less you understand.”

So unreliable is the public electricity supply that the Presidential villa appropriated N10 billion in 2025, and an additional N7 billion in 2026 for the installation of a solar mini grid that will effectively disconnect Nigeria’s seat of power from the national grid, bedevilled by ageing transmission lines which collapse repeatedly from sabotage, poor maintenance, and frequency imbalances.

The joke is on us

Nigerians, ever ready to make a jest of their tragic maladies and long suffering, are beaten when it comes to power outages. They are shocked beyond humour. If the high-tension cables were not too high overhead, people in communities through which they run would not hesitate to hang their laundry on them – knowing from experience that the lines are just part of the landscape and are very likely to be without electricity.

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I have seen a video of a masquerade performing on a streetlight pole. Of course, the crowd applauded its invincibility; yet, both the crowd and the masquerade knew better. The lines had not been electrified for months and were unlikely to be for the spell of the circus.

Hope was rekindled at the beginning of the Tinubu administration when news filtered through that the currently embattled former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, had not only produced a blueprint, but was going to be given the assignment of sorting out Nigeria’s notorious electricity sector. I learnt reliably that, as part of his plan, El-Rufai was discussing a $10 billion investment agreement with the Saudis before he ran into rough weather.

The coming of Adebayo

That was how Adebayo Adelabu took the job – a job at which he has performed so disastrously, saying he failed would be an honour. But it’s not his fault – it’s the fault of the President who appointed him and the Senate that cleared him for a job that he was clearly incompetent to perform, either based on his record or based on any hope of redemption. He is brilliant, but the power sector is littered with the remains of brilliant people, among whom he is now a fossil.

His better years were when he worked as an auditor at PWC. He was also the Executive Director/CFO at First Bank, and later a deputy governor at the Central Bank. He may not have been directly responsible for the misfortunes of these institutions at the time, but he doesn’t exactly smell of roses.

In the normal course of things, his banking career should have been a yellow flag. Still, Nigeria being Nigeria, the quota system and political connections ensured that he defied gravity.

Then, in 2023, Tinubu offered him the position of Minister of Power, after his failed attempt to become governor of Oyo State on the platform of the Accord Party. That only worsened our misery. Adelabu will be best remembered for splitting electricity consumers into parallel payment bands that do not necessarily reflect improved services.

The thing is not that Adelabu failed at his job. It’s the lack of evidence that he tried. Mr Dan Kunle, an energy expert familiar with the history of that sector, told me that, “No one is saying a power minister should provide the resources to fix the sector from thin air. It’s for him to provide a solid framework that would create the right environment and attract sovereign intervention.”

Adelabu, like many of his predecessors, is running the power ministry in 2026 with the 1950 operational manual of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN). Yet, even then, when the country had a population of about 50 million, the British knew that electricity was an economic good. To provide meaningful and sustainable service, they had to prioritise not just the key administrative centres but also areas that could pay. That was why, for example, coal was shipped from Enugu to the Ijora Power Station in Lagos.

No roadmap

Adelabu has no roadmap, or if he has one for a population four times what it was under ECN, it’s a roadmap to nowhere. The same old problems persist: gas shortages, moribund plants, infrastructure deficits, massive debts, and frequent grid collapses, limiting supply to about 4,000 MW despite a capacity of 13,000 MW.

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While Adelabu may wring his hands alongside Nigerians when the lights trip off, the sector has been drowning under the yoke of N6 trillion in debt as of late 2025, fuelled by non-cost-reflective tariffs and unpaid bills to both generating and distribution companies. Some of the problems predate Adelabu, but his incompetence has worsened them.

Yet, he still has ambition. Not to redeem himself after his disastrous three years as minister, but to become the governor of Oyo State. Obviously, he believes the reward for poor performance is a higher office. He is so shameless, it means nothing to him that he holds the Olympic record for national grid collapse. It means nothing to him that Nigerian businesses are powered by Indian generators and their homes by Chinese solar panels.

Examples from Africa

Egypt, with a population of 110 million, has 100 percent universal electricity access, supported by a heavy reliance on gas (81 percent) and growing low-carbon sources like hydropower. This ensures a stable supply amid population pressures.

South Africa serves 85-90 percent of its 62 million residents but faces severe shortages. Frequent load shedding persists due to Eskom’s debt, ageing infrastructure, and maintenance issues, despite high per-capita generation.

Ghana reaches 88-89 percent coverage for 34 million people, with hydro and thermal power dominating. Urban areas enjoy near-99 percent access, while rural areas still have gaps and occasional outages.

Kenya hits 76 percent for 56 million, excelling in urban (97 percent) and geothermal power. Rural expansion lags, though targets aim for full access by 2030.

Compared to the countries above, only 57 percent of Nigerians are grid-connected, with outages occurring 85 percent of the time, and poor metering and corruption that sustain estimated billing and inefficiencies.

After watching Adelabu perform so poorly over the last two years on the national stage, I was hoping he would go away quietly, under the shadow of the darkness he has fostered. But since he insists that he won’t leave quietly – or appears determined to stay on – I’m considering a self-appointed mission to drag him to Oyo State to see how he will turn their night into day.

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.

Opinion

Super Bowl: Can Africa Spring Up anew?

Published

2 weeks ago

March 28, 2026

Trends Admin

Super Bowl: Can Africa Spring Up anew?

With a landmass of approximately 9.83 million km² and a population of 334–336 million as of 2025—making it the third-largest country in the world—the United States is massive. It is four times the size of Algeria, Africa’s largest country, and dwarfs Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation.

The United States is a titan among nations. Who knows—perhaps neologists will coin a new term if the U.S. eventually purchases or forcefully takes Greenland from Denmark, further surging its landmass and population. When this massive scale fuses with unparalleled infrastructure, world-class venues, and a vast market, the USA becomes an ideal host for international sporting events with strong returns on investment.

Between 1904 and 2025, the USA hosted one FIFA World Cup (with another to be co-hosted in 2026 with Mexico and Canada), four Summer Olympics, four Winter Olympics, and one FIBA Basketball World Cup. Unlike soccer, which is still finding its footing in the United States—even with Major League Soccer (MLS) having existed for 30 years—American football is the undisputed number-one sport. The Super Bowl—born from Lamar Hunt’s “light-bulb moment”—is the crown jewel. The Super Bowl has become what sociologists call a secular ritual, binding the social fabric of Americans together.

Beyond the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the Super Bowl has evolved into a global marketing masterpiece. From the famous 1984 Apple commercial introducing the Macintosh, which is studied in MBA classes worldwide, to the 1979 Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola commercial that showed genteel human warmth winning over fearsomeness, the intentionality of brands going head-to-head with rivals has been a recurring feature of every Super Bowl.

While the USA is always attractive for hosting events, the Super Bowl’s success pivots on intellection that results in ingenious marketing. For the recent Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026, two brands mirrored David Ben-Gurion’s principle of “taking the fight to the enemy.” Pepsi and Anthropic’s Claude entered with an offensive strategy: Claude’s AI ad—“Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”—was a calculated strike in the competitive AI market, while Pepsi’s polar bear blind test revived the sulphurous rivalry with Coca-Cola. Many companies use their ad slots to build brand identity and equity or announce arrival in the business world.

Where does Africa stand in this Super Bowl business and sports calculus? While developed nations are making groundbreaking launches with chutzpah and creativity from creative shops—all resulting in a participatory economy—Africa’s involvement is largely an on-the-field display of Négritude spirit and ravenous passion.

For Africa, the Super Bowl has become a “badge of honor” through representation. Mohammed Elewonibi, a Nigerian raised in Canada, was the first player of African origin to win a Super Bowl (XXVI, 1992, with the Washington Redskins). Since then, nearly 41 players of Nigerian origin or heritage have won—the most of any African country—including six who tasted victory with the recent Seattle Seahawks: Uchenna Nwosu, Nick Emmanwori, Boye Mafe, Jaxon Smith-Njigba (of Nigerian and Sierra Leonean roots), Jalen Milroe, and Olu Oluwatimi.

Yet, as impressive as African athletes are in making the continent proud, we have blatantly failed to translate that audience engagement into commercial windfalls like the Super Bowl on home soil. It is appalling that most of Africa’s sporting events—the Durban July Handicap, Senegalese wrestling (Laamb), or the Safari Rally—have not fully harnessed the intersection of sports and marketing. Even the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), despite its 3.45 billion cumulative viewers (far surpassing the Super Bowl’s ~125–127 million), lacks comparable marketing prestige. Why are there no global product launches during our matches? Why aren’t AI giants capitalizing on Africa’s tech startup boom?

Africa is being fed celery when it deserves the whole salad. This asymmetry stems from structural economic factors, but the genie is out of the bottle—we must be forward-looking. To turn African sporting events into “goldmines,” we must reinvent the industry, much as Cirque du Soleil did for the circus. Facing declining audiences, rising costs, and fierce competition, it lost its grip on the circus business. Cirque, however, escaped the dying circus business by reinventing it.

By viewing competition through a new lens, Africa can transform massive viewership into unparalleled economic advantage and value. Just as Cirque du Soleil created uncontested market space, African sports must adopt what W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne called a “Blue Ocean Strategy”—creating uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant. Much as we can not compete toe to toe with advanced economies , we should not follow them like zombies.

In their book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, the authors highlight how companies in “red oceans” fight for shrinking profits in crowded, defined markets. African sports events currently sit in those crowded red oceans. To elevate them, we need disruptive leaders willing to venture into untapped markets, create new demand, and unlock unlimited growth opportunities.

Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, in their book The Experience Economy, wrote about the need to transform commodities into experiences. As Africans, we have been able to move our sporting events from the commodity stage to the third stage—service delivery—but the experience stage is the North Star we should aspire to reach.

Our cultures, as varied as they are, define us. Despite dilution by Western civilization, our culture stands uneroded, like the mountains that litter our landscape and serve as a canopy to preserve our common heritage. This means our forefathers took culture into the realm of experience—something we are still grappling with in our sporting spectacles today. For us to make headway, our cultures—already bubbling with experience—must mix seamlessly with our sporting spectacles.

Now is the time to merge cultural events like the Eyo Festival, Argungu Festival, Gnaoua World Music Festival, Osun Osogbo Festival, Meskel Festival, and others with our sporting spectacles—that is the Blue Ocean Strategy. This can only be achieved through close collaboration between leaders in sports administration and marketing professionals selling experiences, and the time is now. As this is done, a line from David Diop’s poem Africa—“That is your Africa springing up anew”—would fill our lips.

The experience stage is the nirvana!

Toluwalope Shodunke

Can be reached via tolushodunke@yahoo.com