Why would anyone come out and say that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s speech at yesterday’s All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council inauguration was pre-recorded?

Foreign and domestic journalists were there with live feeds, and this photo was taken at the event while the President was reading his speech. You can see the crowd in the background, including some press.

Even media outlets such as Arise Television, which have been critical of the President and his administration, covered the event and provided live updates from the venue.

Additionally, His Excellency, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, rose from his chair, walked to the Presidential podium bearing the Coat of Arms, followed by live cameras, and delivered his speech.

While speaking, the live cameras showed the President’s empty seat on the front row of the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, from which he had just gotten up to give his speech, and also panned to him at the podium.

While reading his speech, the cameras showed the President from angles that captured the Commander-in-Chief and the audience simultaneously.

The broadcast also captured banter the President shared with people in the audience, including Senator Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari, the Director General of the Presidential Campaign Council.

How, in the face of such overwhelming visual evidence, would someone even make such an accusation?

I would have expected opposition mouthpieces to have come up with an intellectual rebuttal of the President’s speech, which dwelt heavily on his record, which includes consistently delivering an above 4% GDP growth during his tenure, as well as fourteen uninterrupted cycles of trade surpluses, and making Nigeria the sixth-largest contributor to global GDP growth in 2025, and giving our country the most profitable stock market on Earth, bar none, per Bloomberg.

But if all the opposition can come up with in response to the brilliant and well-applauded speech of the President is that it was not delivered live and was rather prerecorded, then Nigerians and the international community should realise that there is an urgent need to inject a dose of common sense into the current Nigerian opposition, because this is sad. Very sad!