Booing and Victimising the President, By Festus Adedayo

FOR those arraigned against the Nigerian president’s second-term ambition, his boo on Friday in Abuja was symptomatic. They base this on cause and effect, which the Yoruba break down into an idiomatic saying of “an offence does not happen without a cause.” In its raw rendering, it is, “Èsé kìí dédé ṣé.” The phrase is a traditional way of situating conflicts, wrongdoing, or unusual event in an underlying foundation. The president was booed, and his convoy was reportedly pelted by some aggrieved Nigerians at the Shehu Shagari Central Mosque shortly after he observed the Juma’at prayers. They were reported to have chanted “Ba ma yi, ba ma so” – “We are not supporting you” – as the president’s convoy departed.

 On October 23, 2026, a convoy motorcade associated with the president’s campaign convoy was also said to have met a hostile group of protesters in Kaduna who pelted it with loud boos. A hostile chants of “Ba mayi” also followed from crowds and individuals along the streets of the state capital. These were taken to signify open disapproval and symptomatic of the January presidential contest.

 Popular culture lends support to those who hold this thought. Late Yoruba iconic thespian, veteran writer and actor, Adebayo Faleti, portrayed this while acting the character called Agbaakin in the political film, Saworoide. Written by Akinwumi Isola and directed by Tunde Kelani, Faleti famously chanted this poetic motif in a song which he meant to serve as warning to political leaders and the Jogbo community about a looming crisis that would come due to unspoken truths. In the mould of connecting cause and effect, Faleti sang: “Òrò l›ẹyẹ ń gbó, ẹyẹ ò dédé bà lórùlé o.” Translated, it means that a bird does not perch on the rooftop by happenstance; it must have heard a suspicious conversation or has some words to communicate in its chirp. Broken into its simple chewable form, when unusual events or strange occurrences happen, Yoruba seldom see them as accidental but that they possess a beneath-the-surface import.

So, was the booing of the president at the Abuja mosque bothersome? Not really. Yes, publicly booing a sitting head of a country easily comes as an immediate, unfiltered form of civic expression, but sometimes, in a country like Nigeria where events are politically remote-controlled, this could be misleading. Thus, placing this moment into a broader historical and political context provides a richer framework.

Though a vocal crowd may clearly reflect intense localized anger which are often products of immediate local grievances like cost-of-living crises or hunger and insecurity, we must be careful in coming to judgment as our conclusion must be placed side by side the poli-tricks of booing, as well as the interrogation of whether the heckling crowd represents the broader electorate, a concentrated pocket of opposition or rented dissenters. However, those in government must worry when, like in the Goodluck Jonathan example that I will offer presently,  public booing morphs from being isolated incidents into a recurring phenomenon. When that critical juncture is arrived at, they carry with them a significant weight of consequences both for the leader/leaders being booed and the state under their hold.

When spontaneous public jeers become a culture against a leader, they should really bother. This is because of its purport of erosion of their moral authority. Legitimacy and voluntary compliance serve as the tripod upon which governing relies. When, rather than them, a leadership faces frequent public humiliation, it weakens their political capital, public cynicism and makes it almost impossible for them to rally citizens around economic reform policies or calls for national sacrifices.

Indeed, spontaneous jeers have far more impacts and implications that can neither be dismissed with the wave of a hand nor accepted as representative of the voices of the majority. Of a truth, they do not carry the weight of opinion polls nor admiration of genuinely put together political rallies. But when they come as this, they must be placed under the microscope. It then means that, dismissing the jeers of the Shehu Shagari Central Mosque crowd as immaterial, especially in a non-partisan ecosystem like a place of worship as this, may not be absolutely wise. Nor must it be taken as absolute. On the surface, it is the people’s way of showing their resentment. For a political leader, jeers as this also has the grace of showing them what they weigh in the sight of their people, stripping them of insulation that office, power and majesty confer, but allowing them to directly confront public sentiment.

In its historical context, Jacob Zuma, as president of South Africa, was subjected to such public jeer. At the FNB Stadium, where a Nelson Mandela Memorial Service took place in 2013, while attention of global leaders and that of 90,000 spectators were riveted at him, Zuma received spontaneous loud jeers each time his face appeared on the big screen or when he mounted the podium. It was the submission of analysts at the time that this booing disgrace reflected a stark contrast it posed between him and Nelson Mandela the people had come to celebrate. Mandela represented a people-centred legacy as against Zuma’s of mountainous corruption scandals, poor service delivery and moral deficit.

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe also got his in 2017. It was at the National Sports Stadium in Harare. The event was the Presidential Inauguration of Emmerson Mnangagwa/ZANU-PF Congress. At this time, Zimbabwe faced succession battles and dire economic straits under Mugabe as hyperinflation took over the economy. Even before his ouster, Mugabe periodically received huge dosage of such public jeers, especially in his final months. Unlike decades of fear-induced silence they hitherto faced under him, the people boldly came out of their shells to boo him, in defiance of his iron grips.

Here in Nigeria in 2015, President Jonathan got a dosage of this public anger. By this time, the 2015 general elections was just months away. His convoy was booed and pelted with stones and sachets of water by crowds who chanted «Sai Buhari” at campaign rallies in Northern states of Bauchi and Katsina. Watchers of the political barometer of the time said this signaled a massive loss of northern support for Jonathan as a result of his government’s inability to tame the monsters of insecurity and economic frustration.

Muhammadu Buhari himself was to receive his own syringe injection of boos in 2020. It was when he travelled to Maiduguri, Borno State, to pay condolence to the people over a deadly Boko Haram attack in Auno. Residents intentionally lined the streets and booed his motorcade as they chanted same “Ba ma yi” in anger and frustration over persistent insecurity in the region. It showed that a government which once received kudos could be decorated with jeers by same people.

 So also did William Ruto of Kenya, in events that began in June 2024, which continued through late 2024 and into 2025, where he faced the anger of the people. This took place in churches and public events after the Gen-Z anti-Finance Bill protests that smoked out Kenyan leadership. Politicians allied to Ruto also received repeated booing at public gatherings and church functions. It led the leaders to recalibrate and scale back their public appearances, for the fear of being publicly molested.

Outside Africa, many leaders of the world got similar watershed moments of public jeers. Richard Nixon of America got his›. This happened in 1973 at his inaugural parade while the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal were still booming. In 1990, with the collapse of Soviet authority, Boris Yeltsin also got ample booing as he stepped off the podium during the May Day parade in Moscow. It was a turning point.

 In political science, public jeering of leaders could be said to function as a safety valve and a real-time barometer of legitimacy. The reasons are obvious. In a society as ours where cultural and religious norms dictate deep respect for elders and authority figures and a traditional reverence and awe for people in positions of authority which are carryovers from history and culture, public booing of leaders is a breakdown of deference. When citizens are thus bold enough to boo a president, the totem of authority, especially in the precinct of a sacred or solemn space as the Abuja mosque, it carries the huge weight of signals that may be representative of the burden of economic pain or political frustration. This is showcased in their boo which is temporarily allowed to override their traditional reverence for authority.

 Outside of irreverence, the good done by genuine public booing that is not a product of political enemies is huge. One is that, such boos represent the limit of what is called the echo chambers. Leaders are often enveloped by genuflecting aides and loyalists who filter out bad news from their ears and tell them that “all is correct” on the home front.

When you now have unscripted public booing that represents the genuine anger of the people, like the Friday, December 29, 2023 chants at the Idumota market and Lagos Island in Lagos where a crowd shouted “Ebi ńpa wá” – “we are hungry”, as the president’s gleaming, kilometers-long motorcade passed through the area,  it is deemed to be an opportunity to burst a leader’s echo chambers. 

Lining both sides of the busy market streets, rather than cheer their president as was the norm, as the motorcade passed through the area, en route to a Jumat service when he visited Lagos for the Christmas and New Year holidays, traders and residents’ boo was taken to reflect widespread public frustration over the administration of the country. Then and as of now, soaring food prices, high inflation and economic hardships inflicted on them due to government’s subsidy and monetary policies were seen to have necessitated the boo. Unfortunately, though the “Ebi ńpa wá” should ordinarily make government do a u-turn and make life liveable for the people, government chose not to shatter the bubble, nor did the boo force government’s acknowledgment of grassroots discontent.

 The positive of the Shehu Shagari Central Mosque Friday episode is however that it signals democratic vitality. Not only was it not on record that the booing crowd was resisted by the president’s convoy, the unruly crowd was tolerated by it. The paradox of the Abuja boo is that, the ability of a people to boo their president without immediate violent push-back from the state apparatus of violence is a hallmark of an open society.

 Take a contrary case that happened on October 25, 1969 in Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta, which is today referenced as the Kisumu Massacre.  Some months after the assassination of his popular minister, Tom Mboya, Kenyatta rode to Kisumu which was the stronghold of Odinga Odinga, the country’s opposition leader. He was there for the inauguration of a new hospital. Rather than cheering him, the crowd pelted Kenyatta with loud jeers. They heckled him embarrassingly, showering him with disrespectful insults as they said he was blameworthy for Mboya›s killing. 

 Right there at the podium, like a petty schoolboy, a visibly furious Kenyatta engaged in back and forth trading of expletives with the crowd. The height of it was his Presidential Guard and police’s lethal response of directly opening live fire on the unarmed crowd. In the process, dozens of persons, which some spectators put at over a hundred, comprising men, women and children, got dispatched to the hereafter. A remorseless Kenyatta then went ahead to ban the opposition Kenya People›s Union, adding to it a spurious detention of its leaders without trial.

 Junta leader, Moussa Dadis Camara of Guinea did same on September 28, 2009 at the Conakry Stadium. Camara had seized power in a 2008 coup and reneged on his promise not to run for president. At the Stade du 28 Septembre in Conakry, where mass rallies of tens of thousands citizens chanted against his iron fist rule,  Camara ordered his elite Presidential Guard to surround the stadium. They then opened fire on the crowd. Over 150 people were reported to have been killed and hundreds others wounded. The troop also allegedly engaged in widespread s3xual assaults. 

 Not long after this, this atrocity propelled global disdain for Camara, including an assassination attempt on him. Weeks after, specifically on December 3, 2009, his aide-de-camp, Aboubakar Sidiki «Toumba» Diakité, shot Camara in the head at a military camp in Conakry. He was subsequently evacuated to Morocco for emergency medical treatment. He never returned to power. His position was eventually taken by General Sékouba Konaté who became Guinea’s interim leader. This began a process of transition which culminated in the 2010 return of Guinea to civilian rule.

 Leaders like Nicolae Ceaușescu also did same during his Palace Square Speech in Romania, December 21, 1989, as well as Omar al-Bashir, during the bread and fuel protests in Sudan between 2018 and 2019. So also did Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. When such authoritarian regimes do this, they suppress dissent until it explodes violently in their faces.  In democracies, however, public booing should serve to leaders as an early-warning system that should make governments to course-correct noticeable ills before elections. 

 Rather than doing this, governments, especially in Third World countries, often interpret public embarrassment as a security threat or sponsored political thuggery. Thank God that the Shehu Shagari Central Mosque booing crowd was not push-backed. Otherwise, it would have meant a shrinking of civic space as booing is a legitimate weapon of dissent.  Increasing security cordons or arresting critics would deepen public resentment and ultimately validate the protesters’ grievances.

 History shows that sustained public booing is a bellwether, a predictor of future outcomes which often precedes electoral defeat. Goodluck Jonathan’s harangue by a northern booing community in 2015, as well as an internal party rebellion of Jacob Zuma›s boo in South Africa, leading to his eventual recall by the ANC, were bellwether indicators. 

 Though it is almost difficult to say that the booing of the Nigerian president who is currently seeking a second term in office in the next 62 days, like Jonathan›s, will ultimately translate into a clean ballot-box loss, it must also not be papered over. Yes, the president and his party superintend over a political system where incumbency confers huge advantages, where party structures are poignantly poised to ensure electoral victory and where regional dynamics would be trumped by street sentiments, let me recount the wisdom in a drummers and chanters› song in my youth days when we went to watch magicians, conjurers and illusionists. They sang, “Be careful, the world is not happy with you…” in their native language of “se pèlé-pèlé, inú ńb’áráyé o…” 

Will the president listen?