Bola Tinubu

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu (born 29 March 1952) is a Nigerian politician serving as the 16th and current president of Nigeria since 2023. He previously served as the governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 and senator for Lagos West in the Third Republic.

Tinubu spent his early life in southwestern Nigeria and later moved to the United States where he studied accounting at Chicago State University. He returned to Nigeria in the 1980s and was employed by Mobil Nigeria as an accountant, before entering politics as a Lagos West senatorial candidate in 1992 under the banner of the Social Democratic Party. After the military dictator Sani Abacha dissolved the Senate in 1993, Tinubu went into exile and became an activist campaigning for the return of democracy as a part of the National Democratic Coalition movement.

In the first post-transition Lagos State gubernatorial election, Tinubu won by a wide margin as a member of the Alliance for Democracy. Four years later, he won re-election to a second term. After leaving office in 2007, he played a key role in forming the All Progressives Congress in 2013. In 2023, he was elected president, defeating Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.

Under his leadership the government ended prior fuel subsidies, citing fiscal pressures, dissolved the governing boards of numerous federal agencies and state-owned enterprises, replaced the majority of military and paramilitary leadership, supported regional efforts to respond to the 2025 Benin coup d'état while engaging with security cooperation with the United States against the Islamic State and survived an alleged coup attempt.