Buhari-era minister Solomon Dalung wants you to know he's a revolutionary now

Ever since he failed to make President Muhammadu Buhari's second term cabinet, after serving as the Minister of Youth and Sports between 2015 and 2019, Solomon Dalung has found a new lease of life as an outspoken government critic.

A couple of years after he lost his ministerial position, he criticised the administration of his former boss for not doing enough to curb insecurity sweeping the country. "Nigeria is bleeding to coma," he declared in a Facebook post on December 13, 2021.

His anti-government posture has since kicked up a notch with the administration of President Bola Tinubu which took over from the Buhari administration in May 2023. The former minister has turned his social media accounts into cannons to fire missiles at the leadership of the former Lagos State governor.

In a July 9, 2024 post on X, formerly Twitter, Dalung said he discovered Tinubu would be "another tragedy" when he met him in 2022, prompting him to stop working for his campaign team.

"I am not an opponent of the Tinubu regime but an enemy of injustice, nepotism, corruption propaganda and impunity... his leadership credentials are tinted with absurdities, while his governance style thrives on state capture," he posted.

Solomon Dalung is pointing fingers a lot these days [Facebook/Solomon Dalung]

In another X post the previous day, the trained lawyer slammed the current administration for failing to tackle insecurity and declared, "Nigeria is under rogue regime."

The 59-year-old has also called the president insincere numerous times. In a June 17 X post, he accused the 72-year-old of mocking Nigerians by asking them to sacrifice for the country while his government remained wasteful, and insensitive to the suffering of the masses.

Like many of Tinubu's critics, Dalung has also called into question the electoral process that propelled him to Aso Rock. When the president took a worrying tumble at the Democracy Day ceremony in Abuja on June 12, the former minister published a post titled THE GODS ARE ANGRY.

He wrote, "Can only 8 million people elect a government for over 230 million people? It's beyond common logic that an incredible electoral process can be defined as democratic even when the flaws are stubbornly glaring."

"There's nothing indicating that Nigerians should expect anything from this clueless administration. At best, more people will die before 2027, while celebrations of propaganda, hypocrisy, impunity, and falsehood continue as distortion of leadership catastrophe," he added.

What's Dalung's endgame?

Solomon Dalung wants Nigerians to demand good governance [Facebook/Solomon Dalung Foundation]

Dalung's campaign is not without a goal: he wants Nigerians to revolt. He's posted about such a move numerous times, calling on Nigerians to protest against incompetent governance.

He's gone to dramatic lengths to press his demand, recently appearing in multiple videos in which he dressed in animal skin clothing, reacting to revolutionary songs in the background.

In a July 7 post, he appeared in a video, standing attentively while he played Twokay2Wo and Falo Da Vulcan's Youth Song (16 June 1976), a 2021 song referencing the bloody Soweto uprisings against South Africa's apartheid government.

Previously the same day, he posted a similar video, this time his left arm stretched in front of him in a signature protest pose while Idris Abdulkareem's Jaga Jaga song played in the background.

"An oppressor cannot take his knee off the neck of the poor without resistance. We all have the right to better lives. End bad governance now in Nigeria," he captioned the post.

He posted three other similar videos on July 7. In two of them, he played Hugh Masekela's popular revolutionary song, Sechaba, composed for the popular 1992 musical drama film Sarafina! For the other video, he played Khanyo Maphumulo's Freedom Is Coming, also from Sarafina!

"Arise oppressed people and end bad governance in Nigeria," he captioned one of them.

Solomon Dalung hasn't been a fan of the government since he left the scene unceremoniously in 2019

There's nothing new happening here. Many Nigerian politicians have in the past found their critical all-knowing voice after leaving office where they could have made more of an impact. But Dalung swears he's different.

The former lecturer is very quick to point out that, as a University of Jos student, he was arrested, brutalised and detained in the same prison as former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in 1995.

"I am not a novice to the struggle, it has been my life," he boasted in the July 9 post.

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