Nigeria, April 14 -- The last time I wrote about this tragedy, which I now call Tinubu's Terrible Tribalism, I had asked: Is Tinubu settling scores? Because the president's naked embrace of Yorubacentricism after a lifetime of railing with his kinsmen against Hausa-Fulani hegemony could only have been inspired by vengeance.

But such undisguised and unbridled vengeance in his first term against the North, whose votes he must secure for re-election, would be foolhardiness. The focus on the North isn't to understate the treachery other zones feel but to emphasise the political irrationality and moral hypocrisy of Tinubu's tribalism. Tinubu might be arrogant and occasionally temperamental, but he is a consummate schemer. The idea that he can...