By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
On Thursday evening a ruling party with 31 governors, a pliant National Assembly and every lever of federal power broke into song. It wasn’t celebrating a new refinery, a safer highway or a cheaper bag of rice. It was celebrating a court judgment in a case it swears it has nothing to do with, between members of a party it swears it does not fear.
If you are not afraid of a man, you do not dance when someone trips him. The APC is dancing because it has been waiting for this judgment the way a drowning man waits for a rope.
A party that is winning does not celebrate the courtroom. It celebrates the crowd.
THE STRANGE JOY OF A NEUTRAL PARTY
The APC spokesman, Felix Morka, called our leaders “pirate leaders” and told us to go and sort out our internal mess. In the same breath his party said the judgment proves the judiciary is independent.
So the bench is independent when it pleases Abuja and suspect when it does not. The APC can’t feed the nation, so it has appointed itself marriage counsellor to the opposition.
This is not about Atiku Abubakar or David Mark. It is about a government so frightened of the ballot box that it would rather see the main opposition candidate argued off the ballot than face him in the field.
THE TIMING THAT TELLS ON ITSELF
On 4 November 2026 Sokoto came out for Atiku in numbers that sent tremors through the Villa. Barely 24 hours later Justice Peter Lifu delivered his judgment at the Federal High Court, Abuja.
Coincidence is a generous word. We believe this judgment was long written. The people who filled the roads of Sokoto will draw their own conclusion, and so will Kebbi, where our candidate carried the campaign straight after, unshaken.
They wrote the judgment in Abuja. The people wrote the verdict in Sokoto.
THE LIFESPAN OF A CASE
Let the APC drummers come closer and hear the arithmetic of the law.
This suit was filed in 2025. Its interlocutory leg went all the way to the Supreme Court, which sent it back to the trial court. More than a year after filing, it has produced one judgment at the lowest rung of the ladder.
On 6 November 2026 our party filed its appeal and asked for a stay of execution. The road now runs through the Court of Appeal and, if need be, the Supreme Court, each with its own records, briefs and hearings.
There is a deeper problem for the drummers. On 2 July 2026, Justice Musa Liman of the same court delivered a judgment in a related suit that still stands. A court of coordinate jurisdiction cannot sit on appeal over its sister court. We believe a judgment that walks past a subsisting decision of an equal court cannot stand.
Meanwhile INEC says it has not even received the Certified True Copy of the judgment and has taken no decision. It dismissed reports that the names of Atiku and Amaechi had been pulled from its candidates’ portal, and as of Friday both names were still there.
So what exactly is the APC celebrating? A judgment its own umpire has not received, on a case already on appeal, against a candidate whose name still stands on the portal.
The case has a long road ahead. The election has 71 days. Do the arithmetic.
16 JANUARY IS THE ONLY JUDGMENT THAT COUNTS
There is one court whose verdict no stay can suspend and no appeal can reverse. It sits in every polling unit in this country, and its judges are the Nigerian people.
That court convenes on 16 January 2027. Its judges know the price of food, transport fares and school fees. They have buried relatives killed on roads the government could not secure. They need no lawyer to explain their suffering.
On that day the suffering Nigerian people will deliver judgment, and Atiku Abubakar will defeat Bola Tinubu. Our candidate put it plainly: the APC cannot use the courts to escape the judgment of Nigerians. A government can postpone a hearing. It cannot postpone the anger of a hungry nation.
Parties that are confident campaign. Parties that are afraid litigate.
A WARNING TO THOSE WHO MAY PLOT
If anyone in this government is nursing a plot to subvert the will of the people on 16 January 2027 and refuse to hand over to Atiku Abubakar when Nigerians have chosen him, they should study 1993.
When the will of the people was cancelled on 12 June 1993, the people did not forget, and the men who cancelled it did not prosper. Atiku Abubakar stood in that struggle. He knows the cost of defending a mandate, and so do the Nigerian people.
The suffering masses will not accept a stolen mandate a second time. Their resistance will be peaceful, lawful and impossible to ignore. They will guard their votes from the count to the collation centre and stand in their millions behind the mandate they have given. No government survives the united, peaceful refusal of its own people.
You can annul a result. You cannot annul a people.
THE EAGLE’S EYE IS ON ABUJA
Let nobody in Abuja think this is happening in the dark. The international community is watching. It watched this judgment arrive 24 hours after Sokoto, and its observer missions are already mapping this election.
Washington has imposed visa restrictions on Nigerians who undermined our elections before. Anyone who decides to thwart the mandate of 16 January will answer to Nigerians first and to the international community after. Those consequences follow a man to every airport, bank and capital he hoped to visit. Tinubu should know that the eyes fixed on this judgment will be fixed on him on 16 January and every day after.
TO EVERY MEMBER OF THE ADC
To every ward chairman, agent, woman leader, youth leader and member of our party: do not be distracted.
That is exactly what they want: for you to sit at home, tell yourself it is over, and spend 71 days arguing about a judgment instead of winning an election. Refuse them.
Troop out. Go back to your wards this weekend. Check every member’s PVC. Hold the street meetings, knock on the doors, train the agents. Fill every polling unit with people who will stay to watch their votes counted.
Our candidate is campaigning, our appeal is filed and our name stands on the portal. The lawyers will handle the courtroom. Your assignment is the polling unit.
Let the APC dance to its drums. Our dance comes on 16 January, when the count is done and the people have spoken.
Tinubu has lost this election. He lost it in the markets, on the farms and in the homes of the suffering Nigerian people. Thursday’s judgment changes nothing. It only shows how desperately he knows it.
71 days to go.
#AtikuIsOnTheBallot #ADC2027 #Atiku2027 #TinubuHasLost #16January2027
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
7 November 2026
