By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There is a name in Nigerian politics that does not need a microphone to fill a room. It enters before the man does. It sits at the table of his enemies and eats first. It walks through the corridors of Aso Rock at midnight and leaves the lights flickering. That name is Atiku Abubakar.
They have tried everything. Propaganda did not bury him. Time did not erase him. Betrayal did not break him. Defection did not diminish him. And now, as the nation counts down barely seven months to the presidential election of 16 January 2027, the men who swore he was finished are gathering in panicked huddles, asking each other the only question that matters: what do we do about Atiku?
You do not cure a headache by shouting at it. You cure it by removing its cause. And the cause of their headache is that the Nigerian people are waking up.
THE IROKO DOES NOT ARGUE WITH THE WIND
Let me tell you a story our fathers told us.
In the heart of the forest stood an ancient iroko. Every season, the wind arrived with new noise. It rattled the shrubs, flattened the grass, scattered the leaves of lesser trees, and screamed through the branches of the iroko itself. The shrubs trembled and called the wind master. But the iroko had seen a hundred winds. It bent where bending was wisdom, stood where standing was strength, and when the wind exhausted itself and crawled away, the iroko was still there, taller for the storm, its roots deeper for the shaking.
Atiku Abubakar is that iroko. The winds have names. Some blow from the APC. Some whistle treacherously from inside the carcass of the PDP. Some are hired breezes, paid per gust. They have howled since 1993. The tree still stands.
THE ARITHMETIC OF THEIR FEAR
Their fear is not sentimental. It is mathematical.
In 2023, even against the full machinery of incumbency-in-waiting, Atiku Abubakar polled six million, nine hundred and eighty four thousand, five hundred and twenty INEC-certified votes. The combined opposition vote that year stood at roughly fourteen million, five hundred and eighty two thousand, against the eight million, seven hundred and ninety four thousand that produced this government. The men in power did not win a majority of Nigeria. They won a division of Nigeria. That division is closing, and they know it.
Then came 28 May 2026 at the Transcorp Hilton, where one million, eight hundred and forty six thousand, three hundred and seventy ADC delegates and members handed Atiku the most emphatic primary mandate in the history of Nigerian opposition politics. Not a coronation in a hotel suite. A landslide in the open.
They said the coalition would collapse. It conducted the largest opposition primary ever held in this country. They said ADC was a mirage. The Supreme Court affirmed its leadership on 30 April 2026, unanimously. Mirages do not win at the Supreme Court.
THE RECORD THEY DARE NOT DEBATE
Ask them to debate the record and watch them change the subject.
Between 1999 and 2007, the administration in which Atiku Abubakar served as Vice President and chairman of the economic team took Nigeria’s economy from 58 billion dollars to 270 billion dollars. It paid off the Paris Club debt. It birthed the telecoms revolution that put a phone in your hand. It built the pension system. It licensed the banks that became continental giants.
Now place that beside the present. A naira in ruins. Fuel beyond the reach of the worker. Food inflation eating the salaries of those lucky enough to have salaries. A government that renamed hunger as sacrifice and called it Renewed Hope.
Hope is not a slogan you print on a billboard while the people print their grief in queues. Hope is a record. Atiku has one. They have an alibi.
THE JUDASES AND THE HIRED CHOIR
And what of the saboteurs? The men who eat at the table of opposition by day and carry the leftovers to Aso Rock by night?
Let them be warned in plain language. Nigerians are watching, and history keeps an unforgiving ledger. The Yoruba say the lizard that nods after falling from the iroko praises itself alone; nobody else is clapping. The defectors congratulating themselves on their thirty pieces should enjoy the applause of their own nodding heads. January of 2027 will do the rest.
As for the hired choir of commentators paid to chant that Atiku should retire, we thank them sincerely. Every sponsored insult is a free advertisement. Every coordinated attack is a confession of fear. You do not assemble an industry to demolish a man who poses no threat. Nobody hires demolition equipment for a building that is already rubble.
Their obsession is our evidence. You do not spend millions fighting a finished man. You spend millions fighting the man you know is winning.
NOT AGAINST ANYONE. FOR EVERYONE.
Understand this clearly. Atiku Abubakar is not running against Bola Tinubu. He is running for the graduate whose certificate has become a souvenir. For the mother who now measures rice in cups where she once bought bags. For the pensioner whose savings were devalued into pocket change by policies announced with champagne. For the young Nigerian standing in a visa queue, not because he hates his country, but because his country’s managers have given him nothing to stay for.
He is running for a nation that grew a 270 billion dollar economy once and is being told by smaller men that greatness was an accident.
THE TRUMPET IS ALREADY SOUNDING
So let them hold their crisis meetings. Let them draft their attack memos. Let them recruit new mouths for old lies. It changes nothing.
The presidential election holds on 16 January 2027. That is two hundred and twenty days from today. Two hundred and twenty days for the broken to organise, for the deceived to decide, and for the silent majority that outvoted this government once to finish what it started.
The man they mock by daylight and study by candlelight is coming. Not merely to contest, but to conquer. Not merely to win power, but to wield it as medicine for a wounded country.
They have a headache. Nigeria has a cure. His name is Atiku Abubakar. ADC is the party.
A new dawn awaits.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
10 June 2026
