By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
BABACHIR DAVID LAWAL: THE CERTIFIABLY LOCO, MORALLY BANKRUPT, EFCC-PROCESSED, BUHARI-DISCARDED, IDP-FUND-DEVOURING GRASSCUTTER WHOSE UNHINGED RESIGNATION LETTER HAS CONFIRMED, BEYOND ALL PSYCHIATRIC DOUBT, THAT DELUSION, ONCE FULLY MATURED, IS IRREVERSIBLE
Babachir David Lawal has now done something that Nigerian political writing rarely affords its practitioners: he has handed us a document so thoroughly saturated with logical fallacy, factual inversion, moral bankruptcy, and spectacular self-contradiction that the work of dismantling it is less an act of political combat than an exercise in clinical pathology. We shall be very clinical. We shall be very thorough. And we shall be, as this document demands, entirely without mercy.
THE EFCC GUEST WHO CALLS OTHERS CORRUPT
Let us begin where every honest Nigerian must begin: with the extraordinary spectacle of Babachir David Lawal calling any man corrupt.
This is a man arraigned by the EFCC on a ten-count charge of fraud, conspiracy, and diversion of approximately N554 million in humanitarian funds meant for Boko Haram’s displaced victims in the North-East of Nigeria. This is a man who awarded public emergency contracts to his own company, Rholavision Engineering Limited, and to Global Vision Limited in which he had direct financial interests, while hundreds of thousands of Nigerians sat hungry and traumatised in IDP camps. When Senate investigators began looking at the books, he was found to have hurriedly removed his name from the directorship of his own company while remaining a signatory to its account. He was suspended by his own president in April 2017 and fired on October 30, 2017, based on the findings of a Vice Presidential panel that indicted him for misappropriating funds meant to alleviate a food crisis. His own principal, the man who appointed him to the highest civil service office in the land, found him too compromised to keep and threw him out in public disgrace.
This EFCC guest, this vendor of the misery of the displaced, opens his resignation letter by calling Alhaji Atiku Abubakar corrupt and old. Here is the plain, verifiable fact against which that accusation breaks like water on rock: Alhaji Atiku Abubakar does not have a single pending charge at the EFCC. Not at the ICPC. Not in any court of competent jurisdiction in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Across administrations actively hostile to him politically, across governments that would have rejoiced in his prosecution, not one charge has been made to stick. Not one arraignment has proceeded to conviction. Not one file has survived prosecutorial scrutiny.
The man Babachir calls corrupt walks entirely free of criminal jeopardy. The man calling him corrupt was a guest of the EFCC on ten counts. Let that contrast settle permanently in the consciousness of every Nigerian who reads this letter.
There is a name for what Babachir Lawal is doing. It is called projection. It is the psychological mechanism by which a man who cannot bear the weight of his own crimes redirects the accusation outward, toward the nearest available target, with the desperate hope that the noise of the accusation will drown out the documented evidence of his own guilt. It does not work. It has never worked. And in the age of searchable court records, Senate committee reports, and EFCC charge sheets, it is a strategy so transparently futile that only a man thoroughly consumed by delusion would attempt it.
THE CHRISTIAN FROM ADAMAWA WHO PREACHES ABOUT FULANI CONSPIRACIES
Before Babachir Lawal is permitted to deploy the word Fulani one more time in any political document bearing his name, Nigeria must take full stock of exactly who is speaking. Babachir David Lawal is a Christian. He is from Adamawa State. He is not Fulani. He is not Muslim. He has no standing whatsoever to speak on behalf of a religious or ethnic constituency he does not belong to and has never been asked to represent. When he screams irredentist Fulani and religious hegemonists, he is not speaking from the position of a victim. He is speaking from the position of a bitter, defeated political operative deploying ethnic and religious language as a weapon of personal vengeance. That he comes from the same Adamawa State as the man he is attacking makes his choice of language not merely hypocritical but breathtakingly personal in its malice.
This same Christian man from Adamawa spent two full years as Secretary to the Government of the Federation of the most ethnically and religiously lopsided federal administration in modern Nigerian history. The Buhari government appointed Northerners and Muslims to virtually every key position in Nigeria’s security architecture and administrative leadership, to a degree that generated sustained national outrage from civil society, lawyers, academics, and governors alike. Babachir Lawal said nothing. He did nothing. He collected his salary, attended his meetings, and faithfully enabled that administration until its principal found his own conduct too scandalous to tolerate and threw him out.
A Christian from Adamawa who served Fulani Muslim hegemony in practice for two uninterrupted years now attacks a man for Fulani Muslim hegemony in theory. The hypocrisy is not merely stunning. It is a form of political comedy too dark to laugh at.
The record of the Obasanjo-Atiku administration further buries his accusation. The economists, technocrats, administrators, and reform architects who executed the most consequential economic transformation Nigeria has seen in the post-military era were overwhelmingly not Fulani, not Muslim, and not drawn primarily from the North. They were Nigerians of every background, recruited on the basis of competence and capacity, because Atiku Abubakar has always understood that a nation as complex and talented as Nigeria can only be governed effectively by drawing from the full breadth of its human capital. That documented, verifiable record of diverse national service is the sharpest possible answer to the Fulani hegemonist slander Babachir has deployed.
THE SERVANT OF A BLOOD-THREATENER LECTURES NIGERIA ON DEMOCRATIC CONDUCT
Let us talk about what Babachir Lawal was entirely comfortable with while serving as the most senior civil servant in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Under the administration he proudly headed as its SGF, post-election violence following the 2011 presidential election claimed over 800 Nigerian lives and displaced more than 65,000 persons across Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara. Ten NYSC corps members were among those who perished. Young Nigerians who went to serve their country at polling stations and never came home.
The principal Babachir served had issued a public warning that if what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood. That blood rhetoric was not hidden. It was publicly documented. It generated national and international condemnation. And Babachir Lawal, as SGF, said nothing. Issued no statement. Registered no protest. He was comfortable, serene, and fully present, drawing his salary and performing his duties without a single public word of dissociation from statements that had preceded the deaths of eight hundred Nigerians.
This is the man who today calls Alhaji Atiku Abubakar a Kachalla, a bandit chief, a warlord. The man who was comfortable serving an administration whose post-election climate produced nearly a thousand Nigerian deaths is calling the man who has never threatened a single life a bandit. The projection is so complete and so without self-awareness that it constitutes a kind of political art form in reverse.
THE CHILDREN OF A GREAT MAN AND THE IGNORANCE THAT ATTACKS THEM
Babachir Lawal mocks Alhaji Atiku Abubakar for having approximately twenty-five children and multiple wives, threatening Nigeria with the prospect of 25 Seyi Tinubus. We ask this question directly and demand a direct answer: since when, in the history of this republic, has the number of a man’s children become a red flag against his desire to render leadership to his country?
MKO Abiola fathered approximately twenty-four children by multiple wives. On June 12, 1993, in the freest, fairest, and most geographically inclusive presidential election in Nigerian history, Nigerians voted for him en masse across every ethnic group, every religion, and every geopolitical zone. They did not count his children and run away. They counted his ideas and ran towards him. Nigeria is still paying the price for the annulment of that mandate. The size of a man’s family was never and has never been the measure of his fitness to lead.
President Obasanjo himself fathered many children. Nigeria elected him twice. And in those eight years of Atiku serving as Vice President, how many Seyi Tinubus did we have? How many of Atiku’s children operated shadow governments, collected contracts, summoned ministers, or attended state functions as de facto power brokers? The answer is none. Atiku Abubakar in eight years of the second highest office in the land kept his private life private and his public responsibilities public. The archives of 1999 to 2007 do not lie.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is furthermore the only surviving son of his parents. His siblings were taken from this world before him. He is a man who grew up knowing the acute, personal grief of a family thinned by mortality. For a man of his faith, his culture, and his deeply personal history, the decision to build a large and thriving family is a deeply human response to mortality, constitutionally protected by the laws of Nigeria, and fully consistent with every tenet of the Islamic faith he practises. There is no section, no subsection, and no clause in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that disqualifies a man from the presidency on the basis of the number of his children. Babachir knows this. He simply chose spite over sense.
THE FULANI WHO RIGGED THE SOUTH WEST, THE SOUTH SOUTH, AND THE SOUTH EAST
Babachir insists Fulani operatives rigged the ADC primary for Atiku. We ask with the full weight of verified figures sourced from The Nation newspaper: which Fulani operatives rigged the South West, the South South, and the South East for Atiku Abubakar?
In the South West, Atiku polled 37,783 in Lagos, 25,634 in Ogun, 23,011 in Oyo, 18,395 in Ekiti, 18,287 in Ondo, and 12,321 in Osun, for a South West total of 135,431 votes. Amaechi, the Rivers State-born candidate who by every tribal calculation should have dominated Southern voting, managed only 26,786. Hayatu-Deen, whom Babachir was coordinating, managed 8,861. Combined, both opponents totalled 35,647 against Atiku’s 135,431.
Atiku beat both rivals combined in the South West by nearly four to one. Which Fulani political operatives descended from the North to rig all thirty local government areas of Osun for Atiku? Which Fulani political operatives manufactured this four-to-one margin over a South-South candidate in the heart of Yoruba land? Let Babachir identify them by name and by state.
In the South East, Atiku polled 58,566 in Anambra, 52,222 in Imo, 33,879 in Enugu, 25,153 in Abia, and 1,210 in Ebonyi, for a South East total of 171,030 votes. Amaechi, an Igbo man from the South-South who by ancestral logic ought to have commanded South East sympathy, managed 64,260. Hayatu-Deen managed 16,755. Combined they totalled 81,015 against Atiku’s 171,030.
Atiku beat both opponents combined in the South East by exactly two to one. Which Fulani agents organised Igbo ADC members across Anambra, Imo, Enugu, and Abia to vote for a Fulani Muslim at double the rate they voted for both a South-South man and a Northern economist combined? Let Babachir name the Fulani masterminds of Onitsha and the Fulani riggers of Owerri and Enugu city. He cannot. Because they do not exist.
In the South South, Atiku polled 63,407. Amaechi’s 197,868 South South total was built almost entirely on 115,650 from Rivers and 21,404 from Bayelsa, his personal political fortresses. Strip those two home states and his remaining South South total collapses to 60,814. Outside his home territory, Atiku was competitive or superior in every South South state. That is not Fulani conspiracy. That is home-state loyalty operating exactly as it always does in Nigerian politics.
The grand southern reckoning: Atiku polled 369,868 votes across all three Southern zones. Amaechi and Hayatu-Deen combined polled 325,142. Atiku still beats both opponents combined across the entire South by 44,726 votes. Nearly 370,000 Southern Nigerians, Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Efik, Urhobo, Ibibio, walked to their polling units and voted freely for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. They are not Fulani. They were not coerced. They made a sovereign democratic choice. The arithmetic has executed Babachir’s conspiracy narrative with the clinical finality of a firing squad.
THE SELF-DEFEATING ENDORSEMENT OF TINUBU AND THE STUDENT WHO SHAMED THE TEACHER
Here is the sentence that will define Babachir Lawal’s political obituary: I believe Tinubu might, comparatively speaking, end up a better Nigerian president than Kachalla Atiku could ever be. A man who claims to have left the ADC on grounds of conscience, in the very same letter, endorses the man he claims to be fighting. He has told Nigeria plainly that he would rather see Tinubu in Aso Rock than watch Atiku enter it. A Tinubu under whom the naira collapsed to historically unprecedented lows. Under whom petrol subsidies were removed overnight without a cushion for the poor. Under whom hunger intensified to the point of national emergency. Under whom insecurity consumed the land and nepotism in federal appointments reached brazen, unprecedented levels.
This is Babachir Lawal’s preferred alternative to a man who helped grow Nigeria’s GDP from $58 billion in 1999 to $270 billion by 2007, who led the privatisation programme that transformed Nigeria’s economic base, and who championed policies that made Nigeria genuinely attractive to foreign investment. That is not a political statement. That is the confession of a man driven not by principle but by spite, not by patriotism but by personal grievance, not by love of Nigeria but by hatred of a man who won.
Under the Tinubu administration, ordinary Nigerians have been ground into the dust of an economic catastrophe without parallel in the democratic era. Market women have watched their purchasing power evaporate. Students have watched universities become inaccessible luxuries. Workers have watched their salaries become insufficient for a single week of basic living. These are the Nigerians Atiku Abubakar is running to rescue. These are the Nigerians whose suffering Babachir Lawal has decided is preferable to an Atiku presidency. That calculation tells you everything about where Babachir Lawal’s loyalties actually reside, and it has nothing to do with Nigeria.
There is one further devastation worth recording. The aspirant Babachir was coordinating for has conducted himself with infinitely greater political wisdom and maturity than the man who was supposed to be guiding him. Mohammed Hayatu-Deen raised his concerns about the primary process with conviction, then received Alhaji Atiku Abubakar at his Lagos residence for frank and productive discussions, and agreed to work together for the restoration of purposeful governance to Nigeria. The winner visiting the man he defeated in his own home. The student has shamed the teacher. The aspirant has comprehensively outclassed the coordinator. Some men must leave so that the work can continue.
THE DELUSION THAT NEVER DIED AND THE PROMISE THAT STANDS
When Babachir Lawal entered the African Democratic Congress, many Nigerians of goodwill thought catastrophe had finally taught him something. We thought the grasscutter scandal, the presidential firing, the EFCC arraignment, and the long years of diminishing relevance had cracked open the shell of his delusion sufficiently for some light of honest self-assessment to enter. We thought Babachir Lawal had gotten himself freed from his delusions. He has now confirmed that the delusion never died. It merely relocated. The grasscutter changed addresses. The animal remained precisely the same.
His resignation letter, stripped of its ethnic slurs and its borrowed political vocabulary, is ultimately the document of a man who entered a contest he could not win, invested his reputation in a candidate who was decisively defeated, and then chose public humiliation over private grace. Every serious political actor in Nigeria has known losses. The measure of character is not whether a man loses. It is what he does after losing. Babachir Lawal has answered that question definitively.
He signs himself BD. Two letters, as though the initials of a man fired by his own president, arraigned by the EFCC, and repudiated by the movement he tried to wound carry the gravitas of consequence. History will record those two letters accurately: a Bad Decision, signed by a broken, loco man who confused noise for power and bitterness for principle.
On January 16, 2027, Nigerians will vote. On January 17, 2027, President-elect Atiku Abubakar will be preparing to take his rightful seat in Aso Rock Presidential Villa. The certifiably loco grasscutter will be watching from his village farm, exactly as he promised, while the movement he thought he could wound by his departure marches forward without him, stronger for his absence, cleaner for his exit, and entirely unbothered by a man whose loudest political act was a resignation letter that proved, more conclusively than any of his enemies could have arranged, exactly why he should never have been trusted with public office in the first place.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar does not need to respond to Babachir Lawal. January 16, 2027 is his response. Aso Rock is his response. History is his response.
And to the certifiably loco, EFCC-processed, Buhari-discarded, IDP-fund-devouring Babachir David Lawal, The Narrative Force says simply and finally: Nigeria was fine before you arrived. It will thrive long, long after you are forgotten.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
June 1, 2026
