By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
In the political theatre of Nigeria, few spectacles have been more grandiose yet more tragic than the grand merger that birthed the All Progressives Congress. Like a carefully staged illusion, this coalition of convenience was sold as a miracle remedy to the nation’s chronic illnesses: corruption, insecurity, unemployment, and infrastructural decay. The conjurers of this illusion were skilled in the art of persuasion, and their potion was brewed from the fragmented bones of once-fierce rivals: ACN, CPC, ANPP, and a disenchanted wing of the PDP christened nPDP.
Their union, though painted as visionary, was nothing more than an alliance of political scavengers circling the dying carcass of public trust. They did not come together to serve Nigeria; they came to seize Nigeria. They called themselves “progressives”, yet they regressed every moral and material index of national development. They waved brooms in the air as a symbol of cleansing, yet the only thing they swept was truth under the carpet. They chanted “Change!” as a messianic chorus, but what followed was an epidemic of suffering so brazen, it felt as though Dante’s Inferno had relocated to the shores of the Niger.
The image above tells the story more powerfully than volumes of books. The egg, the symbol of new life and hope, is cracked into the exact components that formed it: ACN, CPC, ANPP, and nPDP. It was never a real egg. It was a jigsaw of conflicting ambitions. A contraption designed for conquest, not governance. A coalition born not out of ideological cohesion, but out of electoral desperation. Today, that egg lies broken, brittle, and bereft of vitality.
From the very outset, the cracks were visible, yet Nigerians, wearied by PDP’s manageable imperfections and sentiment for a northern presidency in 2015, southern presidency having accounted for 13 years and 1 month out of the 16 years of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic democracy, clutched onto the APC as a drowning man clutches at floating straws. We were not seeking saints; we were merely seeking sincerity. But what we got was a toxic broth of ethnic suspicion, nepotistic appointments, economic hardship, and tyrannical silences. The government, once a chorus of promises, became a solo of excuses.
The CPC bloc, once led by President Muhammadu Buhari, felt entitled to dominate. Yet as the years dragged, many within the CPC family began to murmur, realising they were only tools for a purpose that no longer included them. The nPDP, a splinter group who had defected out of ideological frustrations, now found themselves even more marginalised than in the party they had abandoned. The ACN, headquartered in the South West, emerged as the de facto control center of the APC, wielding power with imperial arrogance. The ANPP, swallowed whole, became forgotten, like an ingredient in a bitter stew no one wants to taste again. What was promised as a symphony turned out to be a cacophony of selfish interests.
Oh, how the people danced! Markets shut down to welcome the “messiah.” Churches prayed; mosques chanted. A new era, they believed, had arrived. They sang songs of joy in 2015, and again in 2019, not knowing they were celebrating the coronation of hardship. Now, let us listen closely to the silence in the streets, for it is louder than applause. That silence is pregnant with pain. It speaks of mothers who cannot afford diapers, of fathers who cannot pay school fees, of youths who sleep jobless while old men in agbada siphon their futures. It speaks of a nation that was promised renewal but given recycling of misery.
THE DESCENT INTO PURGATORY: 2026 AND COUNTING
Today, under Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria has descended not into metaphor but into documented catastrophe. Not mere failure. Not simple mismanagement. But systematic ruination. Methodical devastation. A government so spectacularly incompetent, so callously indifferent, so willfully blind to the agony of its own people, that it has transformed the nation into a monument of human suffering.
In 2026, the World Food Programme and UN agencies report that 31.8 to 35 million Nigerians face acute food insecurity. Thirty-five million human beings. Not statistics. Not abstractions. Thirty-five million mothers rationing food they cannot afford, thirty-five million children whose bellies know hunger as intimately as a brother knows a sister. Thirty-five million reasons why Tinubu’s administration stands indicted for crimes against humanity.
Three million children under the age of five suffer severe acute malnutrition. Three million. Stunted. Weakened. Robbed of their cognitive potential before consciousness arrives. Their futures mortgaged before they could speak their first word, sacrificed on the altar of Tinubu’s predatory policies and reckless misadventures.
Nigeria now ranks among the world’s top “hunger hotspots”—a global designation of shame, a scarlet letter sewn into the fabric of national identity. We are no longer a developing nation; we are a nation in freefall. We are not merely wounded; we are hemorrhaging. We are not declining; we are disintegrating.
The inflation statistics paint not merely a portrait but an indictment. A devastating testimony to the malevolence masquerading as policy. Headline inflation eased to 15.43% by July 2026, yet this minor reprieve is nothing but a cruel deception, a statistical sleight of hand designed to obscure the true catastrophe. Food inflation remains locked at a devastating 20.31%, a pernicious stranglehold on the throats of every Nigerian household. The daily cost of maintaining a healthy diet has nearly doubled to over ₦1,513 per adult. For a family of five, that is ₦7,565 every single day, just to eat decently. Just to survive. Compare that to the minimum wage. Do the arithmetic yourself. The answer is starvation. The answer is a slow, agonising death by policy.
The World Bank estimates that national poverty rates have climbed to roughly 63%. Roughly 140 million Nigerians now live below the poverty line. One hundred and forty million. In a nation of over 200 million. Seventy percent of our people condemned to destitution. We are not facing a recession; we are facing a civilisational collapse. We are witnessing the calculated impoverishment of a nation. We are watching the systematic dismantling of the Nigerian dream.
And employment? Forty-five point three percent of Nigerian households have experienced a job loss, business closure, or inability to find work over a 12-month period. Nearly half. The Southeast and Northcentral regions do not merely bleed; they hemorrhage. In Lagos, a banker yesterday is a hawker today, his dignity scattered like torn currency. In Enugu, engineers push wheelbarrows, their qualifications mocked by circumstance. In Kano, degree holders beg for apprenticeships, begging to work for subsistence wages. The hopelessness is not incidental; it is systematic. It is the deliberate consequence of a government that has chosen extraction over elevation, plunder over prosperity.
In the small town of Igbo-Ora, a mother named Mojisola boiled water and added seasoning cubes, not to cook, but to deceive her five children that food was on the way. To lie to infants about nourishment. To mock hunger with theatrical deception. In Aba, a university graduate turned bricklayer watches his dreams mix with cement under the blistering sun, each brick a monument to squandered potential, each day a fresh amputation of hope. From Kafanchan to Epe, despair does not ride okada; it walks, stalking, hunting, consuming. From Lagos to Katsina, the same primordial cry rises, bloodied and desperate: “We cannot breathe. We cannot eat. We cannot survive.”
This is not governance. This is not mismanagement. This is not even incompetence. This is malevolent negligence wearing a presidential sash. This is asphyxiation. This is deliberate, calculated destruction masquerading as policy. This is the pernicious presidency that has transformed Nigeria into a nation of mourners.
Tinubu’s administration has transformed hope into a weapon of oppression, a bargaining chip used to extort silence from the suffering and extinguish loyalty through fear. It is not governance; it is organised extortion. The streets are not merely talking; they are roaring. They are not whispering defiance; they are declaring insurrection. They are rising up against a predatory regime that has made a mockery of democracy. The people are prepared. They are wounded, yes, but they are not broken. 2027 is no longer just an election year; it is a rescue mission. It is a referendum on whether we die as a nation or resurrect as one.
But while Nigerians grind teeth in anguish, Tinubu grins in celebration, his smile grotesque and detached, overjoyed by the gale of defections from opposition parties into the APC. He cares not that these defections represent the death throes of political principle; he cares only that they stroke his towering ego. He dances not with conviction but with pure malevolence. Like a predatory vulture circling dehydrated prey, circling the corpse of Nigerian democracy, he blackmails dissenters with promises of immunity and retribution, intimidates opposition with the brute force of state machinery, and coerces desperate politicians with the poisoned mirage of relevance. Every defection is treated like divine vindication, like cosmic proof of his leadership, not knowing that many of these cross-carpeters are mercenaries and refugees, passengers seeking shelter from the storm of his tyranny, not disciples of this rotten altar.
He brands himself the apostle of renewed hope, a messianic charlatan, yet his sermons echo only with the screams of the starving and the weeping of the displaced. He basks in headlines announcing the collapse of rival camps like a vulture basking in carrion, forgetting that people defect because the alternative is annihilation, not out of love or conviction. He thinks 2027 is sealed, that his defections have already purchased victory, not knowing that Nigerians are not merely deceived or apathetic; they are enraged. They are roused. They are preparing for reckoning.
Philosopher Philippe Ariès once said, “The loss of future renders the present unbearable.” And so it is with Nigeria under Tinubu: our future was auctioned off to the highest bidder, our present is an open wound weeping pus, and our past, however imperfect, has become a golden era in retrospective comparison. Tinubu promised “Renewed Hope.” What he delivered was systematic despair. What he offered was visions of national recovery. What he inflicted was national asphyxiation. No leader in recent memory has presided over such a brazen, unashamed destruction of national welfare. No administration has been so thoroughly, so palpably, so undeniably catastrophic.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE SEASONED LIBERATOR
But amid this desolation, a beacon burns with unambiguous brilliance. It is not flickering. It is not tentative. It is resolute, grounded, and increasingly irresistible.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Wazirin Adamawa, stands as the towering antithesis to this chaos. He is not a novice. He is not an ideologue untested by the furnace of governance. He is the seasoned statesman the moment demands: a man who has navigated the labyrinth of Nigerian politics with surgical precision, a man whose economic vision is not born from theory but forged in the smithy of practical experience.
While others dabble, Atiku comprehends. While others promise, Atiku delivers blueprints. His is not the language of slogans but the vocabulary of solutions.
The masses now embrace Atiku not because of nostalgia but because of necessity. They understand what the APC refused to grasp: that governance requires competence, not mere sloganeering. That leadership demands vision, not vendetta. That stewardship of 200 million people requires experience, not experimentation.
His commitment to the restoration of fuel subsidy is not an act of sentimentalism; it is a lifeline for a drowning nation. When a family spends ₦7,565 daily just to eat, every reduction in transportation costs is relief. Every lowering of goods prices is survival. Atiku understands that you cannot build a nation on an empty stomach. You cannot restore hope to a population gasping for breath.
The people are not following Atiku because they are naive. They are following him because the alternative is annihilation. They have done the calculus. They have measured the distance between promise and performance. And they have concluded, with the sober wisdom that only desperation can teach, that Atiku Abubakar is the captain this ship requires.
From the disenchanted CPC bloc, frustrated by betrayal and neglect, voices are whispering in Atiku’s direction. From the rejected nPDP, leaders are finding solace and respect in the Waziri’s inclusive tent. From the Labour Party, previously intoxicated by idealism, reality has dawned and pragmatists are now aligning with Atiku’s seasoned structure. The decisive PDP, long criticised, has reemerged as a fortress of stability in a sea of chaos. And even the African Democratic Congress, a party long watching from the sidelines, is now warming toward this coalition, seeing in it the ingredients of realignment and rebirth.
This is not accident. This is gravitation. This is the natural pull of a drowning populace toward the only vessel capable of bringing them to shore.
A COALITION FORGED IN PURPOSE, NOT PLUNDER
This coalition is not another egg; it is a foundation. It is not a marriage of bitterness, but a union of purpose. It is not built on propaganda, but on policy, planning, and pluralism. It is not a gathering of political nomads seeking quick wins; it is an intellectual, ideological, and structural renaissance. It is the answer to the people’s cry for clarity, capacity, and compassion.
A growing political migration is swelling its ranks, not as defectors, but as believers in a common objective: to rescue Nigeria from the incompetence of APC, to restore sanity to governance, and to reignite the dreams we once held dear. These are not mercenaries. These are Nigerians who have lived through the crucible of the APC years and emerged convinced that Atiku Abubakar represents not just an alternative, but the solution.
The people are deciding. The masses are moving. Not because they have been coerced but because they recognize in Atiku a rare convergence of qualities: intellectual firepower, administrative pedigree, economic acumen, and the courage to challenge the status quo.
Let this cracked egg of APC be engraved in our memory as a warning from history. Let it remind us that hope must never again be outsourced to opportunists. Let it teach us that unity without values is chaos with decoration. In the words of John Stuart Mill, “The worth of a state in the long run is the worth of the individuals composing it.” Nigeria must now compose itself of leaders with vision, followers with vigilance, and a coalition that is inclusive, informed, and intentional.
THE RECKONING APPROACHES
2027 beckons with the weight of urgency. The story is not yet finished. We the people must now pick up the pen, rewrite the plot, and discard the cracked egg forever. The masses have already begun to stir. They have counted the hunger. They have measured the hardship. They have concluded that change is not a luxury; it is a necessity.
Atiku Abubakar stands ready. The coalition stands assembled. The moment stands crystalline.
Let us hatch a nation, not from deception, but from deliberate, democratic rebirth.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General
The Narrative Force
