By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Look at the phone in your hand.
Before you read another line, look at it. The cracked screen. The data you bought this morning. The WhatsApp group that carried this article to you.
In 1999, fewer than 500,000 Nigerians had a telephone line. To reach your brother in Kano from a village in Ekiti, you made a journey, joined a queue at a NITEL office, and prayed the line would hold.
In 2001, Nigeria auctioned its GSM licences at 285 million dollars each. Within a few years, the Igbo trader in Onitsha, the Tiv yam farmer outside Makurdi, the Hausa mother in Katsina and the Ebira tailor in Okene were all holding the world in their palms.
That government had a Vice President. By law, he chaired the National Economic Council. By law, he chaired the National Council on Privatisation, and the Bureau of Public Enterprises answered to that Council alone.
His name is Atiku Abubakar. And in 101 days, he will be on your ballot.
THE LAST OUTING
Atiku has told Nigerians plainly that 2027 is his last outing.
Read that sentence again, because it is the most important sentence of this election.
Every president Nigeria has known has governed with one eye on the next contest. The appointments, the contracts, the friendships and the silences are all weighed against one question: will this help me win again?
A man who has said this is his last outing has no next contest to weigh. He has no war chest to build, no godfathers to settle for a second term, no coalition of convenience to keep warm for later.
He has only one audience left. History.
A president with nothing left to run for has only one thing left to build: his name in the record of the nation.
BUILT BEFORE POWER
Some men need office to become somebody. Atiku became somebody first.
He served twenty years in the Nigeria Customs Service and retired in 1989 as Deputy Director, the second highest rank in the Service. By his own account, in 1984 he stood at the Lagos airport command against the release of 53 suitcases that powerful men wanted waved through without inspection. A junior officer does not survive that kind of stand by luck. He survives it by character.
In Yola, he founded the American University of Nigeria with his own money, the first American style university in sub-Saharan Africa. When the insurgency swept through the North East and others fled, that university stayed open. It fed displaced people in their hundreds of thousands.
Nobody elected him to do that. Nobody paid him to do that. He did it because a man who builds does not wait for permission.
THE MAN WHO STEPPED ASIDE
In Nigerian politics, men fight to the death for a ticket. Atiku has stepped aside three times.
In Jos in 1993, he stood down. In 1999, he stood down. In 2003, governors and members of the National Assembly urged him to run for President in his own right. He declined, backed his principal and campaigned as the deputy on that ticket.
Each time, he yielded to the stronger position, before the contest was decided.
Not once in thirty three years has he asked a stronger man to yield to him.
That is the record of a man who understands that the nation is bigger than the man. It is also the record of a man who knows exactly when his hour has come.
WHAT HE WILL DO
Atiku does not ask for your vote on sentiment. He asks for it on work.
On security, he has said the problem begins with numbers: Nigeria’s security agencies are understaffed and poorly equipped for the war in front of them. He has committed to significant change within his first year in office. This is not theory to him. In the administration he served, the Nigeria Police grew from about 120,000 officers to over 300,000.
On the structure of the nation, his creed has not moved in thirty years: strong states able to compete and reach their full potential, a lean centre handling defence, foreign affairs and monetary policy, and state policing to bring security closer to the people.
On the economy, his committed plans are published in advance, working documents placed before Nigerians to examine him and his intentions before a single vote is cast.
THE PEOPLE IN THE QUEUE
Think of who stands in the queue on 16 January 2027.
The Tiv farmer who has not slept on his own farm in two seasons. The Hausa mother in Katsina counting what is left in the bag of rice. The Igbo trader in Onitsha whose shop rent has doubled while his customers have halved. The Ebira graduate in Okene with a certificate and no door to knock on. The Ekiti pensioner in Ado who has learnt to walk past the pharmacy.
None of them needs a slogan. Each of them needs a man who has done it before, knows where the levers are, and has nothing left to prove except that he can finish what he started.
Experience is not a word on a poster. It is knowing which door to open on the first morning.
101 DAYS
Now look at the phone in your hand again.
It is proof that Nigeria once moved fast. That ordinary people once felt government arrive in their lives within a few short years. That the impossible became normal.
The man who sat at the head of the economic table when that happened is asking you for one last assignment. Not for himself. He has said he will not be back.
For you.
101 days. Collect your PVC. Know your polling unit. Guard your vote.
#Atiku2027 #AtikuAmaechi #ADC #16January2027 #TheNarrativeForce
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
8 October 2026
