By Adamu Lawal Toro
Hunger has no party card. It does not ask whether a family voted for the APC, PDP or ADC before it empties their pot. It visits the civil servant in Kaduna, the farmer in Bauchi and the trader in Onitsha with the same cruelty. Yet, during campaign season, hunger has become a political football, kicked from one end of the field to the other while the people continue to starve.
On Saturday, at the Ranchers Bees Stadium in Kaduna, President Bola Tinubu flagged off his re-election campaign with a question and an answer. “I hear my opponent talking about hunger, poverty. Who created it? They did!” he told the crowd. “They created the hunger, they created the poverty. We are trying to eradicate it.”
Within hours, Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, fired back. Blaming the opposition for hunger, he said through his spokesman, Phrank Shaibu, was “either delusion or a staggering case of political amnesia.”
A president, he argued, cannot light the fire of hardship with his own policies and then blame the neighbours for the smoke.
So, who is right? More importantly, who is liable?
The President’s claim is not entirely baseless. Nigeria’s poverty did not begin in May 2023. The structural rot that keeps millions of Nigerians poor is decades old: an economy chained to crude oil, a subsidy regime that enriched cartels more than citizens, a failing power sector, neglected agriculture and insecurity that has driven farmers from their land. Many of the men now leading the opposition were at the centre of power when those foundations were laid. Atiku himself served as vice president for eight years. Others in the opposition coalition served as APC governors and ministers until recently.
That is the President’s strongest point. Nigeria’s political class, across party lines, shares the blame for the country’s long decline.
But that is where his argument ends and his liability begins.
A president is not elected merely to describe inherited problems. He is elected to solve them. Tinubu did not stumble into office. He campaigned for the presidency for years under the slogan “Emi lo kan”—it is my turn—and promised renewed hope.
Three and a half years later, what do Nigerians see?
The World Bank, in its April 2026 Nigeria Development Update, estimated that 63 per cent of Nigerians, or about 140 million people, lived below the national poverty line in 2025. Food inflation climbed back above 20 per cent in July.
Petrol, which sold for less than ₦200 per litre before May 2023, now costs about ₦1,400 in Abuja. Even the President’s adviser, Daniel Bwala, admitted on national television this month that “more people went down to poverty” under these reforms.
That is not the work of the opposition.
The opposition did not remove the fuel subsidy on inauguration day without providing a cushion for vulnerable Nigerians. The opposition did not float the naira without first protecting the poor from the consequences of its depreciation. Nor does the opposition control the Federal Executive Council, the Central Bank of Nigeria or the national budget.
Policies have authors. Their consequences have owners.
At the same rally, the President told Nigerians that the election “is not a matter of hunger” and that his opponents “are angry because they are failures.” With respect, for the mother who cannot afford a bag of rice, it is entirely a matter of hunger. To dismiss her pain as opposition propaganda is to tell her that her suffering is imaginary. That is the delusion Atiku spoke of.
Yet, the opposition should not be let off the hook either.
Atiku’s statement raises serious questions about the ₦7.13 trillion recorded under “energy security,” NNPC pipeline spending and gaps in Nigeria’s external accounts. The government owes Nigerians answers. But a list of accusations is not a programme. Nigerians have heard what the opposition is against, but they have yet to hear a clear explanation of what it would do differently.
How would an ADC government bring down food prices? Would it restore the fuel subsidy, and how would it pay for it? How would it stabilise the naira without draining the country’s foreign reserves? How would it end banditry in the North-West and kidnapping on the highways?
These are the questions voters will ask in the run-up to the election.
Shouting “delusional” across the aisle does not answer them.
There is also a danger in this blame game. When the ruling party accuses the opposition of causing hunger, and the opposition blames the government, the debate becomes about who is responsible rather than how to solve the problem. Hunger becomes a slogan, and the hungry become props in a political contest.
Nigeria cannot afford that kind of campaign.
So, who is liable? The honest answer is that the political class as a whole helped create the conditions that fuel Nigeria’s poverty. But the man in office is responsible for the present. He controls the budget, directs government policy and wields executive power. If hunger has deepened on his watch, he cannot shift the responsibility to people who are not in government.
President Tinubu has every right to defend his reforms. He may argue that the pain is temporary, that the economy is stabilising and that the gains will eventually come. Let him make that case with evidence and allow Nigerians to weigh his arguments. But he should not ask hungry people to believe that their suffering was created by those who lack the power to determine the policies governing their lives today.
Ultimately, the election on January 16, 2027, will not be won in a stadium in Kaduna alone. It will be decided in the kitchens of ordinary Nigerians, where a woman standing over an empty pot asks a simple question: Is my family eating better today than it was three years ago?
Whoever can honestly answer that question deserves her vote.
