Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
OPENING CHARGE
When Hon. Oladimeji Fabiyi, one of the most potent defenders and ever loyal allies of Atiku Abubakar, drew my attention to the irritating outbursts of one Bamidele Akintola Yekini, I could not help laughing. I laughed not because the man is funny, but because the man is pitiable. There is a particular kind of political scribbler that deserves more pity than rage, the kind who mistakes bullet points for arguments, anonymous sentiment for evidence, and propaganda for analysis. Yekini is that species. And I pity him, because when a man deploys this level of intellectual poverty in the service of a political agenda this transparent, the kindest response is sympathy before demolition.
But sympathy has its limits. And the limits are reached when the pamphlet in question is designed to wound a candidate, suppress a vote, and mislead a people. Yekini has produced a bullet-pointed manifesto purporting to explain why Yoruba voters reject Atiku Abubakar. It contains no data, no poll, no citation, no verifiable source, and not a single sentence about Tinubu’s governance record. It is not political analysis. It is advocacy wearing a neutral mask. Circulating alongside it is a companion poster that places Atiku’s photograph above a list of religious violence victims and asks whether he has ever condemned these wrongs. Both weapons are aimed at the same target. Both will be dismantled in the same arena. Let us proceed.
THE DATA YEKINI BURIED
Yekini claims many Yoruba voters reject Atiku without providing a single verifiable data point. Here is what certified INEC data actually says. In the 2023 presidential election, in the South-West alone, Atiku Abubakar polled 941,941 votes. Peter Obi polled 846,478 votes. Together, 1,788,419 South-West voters rejected Tinubu at the ballot box in his own political homeland. If supporting Atiku makes someone a bastard, are 941,941 Yoruba voters bastards? Is that Yekini’s new definition of Yoruba identity? Those 941,941 votes will become no fewer than 1,800,000 by 2027, because Tinubu has campaigned for Atiku more effectively than any ADC operative ever could. Hunger is the loudest campaign poster in Nigerian electoral history.
AWOLOWO ANSWERS YEKINI FROM THE GRAVE
Yekini claims Atiku lacks the progressive tradition of Awolowo. On page 261 of his autobiography Awo (1997 edition), Awolowo himself demolishes that claim: “The Yoruba are a fastidious, critical and discerning people. They will not do anything in politics merely to oblige a fellow Yoruba. If the Yoruba man is satisfied that your policy is good and will serve his self-interest, he will support you no matter from which ethnic group you hail.”
In The People’s Republic, Awolowo wrote that “the good leader is one who subordinates his personal interests to the common weal, who tells the people the truth at all times, however unpleasant, and who dedicates himself wholly to their service.” Measure Tinubu against that standard. The instrument returns a verdict of comprehensive failure. Awolowo further declared in Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution that “a federal constitution which does not give the component units adequate autonomy in their internal affairs is not only a fraud but a sure foundation for perpetual discontent and instability.” Atiku has campaigned on restructuring, fiscal federalism, devolution, and state police for twenty-five uninterrupted years. That is Awolowo’s agenda. The Yoruba who voted Atiku in 2023 were not betraying Awolowo. They were obeying him.
THE REFORM RECORD, THE DEBTS FICTION, AND THE PATRONAGE PROJECTION
Under the Obasanjo-Atiku administration, Nigeria’s GDP grew from 58 billion dollars in 1999 to 270 billion dollars by 2007. External debt was cleared. The EFCC was established. The Bank Consolidation exercise transformed Nigerian banking. Foreign reserves grew from near depletion to over 40 billion dollars. These are certified national accounts, not campaign promises. Atiku keeps running because the work he started is unfinished. That is not political vanity. That is political vocation.
On political debts: Atiku won the ADC presidential primary with 1,846,370 votes, 73 percent of a national electorate from all 36 states and the FCT. That is not a man drowning in debts. Meanwhile, let Yekini explain the Emi lokan beneficiaries occupying national positions as repayment for 2023 electoral support. If political debt disqualifies Atiku, it has already executed Tinubu. On patronage: Yekini’s concern applies only to the opposition, never to the incumbent who built the most documented patronage architecture in Nigerian democratic history. That is not analysis. That is advocacy.
THE FALSE EQUIVALENCE AND THE LINE YEKINI DID NOT WRITE
Yekini suggests younger Nigerians see both Atiku and Tinubu as the old order. Tinubu is the incumbent, currently governing, currently inflicting pain. Atiku is the challenger, proposing the alternative. To say young Nigerians are equally exhausted by both is to say a patient is equally tired of the disease and the antibiotic. In an article purportedly analysing South-West political sentiment, Yekini did not write a single sentence about Tinubu’s governance record. No mention of the naira’s collapse. No mention of fuel prices that have tripled. No mention of food costs that have made a bag of rice a middle-class aspiration. Remove Tinubu’s record and Atiku becomes the old order. Restore it and Atiku becomes the only credible route to relief. Yekini removed it. That is prosecution strategy on behalf of a client who cannot survive an honest trial.
THE POSTER: THE AMBUSH THAT DESTROYED ITSELF
The poster lists Deborah Samuel Yakubu, Eunice Olawale, Michael Nnadi, Christianah Oluwasesin, the Owo Church attack, the Yelwata Massacre, and others, and asks whether Atiku has ever condemned these wrongs. The answer is not a defence. It is a prosecution.
July 6, 2015: Atiku condemned attacks in Jos, Maiduguri, and Potiskum, calling the perpetrators “blood-sucking vermin.” February 5, 2020: Atiku condemned the murder of CAN chairman Lawan Andimi and challenged Buhari directly. A Muslim Fulani man demanding justice for a murdered Christian leader. June 2025: Atiku condemned the Benue massacre. September 7, 2025: Atiku condemned the Darajamal slaughter in Borno. March 6, 2026: Atiku condemned the Ngoshe killings in Gwoza. March 17, 2026: Atiku condemned the Maiduguri suicide bombings. May 28, 2026: Atiku condemned the mass abduction of schoolchildren in Oyo and Borno.
Nine dated, documented condemnations spanning eleven unbroken years. Full documentation available on request from The Narrative Force. Every incident on that poster except the Yelwata Massacre occurred under APC federal governance. The Yelwata Massacre of 2024 occurred under Tinubu’s own presidency while he governed from Aso Rock. The party whose logo is on this poster governed Nigeria during every one of these tragedies. That is not accountability. That is audacity.
A FULANI MAN WHO BUILT WHERE OTHERS BURNED
In 2004, before Boko Haram raised its first weapon, Atiku Abubakar founded the American University of Nigeria in Yola, Adamawa State, the epicentre of the region Boko Haram would later attempt to destroy. Boko Haram means Western education is sinful. Atiku’s answer was a university built years before the threat fully materialised. That is a statesman’s foresight, not a politician’s reaction. He then created scholarships specifically for Boko Haram victims. His answer to religious extremism was an institution, a scholarship, and the education of a generation terrorism tried to destroy. What institution did the authors of this poster build? Silence is its own confession.
THE PETER OBI PHANTOM AND THE LAGOS ILLUSION
Who benefits from Yekini’s pamphlet? It names no credible alternative. It gestures toward undefined transformation without the courage to name it. That vagueness has a name. It is Peter Obi. But the Yoruba people have delivered their verdict. Remove Lagos from Obi’s South-West total and his performance collapses to 264,024 votes across five states. Atiku, without Lagos, polled 866,191 across those same five states. Outside Lagos, Atiku beat Obi by 602,167 votes. That is an annihilation.
Obi’s South-West showing was not a Yoruba phenomenon. It was a Lagos phenomenon, driven by three forces unreplicable in the heartland: the headquarters concentration of every major Pentecostal church whose congregations mobilised around Obi’s Christian identity; Nigeria’s largest non-Yoruba resident population of Igbo traders, South-South professionals, and Middle Belt migrants who brought their own preferences to the ballot; and Lagos’s dense urban digital youth who provided the most fertile ground for the Obi wave’s online mobilisation strategy.
The heartland verdict is merciless. Atiku won Osun State outright, defeating even Tinubu: Atiku 354,366, Tinubu 343,945, Obi 23,283. Fifteen to one over Obi. In Ekiti, Atiku 89,554 against Obi’s 11,397. Eight to one. In Ondo, Atiku 115,463 against Obi’s 44,405. In Oyo, Atiku 182,977 against Obi’s 99,110. In Ogun, Atiku 123,831 against Obi’s 85,829. Obi has since abandoned Labour Party and migrated to the NDC, a party with no governorship, no state legislature, and no elected official of consequence anywhere in Nigeria. That is not transformation. That is a political obituary dressed in campaign colours.
THE FINAL RECKONING
Yekini’s pamphlet invokes Awolowo while contradicting page 261 of his autobiography. It ignores Atiku’s documented reform record. It erases Tinubu’s governance failures. It points toward Peter Obi, whom the Yoruba heartland rejected comprehensively, as the unspoken alternative. The companion poster asked a question whose answer is nine dated condemnations, a university built in 2004, and scholarships for terror victims, all while carrying the logo of the party that governed Nigeria during every tragedy it listed. Both weapons have destroyed themselves.
Hon. Oladimeji Fabiyi was right to draw attention to this pamphlet. Not because it is dangerous, but because it is instructive. It shows exactly what a campaign looks like when it has run out of arguments: it reaches for bullet points without data, for Awolowo’s name without Awolowo’s philosophy, for victims’ grief to without victims’ consent, and for Peter Obi’s ghost without Peter Obi’s votes.
The 941,941 Yoruba voters who chose Atiku in 2023 were obeying Awolowo, not betraying him. By 2027 they will be a movement north of 1,800,000. Because Tinubu’s APC has done what no opposition campaign could accomplish: it has converted the suffering of millions into the most powerful electoral argument in Nigeria’s democratic history. And that argument will be heard at the ballot box.
History does not remember who insulted louder. History remembers who built when others only burned. Atiku built. We stood. We are standing. And we will stand.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
