By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
This Sunday morning, somewhere outside Makurdi, a Tiv farmer woke in the bush beside his yam heaps, not in his own house, because the men who come at night do not knock. He will not make it to church today.
This Sunday morning, in Kano’s Kurmi Market, a Hausa trader is opening his stall. He knows the day’s takings will be bigger in naira than ever and will still buy less than they did three years ago.
This Sunday morning, in Onitsha, an Igbo mother is warming yesterday’s soup before church and telling her children it tastes better on the second day.
This Sunday morning, in Ado Ekiti, a retired teacher is dressing for service and wondering what he can put in the offering plate from a pension that no longer buys a month of drugs.
Across Nigeria, the pews will be full today, and so will the prayer requests.
None of them was consulted. Every one of them is paying.
That is why Tinubu must go.
THE DAY POLICY WAS SPOKEN, NOT MADE
On 29 May 2023, a new President stood at Eagle Square and uttered four words: fuel subsidy is gone. No debate. No framework. No cushion for the poor. In one sentence, the price of every journey, every bag of rice and every loaf of bread in Nigeria was rewritten.
He was not proposing. He was pronouncing. Over 200 million Nigerians have lived inside that pronouncement ever since.
In the same season the naira was cut loose, and both shocks landed on the same kitchen table at the same time. That was not reform. That was a stampede, and the poor were the ones trampled.
A reform the people cannot survive is not a reform. It is a sentence.
The government’s own statistics bureau recorded the damage. By August 2024, food inflation had reached 37.52 per cent year on year, with headline inflation at 32.15 per cent. That is not an opposition slogan. That is the Nigerian state signing its own charge sheet.
THE NUMBER THEY ARE DANCING TO
Now the Presidency’s men are celebrating a new figure. Headline inflation eased to 15.39 per cent in August 2026, a third straight month of slowdown.
Let them dance. But every Nigerian should understand what that number actually says. A falling rate is not a falling price. It means prices are still rising, only more slowly. The garri, the rice and the fare to market that leapt in 2023 and 2024 have not come back down. They have merely stopped sprinting.
Read the same report to the end. Food inflation still stood at 19.57 per cent in August, and food remained the single largest contributor to headline inflation. Worse, rural inflation’s monthly rate rose to 1.79 per cent from 0.78 per cent in July, signalling fresh price pressure in the villages.
The villages, where most of our people live, are still being squeezed while Abuja holds press conferences.
THE NIGHTS THE STATE DID NOT COME
The first duty of any government is to keep its people alive. Judge this one by that duty alone.
On 3 February 2026, hundreds of militants attacked Woro and Nuku in Kwara State, killing at least 162 residents in one of the deadliest attacks in months. Reports say the attackers withdrew only when a military aircraft appeared, hours after the killing began.
In March, multiple suicide bombers struck Maiduguri after years of calm. In July, at least 14 villagers were killed in an attack in Benue State.
Different towns. Different tongues. The same abandonment.
When the state arrives only after the killing is done, the state has already failed.
THE CORRUPTION THAT WAS NEVER DEFEATED
This government insists it is winning the war on corruption. Transparency International answered with the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index: Nigeria scored 26 out of 100 and sat 142nd of 182 countries.
Nigerians were told the subsidy savings would build roads, hospitals and schools. Three years on, go to your community and ask where the new hospital is.
THREE YEARS OF “WAIT”
Every time the people cry out, the answer is the same: wait. Wait for the reforms to bite. Wait for the gains. Wait for renewed hope.
The trader in Kurmi has waited. The mother in Onitsha has waited. The farmer in Benue has waited in the bush. A government that asks the hungry for patience while it asks nothing of itself has exhausted its right to ask for four more years.
NIGERIA HAS DONE BETTER, AND KNOWS IT
This country is not cursed. Between 1999 and 2007, Nigeria’s GDP grew from $58 billion to $270 billion. External reserves rose from $3.7 billion to about $45 billion. Nigeria settled with the Paris Club and walked out of that debt trap in 2006.
Same oil. Same people. Same Nigeria. What differed was a government that phased hard reforms and carried the people with it.
At the heart of that economic machinery sat the Vice President, who by law chaired the National Economic Council and the National Council on Privatisation. His name was Atiku Abubakar. Today he is the ADC candidate, with Rotimi Amaechi beside him. Their working documents are already published and placed before the people to examine.
A SUNDAY PRAYER FOR NIGERIA
To every Christian going to church this morning: carry Nigeria with you to the altar.
When the prayer points are called, let yours be plain. Tinubu must go.
Pray it in the cathedral and in the Pentecostal hall. Pray it in the white garment church by the stream and in the village chapel under a zinc roof. Pray it in Yoruba, in Igbo, in Hausa, in Tiv and in English. Heaven understands every one of them.
Pray that he goes by the ballot on 16 January 2027, and that he lives long in Lagos to watch a better Nigeria rise.
Pray for the farmer in the bush, the mother at the stove and the teacher counting coins for the offering. Pray for the soldiers in the North East and the bereaved families of Woro and Nuku.
Then rise from your knees and work, because faith without works is dead. The prayer is said on Sunday. The answer is written with a thumb on 16 January.
Say it on Sunday. Seal it with your thumb.
The mosques offered their prayers on Friday. The churches offer theirs today. On 16 January, the whole nation answers together.
HOW HE MUST GO
Tinubu must go by the only door Nigerians still control: the ballot.
Collect your PVC. Verify your polling unit. Bring your household, your street, your church and your mosque to the queue on 16 January 2027. Remain peacefully, at the lawful distance, until the result is announced, recorded and uploaded.
No stone, no fire. Only thumbprints, in their millions, guarded to the last count.
Pray today. Queue on 16 January.
119 days remain. The farmer, the trader, the mother and the teacher are counting. So is Nigeria.
#TinubuMustGo #AtikuAmaechi2027 #16January2027
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
20 September 2026
